Generic Fun with Football

The 1980 Topps set represents the first year of my fantasy football league. And that's why I bought it. That, and the fact it was cheap. It is a Topps-without-a-license set but that doesn't bug me as much as it does with baseball sets. Probably because I'm used to seeing football cards with portrait shots taken on the sidelines. Would it be better with a team logo in the design? Absolutely. But sets can work just fine without them.

The set kicks off with a 'Record Breakers' subset as shown in the Harold Carmichael card up top. Unlike the '86 and '87 sets I've posted recently, this one is not grouped by team. It's done in the usual random player checklist pattern.

I'd like to think I'm the only person alive who can say he had Matt Robinson (who?) on his fantasy team. On a side note... this is supposed to be out 41st season. I think the odds of it coming off as less than 50/50 right now.

My QB that year ended up being my pal Tommy Kramer.

The card design is pretty simple as you can see. That football with the name inserted reminds me of this:

All Pro players with the appropriate banner.

At first glance, I thought Allan Ellis' pic was taken at Memorial Stadium but looking closer (and factoring in his uniform color) I'm thinking that it's Soldier Field.

The backs had stats, vitals, and a random fact related to the featured players' team.

Some helmet airbrushing made the player look like The Great Gazoo.

The Cleveland 'No Logo' Browns didn't have to concern themselves with airbrush nonsense.

Photos from some angles make the lack of logos irrelevant.

The highest cost card of the set is Phil Simms' rookie card.

Sweetness's card is cool no matter what.

Sideline capes, the football version od bat rack shots.

There were some helmetless shots which showed off that's 80s hair look.

BTW...Doug Kotar...or Waylon Jennings? You make the call.

There were a few scattered game action shots. Like this one of Mike Phipps.

And that card brings up one of the mysteries of this set. Check out DE Fred Dryer in that photo. The Rams' helmets were not tinkered with. Their iconic horn graphics were allowed on the cards. Like so:

I tried to find out why that was done but came up dry. Perhaps the 'horn' graphic was OK because it wasn't considered the team's official logo. The team used a ram's head for that. But that doesn't explain why the Vikings helmets' were airbrushed. The Viking horn on the helmet wasn't their official logo either, the Viking profile was. Who knows?

The Chargers had their 'bolts' obscured. It doesn't look as bad on the white unis as it does on the blue.

Scattered through the set were team cards that featured stat leaders. The Giants have always been my 'second team' and even I don't really remember Billy Taylor. He led the team in rushing yards in 1979 while starting nine games. The '79 Giants were terrible.

there was also a League Leaders subset. Joe Washington was fun to watch.

And the playoff subset covered the conference finals and the Super Bowl.

Dan Pastorini as a Raider, My drinking buddy Kenny Stabler as an Oiler. We're living in the Upside Down, people.

At first, I wondered if the black armband was an airbrush attempt to obscure the Cardinal unique sleeve stripe pattern. then I remembered.

The black armband covering their multiple sleeve stripes were worn during the 1979 season following the training camp death of TE J.V. Cain on his 28th birthday. Cain had been the 8th overall pick in the 1974 draft.

Joe Lavender was as cool as the other side of the pillow.

I showed this Paul Coffman card to my wife and she burst out laughing. She said 'You were playing pro football and I didn't even know it!".

Yes, he's my long lost twin. At least he's doing what I'd be doing on a pro football sideline, sitting it out.

I've decided that since I have the set from the first year of our fantasy league that a fun little project would be to nab a set from each of the five years I won the league. I'm working on that right now.

I also found the 30 card Super Football set. Topps loved 5x7 cards back then. They were pretty nice, truth be told.

Good stuff. And 30 cards for just a few dollars made it easy for me to pick it up and include it in the binder.

I won't burden everyone with the sets I pick up for my championship years, or maybe I will!

