1963 Topps football card of former pro football quarterback Charley Johnson, who played 15 seasons in the National Football League for 3 different teams. His longest stint came with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s, where he led some winning teams, and was named to his lone Pro Bowl in 1963. Johnson had a few good years in Denver at the tail end of his career, earning a spot on the Broncos’ Ring of Fame. After retiring as a player, he worked as a professor of chemical engineering at his alma mater, New Mexico State, retiring in 2012.
Archive for the ‘Classic Sports Card of the Day’ Category
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1981 Topps football card of former NFL defensive lineman Sherman White, who played 12 years in the league for the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills. He was a bit of a disappointment coming out of college after being a first round pick of the Bengals, but salvaged his career and became a steady player in his 8 seasons in Buffalo, playing on a couple of playoff teams under coach Chuck Knox in the early 1980s.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1981 Topps football card of one of the best tight ends in NFL history, Kellen Winslow, who played 9 seasons in the league for the San Diego Chargers. He was a five-time Pro Bowler and was named to the NFL’s All Decade team for the 1980s. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1995. His son, Kellen Winslow II played in the NFL for 10 years with 5 different teams, also playing tight end.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1964 Topps football card of former pro football split end Bill Miller, who played seven seasons in the old American Football League for three different teams. He started his career with the Dallas Texans and played a single year for them and then another year for the Buffalo Bills. Miller saw his greatest success in his final five seasons with the Oakland Raiders. His biggest claim to fame is scoring a pair of touchdowns, on throws from Daryle Lamonica, for the only scores the Raiders could muster in losing Super Bowl II to Green Bay.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1966 Philadelphia football card of former pro football receiver Frank Clarke, who played 11 years in the National Football League. He played 3 seasons with the Cleveland Browns before being selected in the 1960 expansion draft to stock the NFL’s new team that season, the Dallas Cowboys. Clarke was a star flanker in the franchise’s early years, one of the team’s earliest bonafide stars. He earned All Pro honors in 1962 and ’64. After retiring as a player, Clarke worked in broadcasting as a sports anchor for a local Dallas station while also doing color commentary on NFL games for CBS.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1992 Topps football card of former NFL defensive lineman Mike Lodish, who carved out a pretty successful 11 year career in the league. He played five seasons in Buffalo, and played on 4 Super Bowl clubs there, then finished with six seasons with the Denver Broncos, where he was a member of back-to-back title-winning teams. He is one of only three NFL players to be a member of six Super Bowl teams, along with Don Beebe and Tom Brady. After retiring as a player Lodish worked as an NFL player agent for a few years.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1996 Bowman’s Best football card of former NFL quarterback and coach Jim Harbaugh, who played 15 seasons in the NFL with a number of different teams. He spent the first seven years of his career with the Chicago Bears, where he had the unenviable task of trying to replace the popular Jim McMahon, and although he didn’t play terribly there he seemed to be in coach Mike Ditka’s dog house most of the time. His most successful stint as a player came in his four years in Indianapolis, where he made his only Pro Bowl appearance and led the Colts to the AFC championship game in 1995. Harbaugh has been a very successful head coach since retiring as a player, at Stanford, with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers and currently at his alma mater, the University of Michigan.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1989 Topps football card of former pro football linebacker Ray Bentley, who played for ten years, splitting his time between the United States Football League and the National Football League. He helped the Michigan Panthers win a USFL championship in 1983, and after three years in that league signed with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, where he helped that franchise reach the Super Bowl twice in the early 1990s while spending six years with them. After retiring as a player, Bentley worked in broadcasting with both Fox Sports as a play-by-play man on NFL telecasts and on Bills’ preseason game telecasts. During his Buffalo playing days, Bentley also published children’s books featuring a character he created, Darby The Dinosaur.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1968 Topps football card of former pro football running back Curtis McClinton, who played his entire career with the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs’ franchise, spanning an eight year period from 1962 until 1969. One of the young American Football League’s top stars, he was a three-time AFL All Star, and played on both of the Chiefs’ Super Bowl teams. McClinton had the honor of being the first AFL player to score a touchdown in a Super Bowl, catching a 7 yard scoring pass from Len Dawson in Super Bowl I.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
1960 Fleer football card of Tom Dimitroff, who may be the player with the smallest playing resume in pro football history to get his own bubble gum card. He played in the Canadian Football League for the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1957 and ’58, then retired. He came out of retirement in 1960 to sign with the new American Football League’s New York Titans, but never played a game for them. He hooked up later that year with the Boston Patriots of the AFL, and played in 3 games for them, throwing 2 incomplete passes. Dimitroff’s son, Thomas Dimitroff, Jr. is the current general manager of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons.