#28, REX KERN, CB, Colts

images from COMC

In college football bygones, there were teams that succeeded by running the football, then running it again. Woody Hayes’ Ohio State teams were wildly successful at it, and won the National Championship in 1968 with an undefeated season.

That team was quarterbacked by a great all-around athlete named Rex Kern. His story as a Buckeye is legendary, and he finished in the top 5 for the Heisman award twice. As an example of his fame, check out this photo op, shot for a national publication (stolen from Pinterest):

I would do Kern a disservice by trying to break down his legendary collegiate career, so I will look at his pro career. You will notice that Kern is NOT a pro QB, but a defensive back. According to this article fromthe Baltimore Sun, pro teams were put off by a few things…a back injury he had suffered as a freshman basketball player, his size at under six feet, and unknowns about his throwing arm, given that he had rarely been given a chance to show it off as a Buckeye.

The Colts, flush at QB with Johnny Unitas and Earl Morrall at the time, drafted the highly decorated Kern in the 10^th round in 1971, as a project athlete. He would not be a pro QB like the others in the above photo, Jim Plunkett, Joe Thiesmann and Archie Manning, but he worked hard with the cards he was given and made a talented squad as a DB.

Eventually he would be a starter for Colts playoff teams in 1971 and 1973, with a back and a hand injury keeping him out of much of the 1972 season. But here is his rookie Topps card. He was featured on a Sunoco stamp earlier, and would have just one more Topps card in 1974.

Kern was the players representative for the team during a strike, and the Colts GM took the opportunity to punish Kern and release him. He was signed by and went to the playoffs for the Bills in 1974, but his bad back ended his career after that season.

Kern did well as president of a Nautilus equipment firm for several decades before retirement, but unfortunately has been slowed by recurring back and hip problems and surgeries. He was named to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2007, and still holds legendary status in Columbus, Ohio.

CARTOON! Big Smilin’ Football Guy is zipping right along, though those boots will make it slippery on 1973-era artificial turf and that hat ain’t gonna provide no protection from Mean Joe Greene. Notice on the back Kern’s height is given as 6-1, the Baltimore Sun article has him at 5-11.

#27, MIKE CURRENT, T, Broncos

It only took 10 months to get to #27!

Mike Current is shown here on his second Topps card, his first coming in 1970. He played just as many games in the years between, in fact starting all of them for the Broncos, but the limited number of cards in each set played a part in who landed on the checklist. Current gets to come back in this expanded 500+ card set.

A look at the back of his card shows the ignominious start Current had to his 13-year career. As he told the Toledo Blade in 1970; " I had to be the worst tackle ever to come to the pros. I was cut twice by the Broncos and twice by Miami in 1967 and that's still an AFL record." A good article about that start is here.

Well, Current stayed current and active after that tumultuous first season, sticking with the Broncos thru 1975, when right knee surgery limited him to 7 games. His 105 straight starts set the Denver record at the time. There were some hints in the press that Current had some 'disagreements' with the coach over the last two seasons with Denver.

He was off to Tampa Bay in the expansion of 1976 where he started all 14 losses, and was traded to Miami (strangely enough) for 1977. An interesting article here goes into how Current had never been in a playoff and finally had a chance going into the last week of the season. Though Miami tied for first in the division with the Colts, they lost the tiebreaker and missed the wildcard. Current would play in first round games the next two seasons with Miami, then retire after the 1979 season.

Current's post-NFL life certainly was sour. He did publish two books...Rememberin' Life in the Trenches and Bush Justice.

He also was accused in 1994 of sexual harassment of an employee at his cable telemarketing company. In January of 2012 he apparently shot himself dead in a wildlife refuge in Oregon. He was about to come up on charges of sexually assaulting three children under the age of 14. The story of his death is here.

His son, Justin, has a memorial website for his late father.

