Checklist 1955 All-American custom football cards

Until now, there has been no place where all of my custom cards could be found in checklist form.  It is my intention to update this posting as new cards are created. Similar checklists for my other baseball, non-sports and football custom cards will also be posted and updated as appropriate.

Custom card availability. Unless noted, all of my custom cards are available to collectors for $9.95 each, postpaid. To order, email me at scbcguy@yahoo.com for directions on paying via check/money order, or to my PayPal account.

1955 Topps All-American
101 Peyton Manning, Tennessee
102 Bill Cosby, Temple
103 Tony Dorsett, Pitt
104 Lou Gehrig, Columbia
105 Ricky Williams, Texas
106 Sonny Sixkiller, Washington
107 Bobby Layne, Texas
108 Alan Page, Notre Dame
109 Jack Kennedy, Harvard
110 Christy Mathewson, Bucknell
111 Zonker Harris, Walden
112 Joe Namath, Alabama
113 Dan Marino, Pitt
114 Duke Morrison, USC
115 Bart Starr, Alabama
116 Mark Harmon, UCLA
117 Timmy Chang, Hawaii
118 Archie Manning, Ole Miss
119 Johnny Unitas, Louisville
120 Billy Clyde Puckett, Texas Christian
121 Brian Bosworth, Oklahoma
122 Emmitt Smith, Florida
123 Lynn Swann, USC
124 Terry Bradshaw, La. Tech
125 Conrad Dobler, Wyoming
126 Maurice Clarett, Ohio State
127 Erick Dickerson, So. Methodist
128 Brian Urlacher, New Mexico
129 Tim Rossovich, USC
130 Erik Jensen, Iowa
131 Jack Tatum, Ohio State 
132 Hugh McAloon, UW-Oshkosh
133 Bobby Kennedy, Harvard

134 Bo Jackson, Auburn
135 Tim Biakabutuka, Michigan
136 Archie Griffin, Ohio State
137 Doak Walker, So. Methodist
138 Randall Cunningham, UNLV
139 Joe Kennedy, Harvard
140 Sam Huff, West Virginia
141 Glenn Davis, Army
142 Pat Tillman, Arizona State
143 Billy Cannon, Louisiana State
144 Alan Ameche, Wisconsin
145 Kurt Warner, No. Iowa
146 Ben Roethlisberger, Miami (Ohio)
147 Marcus Allen, USC
148 Bronko Nagurski, Minnesota
149 Herman Wedemeyer, St. Mary's
150 Dick Butkus, Illinois
151 Bob Griese, Purdue
152 Randy Moss, Marshall
153 Dwayne Johnson, Miami
154 Michael Vick, Virginia Tech
155 Brett Favre, So. Mississippi
156 Ron Dayne, Wisconsin
157 Doug Flutie, Boston College
158 Vince Lombardi, Fordham
159 Jim Brown, Syracuse
160 Tommy Nobis, Texas
161 Motts Tonelli, Notre Dame
162 Fran Tarkenton, Georgia

163 Forrest Gump, Alabama
164 Marshall Faulk, San Diego State
165 Jim Kelly, Miami
166 Ladainian Tomlinson, Texas Christian
167 Alex Karras, Iowa
168 The Three Stooges, Boulder Dam
169 Herschel Walker, Georgia
170 Paul Hornung, Notre Dame
171 Ernie Davis, Syracuse
172 Jerry Rice, Miss. Valley State
173 Kirk Gibson, Michigan State
174 Ted Kennedy, Harvard
175 Don Meredith, So. Methodist
176 Deacon Jones, Mississippi Vocational
177 Kenny Washington, UCLA
178 Ed Marinaro, Cornell
179 Walter Payton, Jackson State
180 Bill Shakespeare, Notre Dame
181 Bobby Moore, Oregon
182 Joe Montana, Notre Dame
183 Barry Sanders, Oklahoma State
184 Jerome Bettis, Notre Dame
185 Jackie Robinson, UCLA
186 Gale Sayers, Kansas
187 Jim Plunkett, Stanford
188 Buddy Reynolds, Florida State
189 Chris Weinke, Florida State
190 Mike Singletary, Baylor
191 O.J. Simpson, USC
192 Reggie White, Tennessee
193 Jerry Ford, Michigan
194a Troy Aikman, Oklahoma
194b Tory Aikman, UCLA
195 Bubba Smith, Michigan State
196 Deion Sanders, Florida State
197 Eli Manning, Ole Miss
198 Lawrence Taylor, North Carolina
199 John Elway, Stanford
200 Bluto Blutarsky, Faber
201 Dick Nixon, Whittier
202 Dutch Reagan, Eureka
203 Dwight Eisenhower, Army
204 John Taylor, Delaware State
205 Blanchard & Davis, Army
206 Drew Bledsoe, Washington State
207 Kyle Rote, So. Methodist
208 Ron Kramer, Michigan
209 Bob Waterfield, UCLA
210 Chuck Knox, Juniata
211 Arnold Tucker, Army
212 Ray Nitschke, Illinois
213 Steve Garvey, Michigan State
214 Bill Goldberg, Georgia
215 Chuck Bednarik, Penn
216 Tim Tebow, Florida
217 Harry Agganis, Boston
218 Jim McMahon, Miami
219 Austen Lane, Murray State
220 Joe Guyon, Georgia Tech
221 Roman Gabriel, N.C. State
222 Rocky Bleier, Notre Dame
223 Jim Bond, Michigan State
224 Johnny Sample, Maryland State
225 Frank Thomas, Auburn
226 Ray Guy, So. Mississippi
227 Carl Weathers, San Diego State
228 Ted Kluszewski, Indiana
229 Moose Skowron, Purdue
230 Robert Urich, Florida State
231 Aaron Rodgers, California
232 William Perry, Clemson
233 Michael Oher, Ole Miss
234 Jack Ham, Penn State
235 Franco Harris, Penn State
236 Joe Perry, Compton
237 Joe Paterno, Brown
238 Troy Polamalu, USC
239 Fuzzy Thurston, Valparaiso
240 Jim Taylor, Louisiana State

