Are you ready for some football...cards!

The NFL season is off and running and as a New York Jets fan I gotta say, I was full of optimism for this year. Now we are in week 3 of the season and I have already checked out. Hopefully the Jets can turn this thing around and start racking up some Ws? But until that happens I'm going to reminisce on the good ol' days when football players were more than just marketing tools, they were tough and beat the snot out of each other without the yellow flags being thrown! These days were the late 80s & early 90s! Let's take a trip down memory lane and tear into some vintage NFL trading cards, shall we?

Action Packed 1989

Oh my gosh! These cards were amazing! They were embossed and had gold foil graphics. Action Packed was a real game changer when they came out, but they were unable to hold their appeal with collectors. I remember trading for these cards with my friends mostly for the Jets cards, but definately because of their cool factor!

Score 1990

In the 80s & 90s Score and Topps were the go to cards for me. They seemed to be the most affordable and you got a decent product. These cards from 1990 were totally a victim of their time. I say victim, but I really do like the bold colors and almost full card photos in this set. They also had some great subsets and some of the best rookie cards of the year.

Fleer Ultra 1991

Ah, Fleer Ultra. The premium card set. 1991 was early on in the Fleer Ultra brand and they really hadn't hit their stride yet. It would be another year or so until Ultra would include the UV coating and foil embossing that I loved so much. Overall this is not a bad set, just sort of plain.

Pacific Plus 1991

Pacific was always an afterthought in my collecting experience. Yeah, we had the cards but no one avidly collected them. I mostly picked up these cards so I could grab another cardboard version of my favorite player...Bo Jackson. This is a clean looking set, but it just didn't have the clout in the market as some of the bigger card producers.

Ted Williams 1994

I didn't even know this card set existed until a year or so ago when I found packs at an antique store for 75 cents each! This is a nice looking set filled with NFL greats of the past and some from the present. There were some nice subsets included and you did get a bonus POG card in each pack! As a side note, I never knew "Anti Counterfeit Ink" was needed to produce a football card set?

Christmas Traditions

Every family has their own Christmas traditions. Mine was no different than any other. Here are some of the things I remember from growing up that made the holidays so special!

Sibling Gift Exchange

First, I have to say that I grew up with 2 brothers and 2 sisters and each Christmas Eve evening my Mom and Dad would allow us to open one present from a sibling to hold us over until Christmas morning. I always picked the gift from my older brother. We were around the same age and liked the same things, so I was almost guaranteed to get something I liked. Myself on the other hand would buy gifts for my brothers and sisters at the school store. These "gifts" would include large jumbo erasers (Am I the only one who loved the smell of those things?), keychains and pencil sharpeners shaped like historical items.

In all honesty, I thought they were great gifts, I'm not too sure anyone else thought so though?

Opening Christmas Stockings

Every Christmas morning us kids were able to open the gifts that were in our stockings before our parents woke up. Looking back, I can see this as a brilliant idea from my parents. It allowed us kids to wake up early and it gave my parents some extra time to sleep while we played with our new toys that were stuffed in the stockings.

I remember one year getting an Al Toon Starting Lineup figure and some small Transformers that kept me and my brother busy for a while before we got prepped and ready to annoy our parents enough to wake up.

Early Morning Television

This really isn't a tradition in the classical sense, but every Christmas morning when we would wake up the TV would go on. It didn't matter what was on the tube, it was almost like a kid reflex. We only got 7 or 8 channels back in the day and most of the time the local stations just ran pre-recorded news programs.

The one I remember most were the "Shame on You" specials hosted by Arnold Diaz! I always loved watching that guy get kicked out of places after arguing with corrupt store owners. That sound is still the unofficial Christmas Carol of my childhood.

The Making of the Coffee

So after we opened our stocking gifts, but before we annoyed our parents to wake up so we could unwrap gifts, us kids had to make a pot of coffee for my parents. It was one of those things that had to be done so they would get out of bed and we could tear into the goodies under the tree. Finally the parents would be awake and we would go nuts with wrapping paper, ribbons and boxes flying everywhere across the living room. It was so great and I hope my kids have the same fantastic nostalgia of Christmas morning when they grow up. It truly is the best time of the year! MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

What are some of your cherished childhood memories or traditions? Let us know in the comment section below and spread some holiday cheer!

