The One and Only

Four NFL teams have retired #12.  Three of them honored franchise legends.  One retired it for their fans.*

The Buffalo Bills retired the number to honor Jim Kelly, but have also honored the fans as well.

If you're a fan of football, you've probably heard the Seattle Seahawks fans referred to the 12s at some point.  It stems from the 12th man, which according to Wikipedia originated at Texas A&M in 1922.

In their franchise history, there has only been one player to wear #12.  I wasn't familiar with him until a few weeks ago when I decided to research the history of the 12s.  The name Sam Adkins popped up on Football Reference:

After making this discovery, I immediately headed over to COMC & TCDB to see if he had any trading cards and found a pair of oddball issues, but none were available on eBay.  This signed index card popped up though:

The seller had it up for auction, but I was busy doing something when it ended so I missed out on it.  The auction didn't receive any bids and the seller listed it again with a best offer option.  They accepted my $2.50 (+ $1.48 tax & shipping) offer and the rest is history.

I have no idea whether or not this autograph is legit, but I can't imagine a lot of people are going around forging his signature.  That being said, whoever originally owned this signed index card wrote some notes on the back.

Don't worry baseball fans.  I don't anticipate any more football posts in the near future.  Just wanted to share this not-so-random signature of a guy most of you probably aren't familiar with the day after the 12s got a chance to celebrate the second Super Bowl win in franchise history.

Go Hawks!

Happy Monday and sayonara!

Overtime

By the way, here are two new card blogs to add to your blogrolls:

#1:  Batting Out of Order

The first one is Tom's return to the keyboard.  He'll be showing off his Angels and Patriots PC.

#2:  Divas Hockey Ink

The second one is for hockey and Olympic fans. 

I'm super excited to see Tom back in the mix and happy to welcome RR to the blogosphere.

In the Hands of the Cards

With the Los Angeles Dodgers fielding all-stars all over the diamond, the odds of me seeing the A's or Padres win a World Series title in the next decade or so is pretty slim.  Luckily there's a 50% chance that one of my favorite football teams will win a Super Bowl title tomorrow.

I've been a Seattle Seahawks fan since 1981.  To put that into perspective, that's the year I started collecting baseball cards.

Back in December, I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping on Target's website when I saw some UNO Elite football boxes on sale for $4.49 each.  I picked up a few for my co-worker's kids and set aside two for this post.

I thought it'd be cool to use them for a Super Bowl sports card simulation to predict the winner of tomorrow's game.

Let's start off by looking at the two boxes...

Product Description:

Box #1:  2025 UNO Elite Core Booster Set Plus

Box #2:  2025 UNO Elite Alt Jerseys Booster Set Plus

Each box contains 4 packs and each pack contains ten cards.

Scoring:

In an effort to not only predict the Super Bowl winner, but the final score as well, each player will earn their team three points (like a field goal) each time they are pulled from a pack.  Since there are four colors variations in the game of UNO, I will turn a field goal into a touchdown (seven points) if the color matches their team colors:

New England Patriots:  Red or Blue

Seattle Seahawks:  Green or Blue

There are also foil versions inserted into packs.  If I pull any Patriots or Seahawks, they will receive a 2x multiplier to that card.

Box #1 will represent the first half of the game with the first two packs representing the first quarter and the last two packs representing the second quarter.  Box #2 will work the same way except they'll represent the third and fourth quarters.

Checklists:

I analyzed the checklists for both teams.  After thirty minutes of trying to balance things out, I ended up removing any players (like Kendrick Bourne and Tyler Lockett) who are no longer with the Seahawks or Patriots.

That ended up giving the Patriots a big advantage with five cards listed in each product, while the Seahawks only had three in each.  To make things fair, I added two current Seahawks who are featured with their prior teams from each set.

Here's who I'll be looking for...

Okay.  I think everything important has been covered.  If not, I'll make adjustments on the fly.  Let the Super Bowl LX sports card simulation begin...

First Quarter:

2025 UNO Elite Core #120

Drake Maye gets the Patriots on the board first with a field goal, but a Rashid Shaheed was sitting a few cards behind:

2025 UNO Elite Core #149

Although Shaheed is wearing black and gold for the Saints, this card is a color match to his Super Bowl team.  Seahawks take the lead with a touchdown!

Here are the eighteen other cards in the packs:

I was happy to pull the Josh Jacobs for the Packers PC and my nieces will be excited to add the Cowboys and Lions in this break (especially the shiny St. Brown) to their collections.

After fifteen minutes, the score is:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Second Quarter:

Both defenses stepped up in the second quarter with zero Patriots or Seahawks in these two packs.

Shaquill Griffin made an appearance.  He's played in a pair of games for the Hawks this season, but is currently on their practice squad.  Even if he was on their Super Bowl roster, he didn't make this ten card roster, so he doesn't qualify for any points.

The halftime score is:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Third Quarter:

Twenty more cards.  Zero Seahawks or Patriots.  I sure hope the real game has more scoring than this.

Three quarters down and the Seahawks hold a four point lead:

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

Fourth Quarter:

I realize both of these Super Bowl defenses are elite, but this is a little extreme.  Eight packs.  One Patriot.  And technically zero Seahawks.  Thank goodness the Seahawks traded for Shaheed in November.

Final Score:

 

New England Patriots 3

Seattle Seahawks 7

If this was the actual score, it'd be the lowest scoring Super Bowl ever.  The current record is held by Super Bowl LIII (Patriots 13 vs. Rams 3).