241 Sonny Jurgensen, Duke
242 Jackie Jensen, California
243 Tommy Lee Jones, Harvard
244 Joe Greene, North Texas
245 Roger Staubach, Navy
246 Lee Corso, Florida State
247 Kirk Jerbstreit, Ohio State
248 Robert Griffin III, Baylor
249a Russell Wilson, N.C. State
249b Russell, Wilson, Wisconsin
250 Raymond Berry, So. Methodist
251 Woody Strode, UCLA
252 Phil Robertson, La. Tech
253 Jerry Kramer, Idaho
254 Bear Bryant, Alabama
255 Charley Trippi, Georgia
256 Wilmer Sidat-Singh, Syracuse
257 Texas QB Trio
258 Steve Young, Brigham Young
259 Joe Kapp, California
260 Ollie Matson, San Francisco
261 Burt Toler, San Francisco
262 Babe Parilli, Kentucky
263 Donny Anderson, Texas Tech
264 Jameis Winston, Florida State
265 Montee Ball, Wisconsin
266 Brian Piccolo, Wake Forest
267 Pat O'Dea, Wisconsin
268 Melvin Gordon, Wisconsin
269 Tim Davis, Alabama
270 Frank Gifford, USC
271 Mike Tomlin, William & Mary
272 Aaron Rodgers, Butte
273 Brian Stann, Navy

274 Dak Prescott, Mississippi State
275 Keenan Reynolds, Navy

Prescott, Reynolds make my "Class of 2015" customs

With the recent completion of the 2016 NFL draft I've been able to round out the biographies on the backs of my latest 1955 Topps All-American style football calls.

The two 2015 college players who made the cut were Dak Prescott and Keenan Reynolds.

Until recently I never would have thought I'd ever add a Mississippi State player to my 1955-style set. But, like Navy's Reynolds, Prescott was a player that I made a special effort to watch on Saturdays.

It remains to be seen where he will land on the depth chart and how much playing time Prescott will get with the 'Boys this season, but his skill as a running quarterback gives the Dallas backfield a dimension it has lacked for a long time.

Similarly, it is currently uncertain how Reynolds will fulfill his five-year active service commitment and thus how much time he'll see on the field for the Ravens. It looks like Baltimore plans to convert the triple-threat quarterback to a slot receiver and return specialist, so if and when Reynolds takes the field he's likely to be part of some exciting plays. I just hope they don't come against the Steelers.

These two new customs bring my checklist of '55 style cards to 175. It's my intention to quit when I hit No. 300, but at the recent rate of 2-4 new cards a year the end really isn't in immediate sight.

Hawkeye great added to 1955-style All-Americans

A posting on one of the baseball card forums that a follow inspired me to jump my line of pending custom card projects to create a card for one of the greatest linemen in Big 10 history: Iowa's Cal Jones.

He is little remembered today by fans or collectors because he died tragically after just one season of professional football in Canada's pre-CFL era. His image, however, may be more familiar, as Jones was the first college athlete and the first black athlete to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. A tight portrait photo of Jones appeared on SI's seventh issue, Sept. 27, 1954. Jones was not named on the cover.


Another of his firsts was winning the Outland Trophy as college football's best lineman as a senior in 1955. In doing so he became the first black player to win one of college football's top annual awards.

