Draft

This is usually my favorite time of the sports calendar, particularly for the NHL (and NBA) playoffs and NFL Draft. The playoffs have not started off great. My teams are injured to hell and won't make it out of the first round while teams I really don't like are thriving. The NFL Draft is much less stressful for a fan.

I've got a Sportlots box and a  COMC order due to arrive between now and the end of the draft, so I'll have something fun to do in between each team's picks. The Hurricanes' Cam Ward is expected to go first overall.

Nope, not that Cam Ward  #everythingishockey

I've never been a college football fan and I rarely know more than a couple names before flipping through prospect profiles and mock drafts. Here are some things I'm keeping an eye on ahead of this weekend:

• Green Bay is hosting! It will be a blast seeing Cheeseheads show out. I'm sure the host of Packcast will be there, he'll probably announce a mid-round pick for the Pack.

• The Browns and Giants have a tough decision - one of them will take two-way star Travis Hunter and the other will get Edge rusher Abdul Carter. But neither team really needs Carter. Could there be a trade?

• Ashton Jeanty is probably going to the Raiders at #6. I'd rather see him go to Jacksonville at 5 - Trevor Lawrence has never had a legit weapon in his NFL career - but Vegas is fine. As long as he doesn't fall to the Bears at #10.

• The Saints and Steelers will probably get their QBs in the first round. I didn't like Shedeur Sanders at first, but that may have been more about Coach Prime than his son. If the draft experts are correct, N'awlins is suddenly souring on Shedeur and leaning toward Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart. Do not ask Pat McAfee about Ole Miss.
  
  I'd prefer to see Sanders on the Saints, but as long as the Steelers take a QB that can cut off Aaron Rodgers' best option to continue his career, I'm good with whoever. 

• Once again the Packers are picking in the 20s, and the host team has a couple areas of need to address. An edge rusher to help out Rashan Gary would be nice, and this draft is loaded with 'em. The Pack signed cornerback Nate Hobbs and Jaire Alexander is still on the roster (for now) but they could go secondary. And for the fourth straight year the Pack lack a true #1 wide receiver, so... they'll probably draft one in rounds 2-4.
  
  If Green Bay can add any one of Texas A&M EDGE Shemar Stewart, Ohio State WR Emeka Egbuka, or Kentucky CB Maxwell Hairston, I'd be very happy. But! If they take an offensive lineman... it better be this guy:
  
  

I'm more interested in Alabama guard Tyler Booker than most fans would be about a blocker. When I saw his name pop up in draft previews I immediately asked where's he from?  Because I went to high school with an offensive lineman named Booker...

Uncle Ulish was the tallest dude in my high school; you could see him from across the hallway. Don't make me bust out the yearbook, lol.  I was hoping nephew Tyler would go to Seattle (#19), but recent mocks have him all over the back half of round 1. Hopefully he doesn't get past Detroit at pick #28. 

What does your team need entering this weekend's NFL Draft? Which players are you excited about?

Thanks for reading!



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Great Player / Bad Rookie Card

In a recent weekly mailbag at my favorite sports-related website, someone asked the writer which great band had the worst name. (my personal fave would be Silversun Pickups) Let's see if I can apply that to sports cards. 

Over the years I've made a few wishlists of legendary players and / or personal faves. In most cases I'd target a player's rookie card, particularly if they played after 1981. If money were no object I could hoard PSA 10 copies of Hall of Fame stars to my heart's content. But there are some legends with RCs that just aren't appealing at any price. 

Here's a handful of HOFers with affordable (under $200) first cards that I'll probably never own, and why:

1996-97 NBA rookies

The 1996 NBA draft class is one of the greatest in my lifetime, rivaled only by 1984 and 2003. No basketball card collection would be complete without a Kobe Bryant RC and I used to have a PSA-graded copy of his SP single. Unfortunately rookies in that set are plain compared to other '96-97 issues. 

Kobe's top rookie cards are well over $200 - Topps Chrome and Finest (Gold). What's worse, they're prone to "greening", an unavoidable plague that discolors certain Finest and Chrome sets regardless of how well-protected they are. 

That alone is a reason why I avoid shopping for any player in this draft class - even PC stars like Steve Nash and Ray Allen. Allen Iverson is in these sets as well. (this copy screams "I'm melting!!")

It's a shame, the first Chrome basketball set would be a classic without that awful color bleed.
 

Tim Duncan 1997-98 Topps Chrome

Most Tim Duncan rookie cards are super affordable - $5 each or so. The one that isn't, Topps Chrome, is just as prone to greening as the previous year's set. Years ago, I picked up a Chauncey Billups RC from this set and tried to hide it behind another card in a top loader to keep it from greening. Didn't work. 

I wish I could fill that ten-year gap in my hoops legends collection between Shaq and LeBron, but Topps' tekchrome goo makes that a nearly impossible task.
 