-----

CARTOON! Big Smilin' Football Guy gots a four-leaf clover! Lucky him! Too bad none of the kids that got this card would probably have known who Adrian Young was. Young was a LB for the Eagles that was 'featured' on only one Topps card, in 1971. Even then, Topps didn't really feature him, using the wrong picture (Rick Duncan).

#8 - MEL TOM, DE, Eagles

What a great picture of Mel Tom. His uniform has a very odd color to it, a washout green reminiscent of what a washout the 1972 Eagles season was.

Tom had been with the Eagles since 1967, but Topps didn't get around to a card for him until 1973. He had been on the 1972 Sunoco Stamp set for the Eagles. As his career would have it, Tom would go to the Bears during the 1973 season. He would have to wait a year for his last Topps card, a mustachioed picture of him looking quite different than the regal form here. He also was on a 1975 Wonder Bread card.  After playing just a few games for the Bears in 1975, he was done. Wikipedia at one time listed Tom as the first native-born Hawaiian to make the NFL, but that is not true. Charley Ane was a Giant ten years before Tom was drafted.

According to Pro Football Reference, one of the most similar careers to his was Eagles teammate Gary Pettigrew.

Now to the 1972 Eagles. They finished 2-11-1, having started the season 0-5. They beat the Chiefs by one, lost to the Saints, tied the Cardinals 6-6 (!!!!), beat the Oilers by one, then lost five straight to finish the season.

One of their losses was a 62-10 thrashing by the Giants. Another loss, 28-7 to the Cowboys, saw them get only 6 yards net passing for the game. QB John Reaves threw for 85 yards on the plus side, and he was sacked 9 times for a loss of  79 yards. Net gain: 6 yards.

 In that game, Dallas scored TWO safeties on Eagles punting plays, and Cowboy guard John Niland scored a TD on a fumble recovery in the end zone.

The Eagles were a much better offensive team the next season due to some key acquisitions and the emphasis on different players under a new coach, but the 1972 team was just not very good at all.

The cartoon's growling dog refers to the "rover" defensive scheme that the Giants used in 1972. It helps the Giants to a, yes, 2-11-1 record. That dog needed a muzzle.

#7 - BOB TRUMPY, TE, Bengals

Bob Trumpy was a fine TE for the Bengals from their inception until 1977. The college he was drafted from was Utah, as the card says, but he started college at Illinois. After not cutting it academically (he has been less generous to himself in describing what happened) at Illinois, he went to Utah.

In 1972 he had the most passes caught in a season for his career, second on a pass-happy Bengals team. In 1969 he averaged 22 yards per catch, and in 1971 he lined up occasionally as a WR. He finished with 298 catches, averaging over 15 yards each time. His best comparisons career-wise according to Pro Football Reference include Billy Joe DuPree, Steve Jordan, Alge Crumpler and Keith Jackson, some pretty good company. After he retired, Trumpy went successfully into broadcasting, first on TV football casts on NBC, then to radio. He was on the TV broadcasts of a couple Super Bowls, and has done several other sport events over the years.

This card has a picture taken fro the same set of photos his 1972 card came from. Topps would simply re-use Trumpy's 1975 cards photo for his 1976 final card photo. His rookie card came out in 1970, then Topps skipped a year with him (1971 was another odd year for Topps subject choices in a small set) before issuing cards from 1972-1976 for Trumpy.

Topps had all sorts of trouble with Bengals cards in the team's early years. In 1968, as an expansion, the Bengals pictured all had different uniforms on. In the messy 1969 set, again, none of the Bengals were given shots with Cincinnati uniforms on.

The 1970 cards re-used blurry head shots from the 1969 Glendale stamps set for the few Bengals used at all, Trumpy no exception (Eric Crabtree was pictured in a clear shot, but a different uniform). The worst of these was QB Greg Cook, who had been a rookie sensation, whose blurred photo was used not only for his regular card, but for his glossy, Topps Super, and Kellogg's 3D cards as well! Cook would not get another Topps card as his career was cut short by injury.

