SPX Football Gives Upper Deck a Fighting Chance

SPX is usually one of the first products on the market to couple rookies and their NFL uniform material from the rookie premiere, and this year, it looks to be no different - at least in some aspects. For 2010 SPX, Upper Deck is still giving us the product we all know and collect, but this time there is not a single player in the entire product wearing anything associated with the NFL. Due to a lack of an NFL license, they are being forced to use their NFLPA agreement with their newly acquired license for NCAA logos and likenesses to release their football products for the year. Although its sad that we are going to lack any semblence of what the UD calendar used to look like, at least they are trying to make the most of their lot in the industry.

We have already seen 2010 Sweet Spot NCAA, and it looks to be everything it usually is, something that has a lot of people feeling better about what Upper Deck is capable of bringing to the table. SPX is definitely following in that same vein, and I am actually angry that we don’t get to have these cards in the usual way. The design for the main hits of the product are ridiculously cool, and though the base cards oddly remind me of 2010 Classics from Panini, the set looks to be a great use of everything they are supposed to have in an SPX set. In fact, it actually makes 2009 SPX look like it WAS a Panini product.

See, if Upper Deck had an NFL license right now, and that Spiller from below had him in his Bills uniform, I would be signing up for a case right now instead of just trying for a single or two in the long run. Since I don’t care about college football until draft day, sets like this will never appeal to me, and that is something I am truly disappointed about. Although the design and theme of the set looks SO MUCH better than anything else that has come out this year, I just cant help but feel "meh…" about everything because Toby Gerhart will be a Cardinal and not a Viking.

Ill tell you though, after seeing this preview, and seeing the number of Tebow Gator collectors and McCoy Longhorn collectors out there, they must be salivating at the prospects of this set. Because of this fact, I don’t see that there will be much of a drop in the value of the cards produced under Upper Deck's CLC license. Who knows, Upper Deck may somehow find a way to bring the NCAA back to the forefront of the collecting world through offering products similar to this.

On another positive note, I also feel THAT much better about SP Authentic, as its become more and more clear that Upper Deck is not going down without a fight. For people like me that look to Upper Deck whenever we want nicely designed cards, questions and feelings of doubt were filling our heads to start the year. Now that we see exactly what they are planning, things may work out after all. It will never be like it was, but at least they arent sleepwalking through a calendar that has them as the underdog for the first time in over a decade.