Barry Sanders 1989 Score

1989 Score has a dozen rookie cards of Hall of Fame players, but only those who played during the 1988 season got action shots. That year's draft picks got this high school yearbook-looking shit. Which is a shame for fans of Troy Aikman, Deion Sanders, Derrick Thomas, and Barry Sanders. I have a Deion and a Derrick in my collection, but those were under $10 apiece. On aesthetics alone, I'd be reluctant to pay much more than $10 for Barry, even though he was my favorite running back of the '90s and the second-best rusher of the Super Bowl era.
 

If the Sanders Score RC looked like this, I'd have picked up a PSA-graded copy years ago.

Earl Campbell has a plain looking rookie card, too. But Topps didn't have licensing rights for NFL team logos until 1982, so anyone who wasn't a Brown or a Ram would have a similar-looking card. And Joe Montana's rookie card hides the lack of logos just well enough that it's a nicer looking RC than Sanders', which is why I tried to narrow this list to cards released after '81.
 

Hockey rookie cards

I've got to give Upper Deck credit. There aren't many modern hockey greats with lousy looking rookie cards. One that immediately comes to mind is the Brett Hull Topps/OPC rookie card, which predates UD's entry into the NHL market. I can't count this card as one I'll never own since I needed it to complete my set, but a legendary goal scorer like the "Golden Brett" deserved a decent looking RC.
 

That's better

So which hockey Hall of Famer has a (fairly attainable) rookie card that will likely never enter my PC? Here are some contenders:

A rare miss for Upper Deck here as Penguins defenseman Kris Letang gets the Barry Sanders treatment. He's still active and not quite a Hall of Fame lock, but he'll probably get in. Also, this isn't his best RC;  his SP Authentic Future Watch auto is well over $100 and not at all a necessity for my hockey card collection. 

Patrick Marleau should be a Hall of Famer, but so far the HHOF committee has greeted him thusly:

I'd rather have his junior hockey card anyhow. Squint at it and you can almost picture Patty in a Hartford Whalers jersey.
 

Besides Brett Hull, the one actual Hall of Famer with a subpar rookie card is Dale Hawerchuk. 

1982-83 O-Pee-Chee has a nice, clean design. Unfortunately early '80s OPC issues have centering issues galore, and many of them are rough cut. The two other Hall of Famers with RCs in this set - Joe Mullen and Ron Francis - got nice action shots while Winnipeg's rookie centers Hawerchuk and Thomas Steen got cruddy closeups. 

Steen isn't a Hall of Famer, but I could make a One Page PC out of his other '80s issues.  

I had to research that a little bit, and if I did any digging on baseball greats with bland rookie cards I could probably come up with a few. But one star slugger immediately came to mind without looking:

David Arias (Ortiz)

I have over 300 different David Ortiz cards. (I used to keep track on TCDB but that site is a shitshow.) Not one of them is a rookie card. Why don't I own a copy of one of my all-time favorite player's first cards? Well, let's take a look at my options:

I loathe 1997 Fleer. In my opinion, it's as bad as the 1991 edition - and worse than 1995. The cardstock is needlessly flimsy and every base card looks like it was printed from a cheap Compaq or something. The Tiffany/Crystal parallels are pretty sharp, but that just infuriates me even more because that should have been the base design. It was 1997 ffs, not 1987!) 

'97 Fleer Ultra is... fine. I'd probably have a copy of Big Papi's RC if it were $10. Maybe $20. But it's still an average looking card in a very run-of-the-mill, not at all rare or high-end set. It shouldn't cost more than a Jackson. And yet this nondescript single sells for up to $80! 

Instead of those, I picked up a minor league issue for under $15 and called it good. It's not an official RC but I got to rep my home state and save some cash, with an equal or better quality card. 

Can you think of any great players with not-so-great looking rookie cards?

Thanks for reading!



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One Page PC - James Wilder

While digging through my football card box for Neil Lomax cards I came across a few singles of another underrated '80s NFL star that didn't get much national press because he played on a lousy team.

Drafted by Tampa one pick after St. Louis selected Lomax in 1981, James Wilder played ten NFL seasons - nine with the hapless Buccaneers, who only reached the playoffs twice in his tenure. Tampa parted ways with starting quarterback Doug Williams after the '82 campaign... and finished 2-14 in three of the next four seasons. 

Wilder did everything in his power to keep the Bucs competitive, leading the team in yards from scrimmage each year from 1982 to 1987. In 1984,  he led the NFL with a then-record 407 carries and set a single-season franchise record with 1,544 rushing yards -- still the highest total in Tampa Bay annals. Wilder also holds the Bucs' career records for carries (1,575) and rushing yards (5,957) 

While his average yards per carry (3.8) is sub-standard, he was an exceptional receiver out of the backfield. Among 1980s running backs, only Roger Craig and Marcus Allen had more receiving yards. 

Here's my nine pocket PC of James Wilder. The 1983 Topps and 1985 Topps Wilder cards are about as exciting as his '87 and '88 issues, which is probably why I skipped them. The man's name is Wilder. Show him in action, dammit! 

That's better. 

