A Football Card Experiment - Game 1 - Steelers

I've never really collected football cards.  My primary interests, baseball and hockey, keep me more than busy.  I do enjoy tuning in to NFL action on Sundays though, and have been a faithful New England Patriots fan for more than 20 years now.

As the fall weather moves into New England here, I've become curious about sampling some football cards.  Don't get me wrong, I am not planning to collect the sport with anywhere near the level of intensity as my other collections, but I would like to expand a bit on my meager football collection over the next few months.

I thought it might be a fun experiment to pick up one card to represent each of the Patriots' games this season.  This will give me a way to focus a bit, and will also keep the number of new football cards on the lighter side, which is important to me.  Since I have less than 20 total football cards in my collection at the outset of this, the 16 new cards that I add will effectively double the size of my football card collection.

Well, today is game one for New England, and they face off against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the prime-time game this evening.  Here's the first card in the football card experiment, accordingly:

You think Antonio Brown would wear this helmet?

When I was browsing around trying to locate some cards to get a jump start on this project, this 1955 Bowman really stood out to me.  I'll likely focus on the Pats' opponent each week, as it provides a lot more variety than simply showing a New England card every Sunday for months on end.  Given my love of 1950s Bowman on the baseball front, I suppose it's not all that surprising that I gravitated towards '50s Bowman to kick off this football series as well.

I'm hoping these cards will have the side effect of forcing me to learn more about the game each week, and that's already been the case here.  For instance, I had no idea prior to writing this post that the Steelers were formed all the way back in 1933, making them the oldest club in the AFC!

As for Lynn Chandnois (whose name is mis-spelled on this card), I'd never heard of him, unsurprisingly.  He had a very successful collegiate career with the Michigan State Spartans, earning team MVP and All-American honors before joining the Steelers in the NFL.  In the NFL he had some real success as well, making multiple Pro Bowl teams and winning the Player of the Year award in 1952!

The backs of these '55 Bowman cards aren't the most exciting design I've seen, but this one was all about the front for me anyway.  I do find it interesting the way the stats are typed out on the bottom half of the card.

So, there you have it, my first football card of the season, with at least 15 more to come!  I'm certainly looking forward to increasing my collection and and learning more about the game of football as the season progresses here, and I hope you'll see a card or two in the coming weeks that interests you as well.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and for NFL fans best of luck to your teams (except the Steelers) in week one!