Some 1975 Topps Football Customs

 As I mentioned before, I'm organizing and trying to complete some Topps football sets that I've had since I was a kid.  I am making binder covers for them so that they look nice on my shelf.  And of course, I decided that all of the cards featured on these binders would be "Cards That Never Were".  I've made literally thousands of cards for this blog in the decade plus that I've been sporadically posting.  However, football cards have been few and far between.  So now I am making a few cards simply for the sake of my binders, and here is the completed binder cover:

Most of these have been published on this blog.  Bartkowski and Brazile were both Rookies of the Year in 1975. Click Here. The Divisional Playoff cards were just published yesterday. Click Here.  I took the Vikings-Cardinals card for my binder. And Joe Namath on his potential WFL Chicago Winds card was posted a few weeks back. Click Here.

I am a "homer" and I readily admit it.  So you knew I needed to have a bears card.  The Rookie Stars card was a Topps baseball standard of the 60s and 70s, but not football. So here's what a 1975 Bears Rookie Stars card would look like with the classic backfield tandem of Walter Payton and Roland Harper.

The final two include a "normal" card of George Blanda and a 1974 "Highlights" card of Emerson Boozer.  In 1974 the NFL added a sudden death overtime to the rules, and the first player to score a walk-off touchdown was Enerson Boozer.  It was a short path from Joe Namath.

 In 1975 Blanda had 2 "special" cards.  Both close ups of his profile and different layout than the standard card. I really didn't care for either, so I had to make a "regular" card for him. 

Here are his actual 1975 cards:

1975 Topps Divisional Playoffs

 These were requested by someone who contacted me through eBay.  He wanted more complete NFL playoff cards from Topps.  I needed to add a few custom football cards to my binder cover anyway (more on that later).  Anyway, here are the divisional playoff from 1974 using a similar format of the 1974 AFC and NFC championship cards in the 1975 set.

Trailing Buffalo 7-3 to start the 2nd quarter, the Steelers scored 26 unanswered points.  Rocky Bleier caught a 27 yard TD pass from Bradshaw. Franco Harris rushed for 3 more TDs to make it 29-7 at the half. Pittsburgh went on to beat the Bills 32-14.

With the game tied 7-7 at the half, the Vikings scored 16 points in 7 minutes. 10 of which were off Cardinals turnovers. In the game Chuck Foreman had 1968 all purpose yards. He rushed for 114 yards and a touchdown and caught 5 passes for 54 yards.

Trailing 26-21 in a back and forth battle. and just 2 minutes left in the game, Ken Stabler mounted another comeback.  Drive the Raiders downfield culminating in a 8 yard TD pass to running back Clarence Davis. Down 28-26 with just 24 seconds left, the Dolphins' Bob Griese threw an interception on the second play of the drive. Phil Villapiano's pick iced Oakland's victory

In the final game of Sonny Jurgensen's Hall of Fame career, it was all about the defense.  There were only 2 offensive TDs and one of those was set up by a forced fumble. In all there were 9 turnovers between the Rams and Washington. The nail in the Redskins coffin was a 4th quarter pick-six by Isiah Robertson to put L.A. up 19-10.

1975 Topps Joe Namath

 

I've been wanting to make this card for a while now.  If you're of a certain age, you might remember the short lived World Football League.  It existed in only 1974 and 1975.  In 1974 Chicago fielded a team called the Fire. The Fire started out hot (sorry) but after QB Virgil Carter's injury, lost the final 10 games of it's only season. 

In 1975 there was a new team, the Chicago Winds.  The owner pursued Joe Namath who was without a contract.  He offered $4 million for 4 years.  They even changed their colors from red to green to appeal to Namath.  Ultimately, the deal broke down and Namath remained on the Jets.  The ill fated Winds didn't even last the whole 1975 season.  Two different investors pulled out and the league dissolved the team mid-season and distributed their players to other teams via a special draft,

This is a card of what could have been.  Could Broadway Joe have saved the league?

1975 NFL Rookies of the Year

 In 1975 there were still 5 different organizations who awarded Rookie of the Year titles to NFL players. AP, UPI, NEA, Pro Football Weekly and The Sporting News.  That year there were 11 different awards split among 3 recipients.

The player all five organizations agreed upon was Oilers linebacker Robert Brazile. Houston drafted him with the 6th pick of the first round, just two picks behind his Jackson State teammate, Walter Payton.  Like sweetness, he would be enshrined in Canton, OH.  He played all 10 of his NFL Seasons with the Oilers and was selected to 7 Pro Bowls.  He is also on the Titans/Oilers "Ring of Honor".

Mike Thomas was named NFC Rookie of the Year by UPI.  He was Offensive ROY according to AP and shared the Pro Football Weekly Offensive ROY award with Steve Bartkowski.  Thomas was the lowest draft selection among the three ROYs.  He was picked in the 5th round by Washington from UNLV.  He ran for 919 yards in his rookie campaign. In 1976 he rushed for 1101 and was selected for the Pro Bowl. In his 6 year NFL career he had 6207 total yards from scrimmage for the Redskins and the Chargers.

The first pick of the 1975 NFL draft was Steve Bartkowski from the University of California, Berkley.  He was All American for the Cal Bears and led the nation in 1974 with 2580 passing yards. In addition to sharing the PFW Offensive ROY award with Mike Thomas, he earned NFC ROY honors from the NEA and The Sporting News.  In all he played 11 seasons with the Falcons and one with the Rams. He was a Pro Bowl selection twice.

My 2013 Fantasy Football Team

Here's another one of those posts that is just for me. I wanted to make a few cards of the players I ended up with in our fantasy football draft. I want to point out that I was the last one to pick and really didn't prepare very well for the draft. Even so, I'm winning going into the games tonight. 

Tom Brady is pictured on a 1958 Topps style card, Jamaal Charles on a 1975 Topps and Demaryus Thomas is on a 1974 Topps card.

1975 Ron Santo

Although Ron Santo didn't play in 1975 he still had a 1975 baseball card. In his final card, Ron Santo appearred non-airbrushed in a White Sox uniform for the one and only time. The 1975 Topps football cards had a yellow football helmet with the player's position in it. To adapt the design for baseball I converted it into a circle. I considered making it into a baseball but the white ball against the white border just looked wrong.

1975 Topps Walter Payton

I've decided to add a little variety to this blog. I am going to include the occasional Hockey and Football card. In my last post I said that the Keith Magnuson card was my first hockey card. I was wrong. I forgot about this.  I have also changed my background from baseball card packs to include football and hockey packs too.

This is not my first football card. I made a few cards for my fantasy football team. I've also used football card formats a few times for baseball cards. But this is my first strictly football card that never was. 

Payton was the Bears number 1 pick in 1975. Could you imagine a set these days not including a number one pic? The other thing these sets were lacking is action shots. There were action shots in this era but they were few and far between. I think one of the reasons was the fact that Topps didn't have the rights to reproduce the team logos. I played with the idea of "airbrushing" the logo off Walter's helmet to look more "authentic". I decided to keep the photo the way it is. Ultimately the cool looking scuffs on the helmet outweighed my desire for "authenticity".