As a kid I was drawn to the Bucs' orange creamsicle uniform, and it became apparent from Topps team Leader cards that the only player worth following (or collecting) from that era was their running back. 

According to TCDB, James has 71 cards - four fewer than Lomax. Look closer and you'll see that some of those listings are actually Leaf All-American cards of his son, James Wilder Jr. - who won a national championship at Florida State and has over 440 cards despite never playing in the NFL. 

Oh Canada...our home and native land...

I'd be willing to bet that every other NFL franchise's career rushing leader has more cards to collect than Wilder. Go ahead, name one. 

Ottis Anderson? 627. 

Gerald Riggs? 142. 

Sam Cunningham? All right, you got me. 29. 

Looking at the list of franchise leaders, it does make some sense that Wilder has the second-lowest amount of cards since his yardage total is the second-lowest. His career barely extended to 1990, and he was only in two traded sets so the overproduction era couldn't boost his card count like it did with Riggs and Anderson. But how does he have only half as many cards as Gerald Riggs? Why wasn't Wilder in Upper Deck Legends or named a Franchise Legend by Panini Prizm? 

Here's a better question -- why haven't the Tampa Bay Buccaneers added their all-time leading rusher to their Ring of Honor? They have a running back and an offensive star from the early-mid 1980s. Guess the Bucs thought that Mike Alstott and Jimmie Giles have got those bases covered. (btw, did you know Giles was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1976? I didn't.) 

I'd love to end this post by showing off a James Wilder Starting Lineup figure, but 1988 Buccaneers are expensive! (This guy is dreaming; you can buy an autographed creamsicle jersey for that price.) 

Perhaps I'll pick up this SLU card someday. It's a sharper looking single than his Topps issues, but fifty times more expensive. 

🏈

I don't have any other mini-collections of overlooked football stars. The only other non-Hall of Famer who played before the 1990s and appears in my collection more than a few times is Steve Bartkowski, and he retired when I was in kindergarten. (Bart has 216 cards, btw.) 

Do you have any favorite "overlooked" football stars of your childhood?

Thanks for reading!



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One Page PC - Neil Lomax

I started collecting football cards in 1988, before I'd even seen a game on TV. Much of what I learned about out-of-market teams in the NFL (and the NBA and NHL) came from collecting cards. There may have been other ways to learn about underrated stars at the time, but if I didn't see them on SportsCenter or read about them in a magazine I only knew what the back of a trading card would tell me. 

One of those overlooked players was Neil Lomax, quarterback of the St. Louis/Phoenix Cardinals through much of the 1980s. The Cardinals were one of a few teams (along with the Buccaneers, Chargers, Seahawks, and Packers) that fascinated me as a kid because I only knew of their existence though Topps cards. I didn't see them on TV or hear about them, and I couldn't get my hands on their Starting Lineup figures (more on that later.)

Spending hours flipping over cards was my version of sports-reference pages. That was how I learned that Lomax was a really good passer and wondered why I didn't hear about him as much as Boomer Esiason or John Elway. Small markets were much smaller back then, and the Cardinals had just relocated from St. Louis. 

Also, as I would learn later on, playoff success is crucial. Esiason and Elway were AFC stalwarts, along with Dan Marino and Bernie Kosar. Joe Montana was king of the NFC (and NFL); Phil Simms and Randall Cunningham were leading nearby teams to the playoffs. Jim Everett and the L.A. Rams were emerging as a threat to the 49ers' dominance. 

I wanted to learn more about Lomax, but the Cardinals were terrible. And just when I started watching more SportsCenter and NFL highlight shows that covered the whole league... he was gone. I don't even think I noticed at first. Hey, a Cardinals highlight! Wait... who the heck is Timm Rosenbach??!?

A hip injury ended Lomax's career after the 1988 season, which is one reason why he's largely forgotten by modern NFL fans. The lack of playoff success and the fact that his team relocated are probably factors as well. Based on his too-brief career as a top tier passer, I initially though that Lomax was the Andrew Luck of the '80s... but his career numbers are more comparable to Baker Mayfield.

I had to laugh when I saw cards of his predecessor Jim Hart in 2024 Panini Prizm. No one is happy pulling Hart, but I would have liked a new Lomax card or two. He didn't have many cards during his career and has appeared in very few sets post-retirement.

This is a nearly complete career run of Lomax cards - I'm only missing 1984 Topps. Not pictured are two Team Leader cards from 1985 and 1987 Topps. According to TCDB, Lomax has 75 different cards - but they stretch the definition of "different" to include copyright variations and stickers with seven different backs. 

Only seven of those 75 cards were released post playing days, and two of those are 1989 Score buybacks. Lomax only has two autographed cards and no game-used issues, so a (more) complete PC wouldn't be expensive to build. 

I'm probably going to add his '84 Topps card to my next Sportlots order and I'm tempted to toss this in the cart as well: 

Or maybe I'll pick up a sealed figure and card on eBay to pair with my 1988 SLU:

Thanks for reading!



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