There're many great accounts of Cal Jones on the internet, but I'll link one of the better write-ups here; it's by Maury White of the Des Moines Register: http://data.desmoinesregister.com/hall-of-fame/single.php?id=504

Jones' story struck a chord with me because I'm a big fan of anybody inside or outside of college football who stuck it to Woody Hayes.

Jones did so in 1952 by walking away from his commitment to Ohio State so that he could attend and play ball at the University of Iowa with two of his high school teammates from Steubenville, Ohio.

Hayes' bitter protestations to Big 10 bigwigs was unavailing and no fault was found with Iowa. It is said the case was a major factor in the adoption of national letters of intent for college-bound players.

Noodle around a bit on the internet to read more of Cal Jones' story and you'll understand why I had to make a card for him.

Mike Tomlin introduces my '55 format change

One hundred and seventy cards, and 13 years, into my "updating" of the classic 1955 Topps All-American college football series, I've determined it's time for a format revision.

If I'd known then, when I made my first-ever custom card (a '55-style Peyton Manning), what I've learned since, I would have started the project differently. For instance, I would have done a better job of matching the fonts Topps used on the card backs. I would have also justified the lines of type. But back in 2003, I didn't know how to justify type in Photoshop Elements.

I've just completed card #271 (Topps did the first 100) in my set. While working on the back of my Mike Tomlin card, I reflected for about the 171st time how hard it was to digest a footballer's career into 90-100 words. I decided that eliminating the cartoon trivia question on back would give me more freedom to present the player's biography.

It turned out that really wasn't the answer. The finished no-cartoon format just didn't look like a 1950s bubblegum card. Shifting gears once again, I decided to retain a cartoon element, but rather than using a generic cartoon that had nothing to do with the subject of the card, I would make the cartoon relevant to the player. I would also use the space below the cartoon that used to carry the upside-down trivia answer to add 10-15 words to my career summaries. 

I think that's the right choice. I've decided not to change the fonts I've been using. At this point; preserving the "look" of my cards
  
seems to be more important that conforming to what Topps did 60 years ago. For the same reason (really, it's not just because it's easier), I'm not going to justify the type.

Here, then, is the first of my revised-format All-American cards.

Piccolo newest '55-style All-American custom

There's nothing new I can offer anent the legend of Brian Piccolo; there's already been so much written and filmed.

Like all football fans in 1970, I was sorry to hear he had lost his battle to cancer. But I had never been a "fan." He was, after all, a Chicago Bear and insomuch as I followed any team in the NFL, I was a Packers backer.

I recently completed a Brian Piccolo card for my on-going custom card tribute to the 1955 Topps All-American college football set. 

It's not my finest work, largely because there are very few usable pictures of Piccolo from his days at Wake Forest. But I'd always wanted to add a Demon Deacon card to my set, and you can't do better than Brian Piccolo.

As I noted on my card back, even in the heyday of NFL-AFL player draft wars, Piccolo went undrafted. This despite the fact that in 1964 he led the nation with 17 TDs, 111 points and 1,044 yards. He also had only one fumble in nearly 400 carries in his varsity collegiate career.

This is not my first Brian Piccolo custom card. Several years ago, after Topps had offered a couple of really nice Piccolo photos in its "Vault" auctions, I created a 1966-style Philadelphia Gum custom of Piccolo with the Bears. His truncated NFL career had previously limited his football card appearances to just the 1969 Topps set.

"The Rock" custom card gets a rehab

New

Old

Being retired, holiday weekends don't mean the same thing to me that they did when I was on somebody else's clock.

When I was working, holiday weekends usually meant I had the time to work up a new custom card.

Now, I can work on my custom projects just about any time the notion strikes, but I still find myself gravitating to my to-do list on holidays.

This past Memorial Day was no exception.

My principal project for the weekend was re-habbing my 1955 Topps All-American custom card of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

I originally created the card 7-8 years ago. Shortly thereafter, however, a mini disaster struck and I lost the computer files for three or four of my custom cards, including my '55 Rock.

These days, I have more backup for my custom card files. Some might suggest I have gone into overkill backup. I have a set of files on both my home and office computer hard drives, and I have complete sets on two different flash drives. 

Since I had already printed my archives copies of the card, I was able to recreate the file by scanning my card. That, however, didn't produce a truly first-rate result; the card now had a re-screened look. That might not have been readily apparent to the average person, but it nagged at me.

Surprisingly, my Dwayne Johnson '55 custom is not a card for which I have had a lot of requests from collectors and fans over the years, so there was never a great impetus for me to re-create the piece.

