Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Judging by his football cards, Y.A. Tittle seldom took off his helmet. From 1953 to 1964, the only Tittle card I know of that shows him bareheaded is his 1961 Topps card. Here he is in his many helmets:

I think it must have been Tittle’s preference to wear his helmet for photos, since I can’t think of any other player who appeared helmeted on so many cards. As I’ve written before, I usually don’t like images of players wearing their helmets, because the helmets cover too much of the players’ faces. But Y.A.’s many appearances in his helmet made him look natural in it, like Doonesbury’s B.D.

Back when kickers still kicked “conventionally,” some of them wore special square-toed kicking shoes. A few of the shoes showed up on cards: here we have a 1964 Philadelphia Sam Baker, a 1966 Philadelphia Bruce Gossett, and a 1974 Topps Curt Knight.

Reading about these kickers, I discovered that each of the three attempted at least one “fair catch kick” in his career. Knight attempted two of them. According to Wikipedia, in the history of the NFL, only 21 such kicks have been attempted in regular season and playoff games. Alas, our three square-toed kickers all missed their kicks.

Today’s article in the Uni Watch blog bemoans the disappearance of “shoulder loops” on NFL jerseys. (Scroll down to Getting Loopy On You.) The article prompted me to look through my old cards to find which teams’ uniforms had the loops. As I did that, I realized that my favorite uniforms were the ones with the loops, and the loops were the reason I liked them. Here they are, both on 1964 Topps cards: the Patriots uniform, modeled by Ron Burton, and the Chargers uniform, modeled by Earl Faison.

I believe these 1964 cards show the players in their 1963 uniforms, so these are also the uniforms that the Patriots and Chargers are using as throwbacks this year. The eight original AFL teams are wearing throwback uniforms in several games in 2009 to commemorate their 50th year of play. The Patriots chose their 1963 uniform because they won the AFL East Division that year, and the Chargers chose 1963 because it was the year they won the AFL championship.

Head-and-shoulder portraits, fake action shots, and sideline photos are all great, but my favorite pose on a football card is where the player is holding his helmet with both hands, as if he is going to put it on. I like seeing helmets on vintage cards, but if the player is wearing his helmet, it usually makes for a poor photo.

The helmet-in-hands pose appears to have been used mostly in the 1960’s. That was after facemasks got substantial enough to obscure the players’ faces, but it was before Topps started airbrushing logos away in the 1970’s. The photographers for some teams in particular favored the pose: it is used for several of the 1963 Topps Packers cards, for instance, and for most of their 1969 Topps cards.

Below are a few examples: 1968 Topps Jerry Logan, 1966 Philadelphia Irv Cross, 1964 Philadelphia Guy Reese, 1969 Topps Alex Karras, 1963 Topps Lou Michaels, and 1967 Philadelphia Bob Hayes. For more, see a thread on the topic that I started on the Collector’s Universe message boards. I posted a bunch of pictures there before the discussion, um, went south.

A recent cover of Sports Collectors Digest, headlined Pretty in Pink, pictured a group of 1959 Topps football cards with pink backgrounds. Great cover, I thought, and it reminded me of the 1961 Topps cards of the Houston Oilers. On all but one of the Oilers cards in that set, the player is shown in a pink jersey.

As far as I know, the Oilers wore only the light blue jerseys shown on their 1961 Fleer cards. Topps evidently airbrushed the blue jerseys pink, but why? Topps headquarters is in New York City, and the New York Titans finished second to the Oilers in the AFL East in 1960. Might a Topps employee have colored the Oilers pink to exact a bit of revenge for his team?

According to Wikipedia, 0 and 00 are no longer legal uniform numbers in the NFL. That means that the players who wore them effectively have had their numbers retired. Pictured here are cards of five players who wore number 0 or 00: a 1963 Fleer Jim Otto, a 1972 Topps Ken Burrough, a 1961 Fleer Wallet Picture of John Olszewski, a 1968 Topps Obert Logan, and a 1948 Bowman John Clement.

I learned from the Wikipedia article that Jim Otto wore 00 because you could pronounce it like his name: aught-oh. Otto wore number 50 in his first season, 1960, and he switched to 00 for the remainder of his career. Otto’s 1964 Topps card shows a four-year-old image of him wearing number 50.

John Olszewski and Obert Logan also wore numbers other than 0 early in their careers. Olszewski’s cards with the Chicago Cardinals picture him in numbers 33 and 36. Logan’s 1967 Philadelphia card shows him in number 25 for the Cowboys.

The Helmet Project has hundreds of beautiful illustrations of professional and college football helmets past and present. It includes helmets of teams from defunct professional leagues such as the XFL, USFL, WFL, and WALF. It also includes college helmets down through NCAA Division 3 and NAIA.

Shown here are most of the helmets the Denver Broncos have used since their first season in 1960. Personally, I like the old cartoonish figures more than the current angry horse head, but I suppose cartoon figures aren’t intimidating enough these days.

Not many football cards show the players wearing their helmets, since the facemasks cover the players’ faces. Frank Emanuel’s 1968 Topps card, shown here, is one exception, and as you can see, it turned out badly. Wise photographers who wanted helmets in the pictures asked the players to hold them.

Because Topps did not have the rights to reproduce team logos on its cards, in the 70’s the company airbrushed the logos off the helmets. This made for some ugly cards, this 1972 Topps Ken Willard in Action card being one example. Topps also realized that they could use airbrushing when a player was traded, to change his uniform from one color to another without having to take another picture. This made for some very ugly cards, but that’s a topic for another day.

To see all those missing helmet logos, do check out The Helmet Project!