What draws you to football/football history?
 

Net54 may not be an accurate representation since it is a baseball board that just happens to have this football section, but it appears that there are many more baseball collectors compared to football collectors. We could go on all day about how baseball has a glorified past which really helps drive the game and the collecting of it. The point has also been made on this board that the NFL has done a less than great job of celebrating its past. If it didn't happen after the Super Bowl era began, it's like it didn't happen.

All this being said, why football for you?? What is it that drives you to collect football? All of us sports card/memorabilia/autograph collectors make up a small part of the general population, so that automatically makes us rare/odd :D. But, again, why choose to be a small minority of a small minority and collect football? Did you play? Did your dad or uncle or someone pass on the love of the game or take you to games? Did you become a fan of a particular team/school at an early age?

The answer for me is multifaceted. I grew up and live in the South where football of all kinds is king. It is a rare thing for me to encounter people (especially men) who don't at least casually follow football. I can remember playing neighborhood football on freezing cold nights until it was too dark to see. Another factor which sucked me in was the fact that as an 8 year old boy in 1981, I discovered the NFL by way of the San Diego Chargers. Those lightning bolts on the jerseys and helmets and that up-tempo style of play known as Air Coryell, caught me hook, line, and sinker! I will forever be able to picture Dan Fouts taking that snap from center and taking that three or five step drop and throwing to Jefferson, Chandler, or Joiner or pitching the ball to Muncie or Brooks! I was the kid in the South who grew up loving the Chargers. And it isn't just the NFL or SEC football. A small time high school football game has its appeal, too. There's something about the air getting crisp, the leaves turning, and the ball sailing through the goal posts that captures my imagination. Men like Pat Summerall and John Madden captured my imagination together for a long time.

Ok, I collected baseball for quite a while and have a baseball username, but more and more the pigskin sport captures my imagination and pulls me in like it did when I was 8. There is so much I don't know about football history (I am learning). I felt like I've heard the same baseball stories a million times. There is a lot to be discovered and learned with football. From a practical standpoint, a good part of the football collectibles I see are relatively affordable, too. It is really a wide open hobby!

What about you guys? Why?

You might think that since my father played in the NFL I would have a long-standing interest in football, but the truth is I only took an interest after his death. I'm very drawn to artifacts as an entry point into research, and the development of the internet for the public user and the emergence of eBay allowed me to dig deep without leaving home.

That is an excellent point. The internet has changed the common person's access to information and goods (like cards and memorabilia) in ways that are sometimes difficult to understand. For an example not from sports, I finished a doctorate a couple of years ago. I wasn't sure how the dissertation process might go. Some folks who are a few years older than me told me their tales of woe about being in a library for hours upon hours and flipping through gigantic stacks of books, periodicals, microfilm, etc. Thanks to the internet, I did most of my research at home in my underwear. On-line university libraries were my best friend during that period of my life!
Back to your point about researching and ebaying football. I might have given up collecting were it not for these two realities. Where I live, you can pretty much forget about a card show. I would still be living in the days of buying from Tuff Stuff, SCD, etc. Accessibility has certainly aided collectors of all sports.

For whatever reason football has always been my favorite major sport. As a kid, I was a voracious reader and read every football book in both my elementary and middle school libraries. That's probably what hooked me on the history of the game. It was awesome to read about Thorpe, Grange, Nevers, Nagurski, Friedman and all the other great stars from the early days of the NFL. Not to mention the memorable NFL games like the Sneaker Game, the Ice Bowl, the Greatest Game Ever Played, the Bears beating the Redskins 73-0, etc.

As I got older I realized that professional football started looong before the NFL and I got interested in pro stars and pro teams that existed between 1892 - 1919. This era has been all but forgotten in history but the teams and players in this time period are the true pioneers of the professional game.

Helping to preserve and document the history of the sport has become a passion of mine. I love nothing better than finding an interesting piece of football memorabilia, digging into it to find out what I can learn about it, and writing my findings up to share with others.

What a great hobby this is!

jeff

I grew up as a baseball collector, but while I was in graduate school I interned for the San Diego Chargers, cleaning up their photo archive. At that time I decided to write my thesis on Sid Gillman, the Chargers first head coach. It was interviewing Sid and his former players that first sparked my interest in the AFL. Since then I have written a couple of books about the Chargers (one AFL, one Coryell era), put together my AFL website, and while they were still in SD, I did a lot of contract work for the Chargers. It was all history-based stuff, a lot dealing with the AFL.

