Nearmint's Vintage Football Card Blog

Here’s a trivia question for you: what legendary NFL running back appeared on the 1964 Topps CFL Saskatchewan Roughriders team card? Here is a picture of the card. The player is in the middle row, fourth from the left, wearing number 32.

Give up? The answer is Jim Brown. What, you say, Jim Brown never played in the CFL? Well, it’s a trick question, because the team pictured on the card is not the 1964 Saskatchewan Roughriders. It is actually the 1959 Cleveland Browns. I learned this bit of trivia earlier this week from a post on a Roughriders forum.

But that’s not the extent of the error. Topps routinely used the same team photos for years at a time, and all of the Roughrider team cards in the 1961-1963 Topps CFL sets have the same mistake. Ironically, though Topps used the 1959 Browns photo on several CFL cards, this photo never appeared on an NFL card. Topps used a picture of the 1958 Browns team on all of its Browns team cards from 1959 to 1963.

For many more football cards that picture the wrong players, see the Mistaken Identities page of the Vintage Football Card Gallery.