1970 Kellogg's 3-D Football

One of the more fun (and easier) football sets that I put together during my recent football kick (pun intended) was this gem. Kellogg's only did two football sets, both 3D, of course. This one, the 1970 set, was available to consumers in complete form with a mail-in order option. Their followup the next year wasn't offered thru the mail so if you wanted the full 60 card set you had to eat (or at least buy) a crapload of  Corn Flakes and Raisin Bran.

This 1970 bunch (and I'm assuming all the Kellogg's 3-D sets) was produced by the Xograph Company. The design is simpler than the 1971 offering which had a border of stars around the photo. I must say I prefer this cleaner look.

Not much point in typing a lot on these. They are probably familiar to most collectors. There are plenty of stars and future Hall of Fame players included. I haven't double-checked this but I saw it mentioned online that only five players appeared in both years.

Juice here looks to be on the team's bench in this photo. That's about as close as you'll come to an actual game action shot.

Here's one...Johnny U. My hero. I had the Colts from this set, Unitas, Bubba Smith, Tom Matte and John Mackey, in my Colts collection. But since these are pretty inexpensive it was an easy call to just grab a second copy for this set's binder.

Speak of the devil...

George Webster was a terrific player, very much an overlooked talent both then and now. Like John Mackey above, he's been placed in front of a Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum background.

I've heaped praise on Gale Sayers on this blog many times. This is another card I grabbed a second copy of. No need to cannibalize my Sayers collection, small thou it may be.

Sayers' teammate, Dick Butkus. A real badass.

Yes, Alex Karras played football. He wasn't just that guy in Blazing Saddles.

Speaking of actors. 

Recently Night Owl did a fun post in which he took a deep dive into the card numbers on Topps baseball through the years. There were a few that failed the 'Is it easy to sort these?' test, especially if your eyes have a few years on them.

Well, even the toughest Topps number font/color/position takes a backseat to these things.

If you're not familiar with the backs, well, the number is down there on that line in the lower right-hand corner. Don't squint, I've done the work for you:

The backs had various configurations of pretty much the same info, depending on whether the player had stats to display. In general, they all listed basic vitals, some notes on his college, what Kellogg's called 'personal info' which was a blurb about being drafted, traded, injured, and so on. 'Pro Honors' was just that. One thing they didn't include, front or back, was the name Kellogg's. I'm sure someone knows why.

To fill space some cards had 'It's a Fact' blurbs.

George Webster got two of those. Here's a closer look.

And a few more backs showing how they moved the blocks around to fit the space.

For the sake of comparison here's the Kellogg's 1971 Colts LB Bob Grant. Again, there is no mention of Kellogg's anywhere.

At least the number is a little bit bigger.

We Interrupt This Charles Bender Blog....

...to bring you a few football cards that arrived from north of the border. Angus (Dawg Day Cards) sent me these sweet cards and they fit right into my modern Baltimore Colts collection. It was one of those totally unexpected deliveries. And aren't those the best kind?

First up is a signed Mike Curtis. This comes from a 2004 Upper Deck set and is my first Curtis signed card.

I'll admit to some prejudice but I've always felt that Mike Curtis has never gotten his due as a player. He was famously hard charging player who also had a nose for the football. He had 25 interceptions in what amounted to eight full seasons. A lot of folks remember his for one moment on the field when he slammed a fan who attempted to make off with the game ball.

But he was much more than that and I think he's Hall of Fame worthy. But the good old boy network that runs the Hall has never seen it that way. Of course they are the same guys who denied John Mackey entrance for over a decade because of his Players Association work.

But it's a great card and much appreciated.

The other two are both of Raymond Berry, one of my football PCs.

Shiny Chrome Prizm above...

..and a real beauty from the Donruss Americana set. (I think...the fine print on the back is really, really fine!

Here is a fun little video about Mike Curtis.

Thanks so much Angus.

And this is as good a place as any to post my Colts World Champions sticker sheet. I was directed to some of these on eBay but I had a package of sheets from back in the day. Amazingly they came from a Hallmark store in Catonsville, Maryland long, long ago.