Thanksgiving Memories

Growing up in the 80s & 90s, I always loved Thanksgiving. Yeah it was sandwiched between 2 of the biggest holidays for kids, but Thanksgiving never had any of the pressures of Halloween or Christmas. You didn't have to worry about what costume to wear, if your candy was poisoned or if you forgot to buy your brother a gift. It was that special time of year where you could just eat all day and be lazy!

Every Thanksgiving morning my Mom would turn on the Macy's parade. It was always on in the background at our house. Me and my brothers and sisters never really sat and watched the thing, it was just on for the sake of having the TV on until Thanksgiving 1986 when He-Man, Skeletor and the rest of the Masters of The Universe mad their glorious debut in the parade!

This was something me and my brother had been anticipating since we saw a sneak peak of the float in our Masters of the Universe Magazine! We were not disappointed by their appearance in the parade and we wouldn't reach this level of anticipation until...

Bart Simpson made his debut in 1990! Since then I really haven't sat down to watch the Macy's parade, but I will make damn sure it is on my TV Thanksgiving morning!

The weather was typically nice each Thanksgiving in New Jersey and after we were dressed in our best sweaters and corduroys, we had to make sure to seem like we were busy otherwise Mom would put us to work by either helping her with the cooking or cleaning the house for guests. That's about the time we would go outside and toss around the old...NERF Turbo Football!

Yes, we had the Turbo Screamer Football. Yes, it would almost rip your finger off if you got hit by the hard plastic "Screamer" part and Yes, we did treat this thing like gold! After some outside time, the guests would start arriving and it would be about that time for some turkey!

A lot of people say Turkey is their favorite or maybe the stuffing or cranberry sauce, but for me it was always my Dad's home made baked Mac & Cheese! We only had this dish once a year and it was amazing. My wife still makes it for me each Thanksgiving and it's great. I just wish I was back home in NJ to enjoy it with my family!

After dinner we would settle down and watch some NFL football. There really have been some great games on Turkey-day over the years, but the one that sticks out the most to me is the 1993 Cowboys vs Dolphins game. A day that Leon Lett will never forget. Those are some of my Thanksgiving memories, what are some of yours? From all of us at 20 Years Before 2000...

Memorial Day Weekend 2017

First of all I want to say Thank You to our service men and women who have served are serving and will serve in the armed forces. Without these men and women we probably would not have the freedoms to celebrate a long holiday weekend. Secondly, Memorial Day weekend is always the official kickoff to summer for me and my family. This past weekend we had no prior commitments like baseball, gymnastics, school functions or birthday parties for the first time in a long time! We finally had a chance to relax!

With all that free time I was able to tackle a few things around the house that had been piling up like getting our lawn sprinklers up and working, fixing a broken light fixture, catching up on laundry and building this raised garden for my kids to plant some veggies! We went to Lowes and the kids picked out cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes and surprisingly Brussels sprouts!

We cooked almost every meal on the barbeque! This included hot dogs, home made cheese burgers, chicken and my favorite...Earl Campbell's Hot Links! Oh, I also stirred up a pitcher of my fave Kool-Aid flavor Blue Raspberry Lemonade!

Now back to the Earl Campbell Hot Links. These are amazing! They are so flavorful with enough spice to make your mouth water. The spice is just right and doesn't overpower the taste of the link itself. The price is also reasonable. It is only $4.98 for a 36oz pack at Walmart. You can check out some other Earl Campbell products at his website EarlCampbellMeatProducts.com. You may be asking yourself 'Who the hell is Earl Campbell?" Earl is a Heisman Award winning, Hall of Fame NFL running back who played 8 years for the Oilers & Saints. See him in action in this video!

Other highlights include 5 Pro Bowl selections, 3 All-Pro selections, 3 time NFL Rushing leader, 2 time NFL Touchdown leader, 1979 AP NFL MVP, 3 time NFL Offensive Player of the Year, 1978 Offensive Rookie of the Year and a 2 time All American at Texas! His football legacy is why I picked these up in the first place.

Of course we had to have the traditional side dishes and junk food to go along with our meals which included salads, watermelon, chip, Cheetos and I finally got to try the new Mountain Dew flavor Dew-S-A which is a combination of Mountain Dew Code Red, White Out & Voltage. It was okay, but a bit too sweet for my likes. The kids loved it though! Also finally found and got to try the new Warheads "Hotheads Worms". These I really liked. They start out with a sour sweetness and end with a spicy kick. I found these at the dollar store.

It was such a great weekend filled with good food, fun in the sprinklers, competitive games of badminton, completed projects and time with the family. How did you spend your weekend?