This time of year is always a cold realization for this baseball fan.
Especially on the weekend, I'm at a loss. There are no baseball games to watch. College football means nothing to me and I'm only a casual NHL and college basketball fan so I can't get into those games until much later in the season. I like to watch the NFL, but for the most part that's only on Sunday.
So, it's tough. On Saturdays, I wander aimlessly, around the house, through the card aisle, and ... huh ... what's this? Topps is doing Heritage football? Maybe I'll try a pack of that.
Actually, this purchase was more deliberate than that. I saw the hanger packs when I was in Target a couple weeks ago, picking up the Topps Update I wrote about. The Heritage football is using the 1976 Topps football design, and I've mentioned I love that set and that the first football pack I ever bought was from that set.
It would be foolish not to try a pack.
Butby the time I was done I was glad I tried only one.
Heritage football is plagued by the same modern additions and inconsistencies as Heritage baseball. Same company, you know. It's a fun rip probably if you never opened packs in the 1970s, or you're able to embrace that this set is 50 years after the '76 set and, of course, there are going to be differences!
I'm just not at that stage, I guess. I just wander around the old neighborhood and mutter "it's not the same."
So in that frame of mind, let's run through this pack!
Starting with the first card out of the pack. It's one of two Falcons quarterbacks I pulled. That's not a good sign for the Atlantas. But all my brain wanted to know was where were the red helmets? Where is Steve Bartkowski? Sorry, brain. "Good Times" isn't on prime-time TV either.
The star of '76 football card fronts is the giant, colorful football and, at least to my eyes, the Heritage football looks similar to the original.
There's your side-by-side. Footballs mostly the same. The difference comes with the player name fonts. In '76 football, the name fonts would be fat and bold for shorter names and thinner only for players with longer names (think Ed "Too-Tall" Jones). In Heritage football, all the names, it seems, are thinner.
Granted, all of the Heritage football photos are action shots and most of the '76 football shots were candids or poses, so there's a lot to take you out of the nostalgia here. It's best if you don't look for faithful recreations from Heritage anymore, but it's too late for that now!
The back ... my goodness ... the back.
It looks like this because I tried to sharpen the image for clarity but I think you can see how readable this would be in regular November lighting. It's not readable, at all.
You can blame that on the dark print on dark backs that was the habit for 1970s card backs, until you compare side-by-side again.
Gracious, the '75 back is so much better.
Heritage backs have a few things going against it: the smaller type, the vastly smaller card number (arguably the most-important aspect of the back), the only single year of stats, the expanded legalese and finally, all the extra words in the write-up.
'76 football back write-ups gave you facts and numbers -- best game performance, etc. Heritage backs give you mumbo-jumbo like "tactical gravity". I don't know what that means, but I see stuff like that now in football sportswriting, too.
Of course, nobody but me is reading card backs anymore so I should turn it back to the front.
Every pack will have rookies, I'm sure. I haven't heard of any of these guys because I don't follow college football and I don't play fantasy football. But the only one of these players who hasn't played this year is the Steelers QB. The other three are regulars, just on pretty lousy teams.
I did get a Bills player in the pack and a good one -- hold on to the ball with two hands, James!
I don't like that Cook has a fumbler reputation. Most of those "fumbles" have been punch-outs, and I don't see why the NFL allows that. It looks like cheating to me. (I've read that the NFL allows it because it's not considered a safety hazard).
The Bills checklist for this set is pretty incomplete. That's typical for NFL sets, even back in the '70s, but with the three rookie additions in the Bills checklist (two that are barely familiar to me and one that is not at all), Topps leaves out Gregory Rousseau, Deone Walker, Terrel Bernard, Cole Bishop ... a bunch of defenders, basically.
The inevitable inserts and parallels. I don't know what "The Expansion" means. It's not about expansion teams. Reading the back didn't help.
The only All-Pro in the pack. There's too much space above the type in the box but otherwise it reminds me of the '76 set. I loved the All-Pro logos from '76, '77 and '79. Not quite the impact of the All-Star logos from the late '70s but fairly close.
The rest, although I've already shown the Caleb Downs and I'm not retaking the picture. Some decent star power/questionable people in that lot.
Before I get out of here I have to mention that it's nice that this set is a tribute to a set exactly 50 years prior, rather than what happens with baseball with the Heritage 49-year tributes.
Overall, seeing that '76 design again is fun. And with no baseball in sight, it's the best of what's currently on the TV. But I think for me, that'll be the only pack of this I buy.
But while I'm on the topic of football cards, here are my latest additions from Diamond Jesters' Time Travel Trading:
One from 1984 and four others from 1988. When football cards made more sense ... to me, anyway.
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