I am drawn to the social aspects of football. I'm fascinated by stories of the AFL boycott and other issues that came about during the Civil Rights Era. I love the story of the underdog AFL taking on the NFL and forcing a merger. I love that the players were just guys, who assimilated into the community with off-season jobs, and were not the whacked out prima donnas that we read about so often with modern athletes.

While your AFL auto sets are completely awesome, I'm still in awe that you figured out how to write a Master's Thesis on football, Todd! That is incredible. I wish I was that smart ... my thesis was on a bunch of technical gobblygook and would have rather written about Thorpe or something LOL.

jeff

÷1000! Sid Gillman is a much better topic than anything I ever wrote about!

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Todd, interning for the Chargers?! [emoji2] I am trying extremely hard to not let my awe and sheer envy get the best of me! That was my childhood team (I still can't quite stop myself from keeping up with them even now despite the fact that I stay furious with that franchise ). What an opportunity to be around those guys and the AFL. One of my favorite aspects of the AFL is that it provided opportunities to soooo many players who would have never gotten a sniff by the NFL. These were guys in a lot of cases from small colleges who had serious talent.

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Yeah, Todd's been living the dream for decades ...

jeff

That's the truth! Interning for the Chargers! Had I known about it then, I could have lived vicariously through him! Not to mention all the pics and autographs I would have begged him to get for me. [emoji2] Although my Chargers collection isn't as large as my fandom has been over the years, they were a driving force in my love of football.

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Haha. Next time we're together, remind me to tell you about how I got into grad school in the first place. I was actually recruited in to write about baseball. Then when that didn't work out, I got the Chargers gig.

It has been an interesting way to make a living. Sometimes flush, other times not. But it has put me in some interesting situations, and given me the opportunity to do some neat things, and certainly expand my collection in ways that are not available to most people.

At the same time, I think that being so close to a lot of it has been a major contributing factor in my total disdain for contemporary professional sports. My love for professional athletes is all memory and research-based. I don't really watch any live sports beyond my kids and their friends playing lacrosse, or football, basketball, etc., for their youth leagues or high schools. Though I do get a great deal of joy out of that.

You mean like this, Robert?

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/L4...s=w478-h640-no

P.S. Thanks Todd!

jeff

Ha! Rub it in...LOL! I actually have that SI, it is just unsigned [emoji17] Great piece. Maybe Todd has a few excess Chargers items from that period he might part with?? Over the years, I have considered collecting everything Chargers, but somehow I just never did it. I have the dual connection to Bambi in that he was a Razorback and a Charger, my two teams. This really tempts me....

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Haha. I recognize that SI, Jeff.

I've still got some nice Chargers stuff. Certainly not as much as I used to have, unless you count signed cards.

Those are some nice items, Todd. I especially like...all of it. :D I noticed the Alworth signed cards with the special inscriptions. My favorite is the card signed "My Chargers are in San Diego, not LA." That is absolutely legendary! Really all those '64 team cards are extraordinary. Should you ever look to part with those Chargers items, I think I might know someone who is interested. :cool: You are making me think I should act on my impulses about collecting AFL era Chargers items. I have fought the urge for a long time, but I am weakening.

Thanks, Robert. I've been having some fun with special inscriptions lately. I've got a nice handful of them, several of which refer to the Chargers-LA situation. I've got a similar one from Tom Flores about the Raiders moving to Las Vegas.

Cool stuff. Count yourself lucky, geographically speaking. It is difficult to get that kind of access for such creative inscriptions from Arkansas. There are some nice Lowe, Lincoln, Alworth, Mix, etc. items on ebay I have considered.

I grew up in Buffalo, New York. No major league baseball so we had a new team come in 1960 called the AFL Buffalo Bills. As a kid I couldn't get enough of football. 1970 the merger and the rest is history. I've built raw and graded sets from 1960-70 and still enjoy collecting although not too much of the shiny stuff. A little from 1989 Score and actually purchased a few Nathan Peterman rookies. (just incase) :)