Designs wasted on non-baseball cards: 1992 Score football

This will be a semi-recurring feature on the blog, dependent solely on how long it can hold my interest. You know how that goes.

As I've said, I'm pretty much a baseball card only guy. I've dabbled in other cards over the years, most notably football in the late '70s and hockey in the early '90s. But those were experimental stages, and I'm really too old to experiment anymore. The days of salivating over the latest app are over, if they ever began.

But I am aware enough of non-baseball cards that I am periodically jealous of some of the designs that appear on those cards. Football and hockey, mostly. But there were some very cool early '70s basketball card designs, too.

I see those designs and think, "those should have appeared on baseball cards." What a waste, throwing them away on some sport I don't collect.

So, I thought that periodically I'd show some of my favorite non-baseball card designs and babble about why I like them.

If I had the time and ability, I would also incorporate the favored design into a baseball card format. But I have neither, so you'll just have to imagine, or do it yourself. Maybe some day, when I do acquire time or ability, I'll update this post. And there, I've just made another empty promise.

Anyway, the first design that I wish appeared on a baseball card is from 1992 Score football.

Some may think this design is too colorful or too gaudy.

That's impossible, I say.

This design and this set is great because the design is definitely of its era. Some younger collectors may say that it evokes memories of "Saved by the Bell." But I'm going back farther than that.

I think these cards go perfectly with what was going on in the mid-to-late '80s. Specifically, "Miami Vice," Ocean Pacific, neon Hawaiian shirts, the kind of beach-ish stuff that was very popular then.

The elements are all there on the card. The bright colors. The pink and yellow and green. The bold, geometric designs and the big lettering.

Score uses a variety of different colored borders in the set, which it also did with its 1991 baseball card set. I don't like that, mostly because there is one border color that looks better than all the others, and I find myself wishing that the whole set was designed with that border.

That is especially true with '92 Score football  because of these cards:

Holy crap, that's a great-looking card. I think I had a Hawaiian shirt that looked almost like that. I've come to my senses enough to know now that the colors look a lot better on a card than a shirt.

There are a wide variety of black-border cards throughout collecting history, but I like some better than others. I find that if you combine bright colors with black borders -- kind of like the 1971 Topps baseball set -- then I have an uncontrollable need to collect it.

The only thing that would make this set better is if it came out about six years prior. I think this style was pretty old by '92. Not enough flannel, or whatever color says "I'm miserable and from Seattle."

If all of the cards in this set were black-bordered there is almost no doubt that I would attempt to collect it, even though I am not interested in football cards.

That's what a good design can do for a card, and why you can't full-bleed every freakin' set.

So, there you are: an awesome design wasted on a non-baseball card product.

Instead of the greatness of that design in '92, Score gave us baseball collectors this:

So disappointing. Still don't like this set.