There are twenty-four cards in the set, with the players composing a starting lineup of eleven defensive players, eleven offensive players, a kicker, and a punter–a cool concept. The defensive players and the punter have red borders, and the offensive players and the kicker have blue borders. The punter, Ray Guy, switched sides in 1976: in the 1975 Wonder Bread set, Guy was with the offense. Moving him to the defense evened out the set at twelve red cards and twelve blue ones.

The player selection in the set is curious: if you had been asked to select an All-Star starting lineup in 1976, would you have chosen Craig Morton as your quarterback? Probably not, with Stabler, Tarkenton, Bradshaw, and Staubach to pick from. Maybe Topps (who printed the set for Wonder Bread) wanted to include a Giant in the set, since New York is a large market. The teams of the star quarterbacks were already represented by other players in the set.

The backs of the cards are awful, with each one showing a diagram of one of Hank Stram’s favorite plays. As a kid, I would have scanned one of these and disregarded the rest–which is exactly what I did as an adult. What’s wrong with stats, cartoons, and quizzes?

Anyway, looking around the internet for pictures of players in their All-Star uniforms, I found a site called The Chicago Charities College All-Star Game 1934-1976. What a great site! It provides the background and history of the game, scores from each year, a summary of each year’s game, game records, the MVPs, and yearly attendance. Some of the early games drew over 100,000 fans!

The MVP awards were given only to the college players, and the positions that the MVPs played show how the game evolved. In the 30′s and 40′s, nearly all of the MVPs were running backs, and there was even an offensive lineman, Bill Fischer. In the 50′s and 60′s, as the passing game became more prevalent, the award went mainly to quarterbacks. In the late 60′s and 70′s, when the NFL dominated the game and stuffed the All-Star offenses, many of the awards went to the All-Stars’ defensive players. The college MVP in the final game, in 1973? The punter, Ray Guy!

Find Jim Dooley cards on: eBay, Nearmint’s Cards.