In 1971, none of the Bengals featured in the first series were pictures in Bengal uniforms. In the second series, four Bengals were pictured in head shots, fuzzy quality once again, actually in white team uniforms. Two Bengals, Virgil Carter (whose Topps story is a bit strange - we'll get to him later) and Steve Chomyszak were in different team's uniforms. Chomyszak was in a Jets uniform...he had played only two games for them in 1966! He had been on the Bengals since 1968, yet Topps couldn't be bothered to get a picture from the last three years! I'm just one card away from the 1971 set, that deserves it's own blog.

Finally, in 1972, Topps featured all Bengals players in Cincinnati uniforms in good quality pictures. Fifth time's the charm!

The Dutchman Van Brocklin looks awfully burly to be a QB in the cartoon....

#2 - 1972 NFL PASSING LEADERS

Well after getting card #1 with those great running backs leading the way, you would expect REAL greatness in card #2 and passing leaders. Well...

You get Norm Snead, a perfectly good player for the Giants at the time, and Earl Morrall for the Dolphins. On the back you see a sideways accounting of some sort of bizarro world algebra that decided the top passers of 1972. I didn't understand it when I was 7, and I don't understand it now.

We couldn't even use this card as a checklist of great quarterbacks to look for in the packs! Daryle Lamonica didn't get a card in 1973 and Roman Gabriel's situation was a real mess for Topps.

Morrall ended up playing a lot for the eventual World Champion Dolphins due to an injury to Bob Griese. Unfortunately, Topps couldn't get a picture of him in a Dolphin uniform. Morrall's high number 1972 card has him in a Colts uni and I believe his 1973 close-up shot does too. Here they re-used his shot from the 1972 set and painted his uniform a weird blue hue that I'm sure was all the rage in the early 70's, but wasn't very close to the Dolphin blue.

To our young minds, this card made no sense. Where was Roger Staubach (Craig Morton was the Cowboy representative on the list) and Terry Bradshaw (absent)? Who were John Reaves and Dennis Shaw? Was Bob Berry really a better quarterback than Fran Tarkenton??

1973 #1 NFL RUSHING LEADERS

1973 Marked the second year Topps put league leaders in their football sets, and the first to put both AFC and NFC leaders on the same card. When I first got this card way back in '73 I thought it was the greatest thing. First of all, here's O.J. - pre-2000 yard season and all them legal trouble things, looking young and halfbacky (new word for you) and every bit the superstar. Second, here's Larry Brown...just off the Super Bowl all big and fullbacky (spell checker hates me). And on the back...

A handy list of all the great running backs in the league!...Hey! What's that Bobby Douglass guy doing there? Douglass, the Bears QUARTERBACK was a strong-armed big fullbacky guy that was all the Bears running attack after Gale Sayers was retired.

Back in 1972, 1000 yards in a season was an amazing feat...and so many made it! Csonka and Morris of the champs (HAD to get the Mercury Morris, one of the most fun cards of the set)...Brockington of my favorite Packers...some guy Ron Johnson of the Giants....Mike Garrett....the guys used these league leader cards as checklists to get the best players in the league. Most of us were still too young to really KNOW most of the players...but if they were LEAGUE LEADERS they must be good.

The Packers (who almost never threw the ball in 1972), Cowboys and Falcons each had two players in the top ten in the NFC while the Dolphins (who also rarely threw) were the only two-player team in the AFC (and that didn't include Jim Kiick).

The number 1000 was fully ingrained in us as kids with this card and the RECEIVING LEADERS cards...if the player was at or near that magic mark, he was worth hanging onto.

Hello and Welcome!

In seeing what a great job other collectors have done with various years and sets I decided to feature my favorite football card set, 1973 Topps.

This was the first card set I really chased when I was a kid, before I even knew about any of the players. It's design is simple, but effective, and it was by far the largest Topps football set at the time. Plus, it was one series of 528 cards (plus team checklists) so it seems the impossible dream for a kid to finish it.

Well, I ain't a kid no more, and I've finished the main set. Hope you enjoy this trip through it.