by Jeffrey J. Miller
Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., preeminent manufacturer of football (and other sports and entertainment) trading cards, had been including special cards of star players (known as inserts) in their sets for several years, but it wasn't until 1971 that the company produced its first All-Pro (actually designated "All-Star") subset. The cards of the players selected were included in the
regular set but distinguished from rank-and-file cards by the two-tone color scheme
featuring a blue border on the top half of the cards and red on the bottom half,
and the designation “ALL-STAR” at the bottom right-hand corner. Within the set, players from AFC teams
featured red borders while the NFC featured blue. The complete 1971 set featured 263 standard cards, 35
of which were marked as All-Stars. Of
those 35, 20 were from the NFC and 15 from the AFC.
So how exactly did Topps choose its All-Star team, and how did they arrive at the odd total of 35? Well, it appears the company used the All-Conference selections named by The Sporting News magazine at the end of the 1970 season. The one common thread tying all 35 members of Topps' team together is that they all appeared on The Sporting News' team that year. No other publication or service naming honor teams that year (Associated Press, Pro Football Weekly, United Press International, Pro Football Writers of America, Newspaper Enterprise Association) included every player ultimately selected to Topps' team.
Oddly, not every player selected to The Sporting News All-Pro team in 1970 was featured on a Topps card in 1971, which is how the All-Star subset wound up totaling just 35 cards. The set included two quarterbacks (Bob Griese and John Brodie), three running backs (Floyd Little, MacArthur Lane and Larry Brown), three wide receivers (Paul Warfield, Dick Gordon and the 49ers' Gene Washington), one tight end (Charlie Sanders), two offensive tackles (Jim Tyrer and Ernie McMillan) two guards (Tom Mack and Gale Gillingham), one center (Jim Otto), four outside linebackers (Andy Russell, Bobby Bell, Chuck Howley and Chris Hanburger), two middle linebackers (Dick Butkus and Willie Lanier), two defensive ends (Deacon Jones and Bubba Smith), four defensive tackles (Rich Jackson, Joe Greene, Alan Page and Merlin Olsen), Four cornerbacks (Jimmy Johnson, Willie Brown, Rick Volk and Roger Wehrli), three safeties Johnny Robinson, Larry Wilson and Willie Wood), and two placekickers (Fred Cox and Jan Stenarud). No punters were included.
The players from The Sporting News All-Conference teams who were not honored with the inclusion of an All-Star card in the Topps set were somehow not even afforded the dignity of having even a regular card in the set. Those players included Marlin Briscoe, Warren Wells, Bob Trumpy, Winston Hill, Ron Yary, Ed Budde, Gene Upshaw, Ed Flanagan, Jess Phillips, Carl Eller, Tom Keating, Jim Marsalis, and punters Julian Fagan and David Lee.
Surely Topps could have made room to include the other Sporting News All Pros by applying just a little creativity. For example, Topps saw fit to include a card of Buffalo wide receiver Haven Moses but not Marlin Briscoe, the Bills' only All-Pro selection from 1970! Wouldn't it have made more sense to include Briscoe before Moses? How about swapping Jets guard Dave Herman for tackle Winston Hill? We could go on ....
Overall, the Topps' All-Star card concept of 1971 was a fun one though put together in a slapdash fashion. The company shelved the idea for a couple of years but returned with its own All-Pro Team cards in 1974. How would they do? That is a column for another day.
Here is the rest of the 1971 Topps All Star subset ...
Images of Topps cards courtesy of our good friends at the Vintage Football Card Gallery (https://www.footballcardgallery.com)
Topps would use that photo of Bubba Smith on five different cards…for 3 different teams!
ReplyDeleteNice article Jeff. Topps messed up on All-Star picks throughout the 1970s. In baseball, they missed Reggie Jackson on their 1975 cards, Richie Zisk in 1978, and Freddie Patek in 1979. In basketball, they forgot Elvin Hayes and Dave Cowens in the 1975-76 set. In football, they forgot Terry Metcalf and Art Shell in the 1976 set and of course left off an NFC QB in the 1980 set, as Staubach would have been the choice but had retired. Then the omissions of Lynn Swann messed up the All-Pro selections in the 1979 set, and of course Earl Campbell would have been an All-Pro if he was in the 1980, 1981, and 1982 sets. I’m probably forgetting a few others.
ReplyDeleteBut the most mysterious of all the Topps All-Star selections was definitely in their 1975 football set, the one where they had two players per card representing AFC and NFC All-Pros from 1974. For decades, I wondered where the heck they got these picks from. I couldn’t find any “official” All-Pro team that tracked with their selections. They made just about no sense. Then finally, I think I have it figured out.
In the April 1975 issue of Pro Quarterback magazine, the magazine’s editors pick a 1974 All-NFL team, comprised of players from both conferences. The only players on that Pro Quarterback All-NFL team who were on the 1975 Topps cards depicting 1974 All-Pros were Ken Stabler and Otis Armstrong.