Sadly simulations and reality are two different things.  We'll see who the real Super Bowl LX Champions are in a little over twenty-four hours.

I was planning to watch the game at my friend's house, but I'm sick AGAIN.  I'm on antibiotics this time around, but don't want to risk spreading it to my friend or her mom.  So it'll be me watching the game at home by myself.  Hopefully the Hawks pull out a victory and redeem themselves after that Super Bowl XLIX tragedy.

I'm sure other blogs have already asked you, but it wouldn't be a Super Bowl post without this question:

Who do you think will win the game?

Who are you rooting for?

I'm nervous about picking the Seahawks (and jinxing them), but I've watched them a lot this season and they look really good.  I'll say they win 24 to 20.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Calm Before the Storm

Collecting sports cards can be relaxing.  Rooting for sports teams can be quite the opposite.  Today's a big day for one of my favorite teams and I've been stressing out about it for the past week.

I figured I'd try to distract myself this morning, but catching up with a pair of items from Ryan's advent calendar that could be classified as relaxing or calming.

Let's start with the helpful hint that he wrote:

This was one of the most obvious haikus from his package.  It refers to this miniature bonsai tree:

The planting portion was super simple and took less than a minute to complete.  Now the waiting game begins.  I'm planning on taking the pot into my classroom.  Maybe watching it grow will help some of my 8th graders relax too.

The other "calming" present was building block related.  Here's his haiku:

And here's the gift:

It's one of those blind bags that contains one "Space Collection" build.  Here's the one I received:

Building block sets are often pretty therapeutic, but this little sucker was a challenging build due to its small size.  Here's a photo that shows the size compared to the mini bonsai planter, a Lego mini-figure, and a Kenner SLU:

The astronaut will accompany the bonsai pot and join the other Lego builds I have displayed in my classroom.

While on the topic of building blocks, I wanted to show off one more Christmas related gift before discussing the storm that quickly approaching.

My friend's mom gave me this awesome Lego set:

2024 Lego Star Wars #75375

I've thought about buying the midi-scale Millennium Falcon for over a year, but I just never got around to doing it.  So I was blown away to see that this was waiting for me under their tree.  Unfortunately, I haven't had time to build it... but as soon as I do... I'll show you guys what it looks like.

Okay... now let's get to the sports section of this post.  In a couple of hours, the Seattle Seahawks will host the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game.  Division games always stress me out.  Division games that involve the winner moving on to the Super Bowl is next level.

On one hand, I haven't been as impressed with the Seahawks defense since these guys:

2014 Prizm Red, White, & Blue #200

On the other hand, I'm not quite as confident in the Seahawks offense as I have been in the past.  I'm predicting a close game... but honestly have no idea who wins this game.  I've watched a ton of analysis and prediction videos... and I feel like even the experts are pretty torn.

At this point the only thing to do is sit back, watch the game, and see how things play out.  Let's go Hawks!

Here are today's questions of the day...

Do you ever get stressed out over your favorite sports teams?

Out of the four remaining football teams, are you rooting for any of them?

If so, who?

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

Are You Ready for Some Football?

I am.  But honestly... four days ago I would have said "not really".  What changed?

1995 Pacific Crown Royale #12

Jerry Jones traded one of the best pass rushers in the league to the Green Bay Packers.  Who dat?

2022 Sports Illustrated for Kids #1039

As noted by several sports commentators, Micah Parsons is only the second person in NFL history with 12+ sacks in each of his first four seasons.  The other guy?

1994 Topps Finest Refractor #92

Reggie White helped lead the Packers to a Super Bowl title.  Hopefully Parsons will too.

Since football posts aren't exactly common on this blog, I figured I'd kill a bunch of birds with one stone.

1993 Pacific Picks The Pros #2

Congratulations to Sterling Sharpe who is a member of the Hall of Fame Class of 2025!

2022 Panini Mosaic Reactive Orange Prizm #97

Congratulations to Travis and Taylor!

Side note:  I spent over an hour digging through boxes searching for the 2011 Topps American Pie card of Kanye West and Taylor Swift, but couldn't find it.  Not sure if I even own the card, but I thought I did.

In addition to the start of the NFL season, college football is kicking off as well.

2015 Leaf Draft #25

2015 Upper Deck #15

I'm not an Oregon Ducks fan, but I did follow Ekpre-Olomu about a decade ago.  At the time he was dating my best friend's cousin's daughter and was rated one of the best cornerbacks in college.  Ten years later, he's part of the family.  Earlier in the summer, my friend had him sign a few cards for me.  Thank you Ifo!

By the way... Kerry I have a signed card set aside for you.  He's the biggest Ducks fan I know.

As for me, I'll be rooting for the San Jose State Spartans this season.

1985 7-11 Dr. Pepper San Francisco 49ers Police #NNO

Did you know that hall of fame coach Bill Walsh graduated from SJSU in 1995?  Forty-plus years later... I did too.

Alright... I'll wrap up this post with a Seattle Seahawks card:

1988 Kenner Starting Lineup #NNO

They are my other favorite football team.  I've been a Seattle Seahawks fan since 1981.  They might not be ranked as high as the Packers on experts' power rankings, but I'll be rooting for them just as much.

It's time to answer the question...

Are you ready for some football?

If so...

Who are you rooting for?

As I stated at the start of the post... "I am".  But baseball comes first.  So depending on how the San Diego Padres play, the Seahawks and Packers might be on hold until November.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!