The other day I had occasion to do an internet search for images of Johnson in his Miami Hurricanes uniform and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the number of such images has grown a bit in recent years.

When I originally made my card about the only usable picture available to me was a shot of Johnson standing with his hands on hips . . . satisfactory, but not exceptional.

To re-do my card I chose a shot of Johnson in a celebratory pose that fits nicely into my cards' horizontal format. Shown here are the before and after photos.

While I was working on the back, I noticed a typographical error on my original card. In the first line I had omitted the word "a" between "earned" and "National". That's now corrected.

New

Old

Jameis Winston, Melvin Gordon drafted into my All-American custom set

The NFL draft is annually one of the highlights of my college football season. 

By this time of year, it's been too long since the last college bowl game. And, while I've greatly enjoyed the coverage of many schools' spring intersquad games, I was ready to see which players on the college teams I follow went where, when, and how the Packers and Steelers helped themselves.

The annual draft has become way too much of a television spectacle, but by recording the proceedings, I can fast-forward to the players and picks that I really care about.

After last season's bowl games, I decided that two of the nascent pros were definitely going to be added to my on-going 1955-style All-Americans custom card set. I did most of the prep work for new cards of Jameis Winston and Melvin Gordon. I only had to wait for draft night to get the information I needed to complete the cards' backs.

With that information finally available, I finished the cards and present them herewith.

Badgers Ball added to my '55AA customs

If you follow my blog regularly, you know I've recently been busy with custom cards in the format of the 1955 Topps All-American college football set.

My latest is a tribute to one of the Wisconsin Badgers' finest running backs, Montee Ball.

While he hasn't (yet) wowed the NFL in the same way he did the NCAA, it's still early in his pro career and there may be bigger things coming for him. Even if he never played another down in the NFL, however, his stature as one of the premier running backs in college ranks in the early 2010s earned him a spot on my checklist.

Where was Penn State's
 respect for Montee Ball?

The incident of Aaron's 200th hit going unmentioned in the ballpark that I detailed on this blog on Feb. 26 brings to mind a similar situation I encountered while in attendance at the Wisconsin-Penn State game on Nov. 24, 2012.

The Nittany Lions were hosting Wisconsin in the final game of the season. Badgers running back Montee Ball entered the game tied for the NCAA FBS major college record in career rushing touchdowns scored.

In the first quarter Ball broke the record with a 17-yard run; his 79th career TD. 

I waited in vain for the stadium announcement of Ball's feat. It never came; no announcement, no message on the score board, nothing. 

I'm sure that many of the fans were made aware of the accomplishment via their smart phones, tablets, etc., but I thought it was bush for Penn State to go mum on the subject.

About all I can figure is that the school didn't want to embarrass its defense by making public note that Ball had achieved his record on their watch.

My 'oldest' All-American custom: 'Kangaroo Kicker' O'Dea

The original 1955 Topps All-American college football set contained a couple of stars from the 19th Century (Heffelfinger, Stagg), but until now I'd never found the inspiration to include a player of that vintage in my '55AA customs.

That changed when I discovered the tale of Pat O'Dea.

O'Dea was an Aussie who had played Australian rules football Down Under in 1893-95.

In 1896, when he was on his way to Oxford to study law, he stopped off in Madison, Wis., to visit his brother who was crew coach at the University of Wisconsin.

The story goes that O'Dea so impressed Badgers football coach Phil King with an impromptu kick that he was convinced to matriculate and played four seasons for the Badgers, who compiled a 35-5-1 record and two Big 10 conference championships 1896-99.

O'Dea may have been the greatest punter and field goal kicker of all time. He was so proficient that he was nicknamed the "Kangaroo Kicker" and was the toast of college football at the turn of the 20th Century, in the days before the forward pass was legitimized and at a time when a field goal tallied the same five points as a touchdown.

Some details of his reported on-field performance are subject to speculation, but there's no doubt he helped revolutionize football from a game of brute force to one emphasizing speed and athletic ability.

You can read a capsule career summary on the back of my card, and there are several biographies on the 'net available for the googling. Here's two of the best: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/mar/08/forgotten-story-patrick-odea
http://www.academia.edu/1931005/The_Legend_and_Mystery_of_Pat_O_Dea_the_Kangaroo_Kicker_

O'Dea went to California to practice law after World War I and "vanished" until 1934 when he was discovered living under another name, perhaps having become involved in an embezzlement.

He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1962 . . . and died the following day.

Fortunately for me, there exists a great studio portrait of O'Dea in a drop-kicking pose that gave me the essential element for my custom.

Now that I'm in the mood to add to my All-American custom "updates," I'll probably reel off another half-dozen or so in the next six-eight weeks . . . including a couple of more Wisconsin Badgers.