But here is where it gets interesting. Pro Quarterback magazine also picked All-Conference teams for the NFC and AFC … but they didn’t include the players who they already picked for the All-NFL team. How this made sense to anyone is beyond me. So Ken Stabler was their All-NFL QB, but Bob Griese was their All-AFC QB.
However, just about all of Pro Quarterback’s NFC and AFC All-Conference picks were depicted on the Topps cards. Their entire All-NFC offense and defense picks track with the Topps cards. Their All-AFC team tracks with the Topps cards except for 3 players: Griese, who was replaced by Stabler on the Topps card; Larry Csonka, who didn’t have a 1975 Topps card as he was on his way to the WFL in 1975 so Topps saw no point in including him in their set and instead put Armstrong on their AFC All-Pro RBs card; and Mike Curtis, who hadn’t had a Topps card since 1972 so there was probably a contract dispute there, a la Joe Namath. He was replaced by Willie Lanier on Topps’ card.
So for any of you who have spent restless decades wondering where was Joe Greene in Topps 1975 cards depicting 1974 All-Pros? Where was Jack Ham? Where was Cliff Branch? Now you know. As far as I can tell, someone at Topps seems to have seen the All-Conference picks in Pro Quarterback magazine and just went with them, without checking to see if most, if not all, of PQ’s All-NFL picks should have been swapped in for the All-Conference picks. Pro QB didn’t pick All-Pro kicker, punter or return men, so I guess Topps was on their own there.
And for the record, these were Pro Quarterback’s All-NFL picks for the 1974 season, just in case you were wondering who could have been swapped in on the Topps cards: QB Stabler, RBs Armstrong and Chuck Foreman, WRs Drew Pearson and Cliff Branch, TE Richard Caster, T Art Shell and Ron Yary, G Bob Kuechenberg and Gene Upshaw, C Jim Langer. MLB Bill Bergey. LBs Jack Ham and Chris Hanburger. DEs Bill Stanfill and L.C. Greenwood. DTs Joe Greene and Wally Chambers. CBs Robert James and Roger Wehrli. S Dave Elmendorf and Tony Greene.
I have pictures of the pertinent Pro Quarterback magazine pages from the April 1975 issue if anyone wants me to send them to an email for you to see.
I used to wonder if Topps had some sort of blue ribbon panel making these selections, but I soon realized the company wasn't that sophisticated. A little detective work was all it took to figure these things out. Thanks for sharing your discovery! I used to love PQ magazine..
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, but those Topps All-Star designations were a really big deal to kids in the 1970s. It exalted your favorite players to the highest status. Plus the All-Star stamp, ribbon or other design often added some dramatic color to the card too. Some of the Hockey card All-Star designations were really cool in the 1970s.
DeleteI was one of those kids who didn't get that Topps chose its baseball all-stars based on the starters for the previous year's all-star game. Only after Ron Guidry was not an All-star in the 1979 set (after a historic 25-3 year in 1978) did I fully get it. Then I proudly looked forward to seeing my favorite player, 1979 all-star starter Nolan Ryan, have the all-star mark on his 1980 card, even after his 2nd half of the 1979 season was awful.
All the football all-pro inconsistencies really messed with me though. I was convinced that Topps made a mistake naming Tom Macleod an All-Pro in its 1976 set when Stan White made 8 Ints in 1975. Did they pick the wrong Colt LB? I had never heard of Macleod and couldn't understand why he would have been picked over White.
I remember in my first pack of 1978 cards seeing Roger Staubach's 1978 card without any all-pro designation and wondering who the heck they could have picked for the All-NFC QB from 1977 before I realized they were doing All-NFL picks that year - after doing conferences for the previous 3 years.
Then in 1980, that was all totally messed up. Pulling the Franco Harris and Mike Pruitt cards with AFC All-Pros on them and wondering how the hell Earl Campbell wasn't an All-Pro, before realizing Campbell wasn't even in the set. I don't think I even bothered to check the Oilers team card checklist as the thought of Campbell not being in the set was simply unfathomable. But several hundred cards into the collecting that year, I finally figured it out. Then there was the "missing" Staubach 1980 card and the subsequent lack of an NFC All-Pro QB. That 1980 set had quite a few offbeat All-Pros - Dave Pear, Richard Bishop, Greg Buttle, Keith Simpson, David Hill, all of those guys were surprises to me.
PQ magazine was an interesting sign of the times of the 1970s. The mag started as an obvious takeoff of the Playboy motif, with somewhat risque football-related cartoons and very long, dense articles. They soon dropped the number of issues per year, made the articles shorter, and added more full-page color pictures, which were awesome. It's too bad they couldn't continue at 6 or 8 issues a year, perhaps Sports Illustrated's expanded football coverage in the 1970s made PQ kind of obsolete.
Would be interesting to be able to talk to some of the employees, including Sy Berger, to ask how some of their decisions were made. Why some photos were used over and over, why cards of some All-Pros were not made in certain years, how their All-Pro teams were selected, why someone like Broncos tackle Sam Brunelli (who was never an All-Pro or even in a Pro Bowl) was featured on a poster in the 1971 set while actual All-Pros like Winston Hill didn't even get a card, etc.
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