New York, NY - In an unprecedented national security move, the FBI has asked Sports Illustrated magazine to put a photo of al Queda chief Osama bin Laden on their cover next week in hopes the shockingly consistent "SI Cover Jinx" will kick in. The University of Illinois basketball team has been the latest victim. The Big Ten school begged the granddaddy of all sports publications to please run its Illini photo on the inside and go with "some NASCAR thingie," according to emails, but to no avail. The magazine placed them on last week's cover, and Illinois promptly dropped it's first game of the year to Ohio State, 65-64. "If they'd just put Osama on the cover this week," said FBI spokesman Carl Vaguely, "I guarantee you sometime next week he'd be caught by a couple Buddhist monks playing hackeysack and brought into Islamabad tied to a freakin' donkey's back." To its credit, SI is actually contemplating the move. "How many times can we sit here and say it's coincidence?" said mag publicist Rhonnette McKees-Port, "clearly, the lacerated eye of Satan has got a dead bead on our damn cover." The only remaining hang up to the bin Laden cover: SI will not use file photos, and is attempting to line up a PR shoot with the al Queda leader through his publicist, PMK.