May 11 Report: Former New York Jets Kicker Pat Leahy

Hard to believe more than a month and a half has passed since I reported my last football success here on this blog.

Shouldn't be that much of a surprise since I've been focusing on golf so much lately. Guess like many aspects of this hobby, trends come and go. I never would have thought when I started this project I would have ever sent out more golf requests than I have football.

Well today I get back to my first love -- football autographs.

Pat Leahy kicked for the New York Jets for entire NFL career (1974-1991). Amazingly in his 18-year career he never had a kick blocked. He scored 1,470 points.

Day of the Year: 131
Number of Autographs This Year: 179

January 11 Report: Gary Fencik, Joe Ferguson and Jeff Lageman

Today marks a streak of 5 consecutive mailing days where I have some success to report. Two of these three former NFL players competed in the 1970s and the other was most prominent in the 1990s.

First we have the former Chicago Bears safety Gary Fencik, whio played 12 seasons for the team and retired as their leading tackler and interceptor. He was part of the victorious team that played in Super Bowl XX and he was named to two Pro Bowls, proving the Yale grad could play football as well.



Joe Ferguson was a standout at the University of Arkansas where he was the Southwest Conference Player of the Year before being drafted by the Buffalo Bills in the third round of the 1973 draft.

During his NFL career, which spanned from 1973-1990, Ferguson passed for nearly 30,000 yards. I was saddened to hear that in recent years he has battled both leukemia and cancer. Thankfully this appears to be in remission. We'll keep Joe and his family in my prayers so that there is not another medical issue as significant as those two in his future.

Lastly today we have Jeff Lageman, the former University of Virginia standout who, despite his size, made a fine career in the NFL as a linebacker. First for the New York Jets, who drafted him in the first round of the 1989 draft, then later for the upstart Jacksonville Jaguars franchise.








Day of the Year: 11
Number of Autographs This Year: 13

My 2010 Hobby Project

I've been an avid sports fan since the late 1970s, when I was old enough to earn a little allowance or lawn-cutting money and look forward to spending most of it on a few packs of football cards. it wasn't long thereafter I began collecting the autographs of my childhood sports heroes.

By the 1980s I had begun collecting the signatures of players who had played decades before and also began getting the signatures of other sports stars. Today, some 30-plus years after I began collecting football cards, I have a collection of several thousand autographs from every sport imaginable, as well as politicians, actors, actresses, models, etc.

While I haven't actively been collecting autographs for the last decade, I have gotten few and a few there. Well, in the process of organizing the vast collection, my interest was rekindled the last week of 2009. I wondered if, in 2010 I could manage to collect an autograph a day for every day in 2010.

While I realize that there will be days where I will not add an autograph to my collection, my goal is to boost the collection by 365 autographs by year's end.

So I've created this blog to track the progress and hopefully along the way share some common interests with other autograph collectors out there.

If you've found this place, thanks for checking in from time to time.

Cheers,

Mark