Dick Enberg’s legendary career includes very few card appearances

One of the familiar voices in all of the sports world — a long-time broadcaster for NBC, CBS and ESPN who covered Wimbledon 28 times, covered 10 Super Bowls and covered eight NCAA men’s basketball championships along with much, much more — has been silenced.

Dick Enberg was 82.

Despite a Hall of Fame career and plenty of time in homes on TV since the 1960s when he covered John Wooden‘s UCLA Bruins, he’s only got a handful of sports card appearances from the past — and, of those, really only one is easy to find.

Veteran ESPN voice and broadcaster John Saunders dies at 61

One of ESPN’s longest-running on-air talents and a memorable voice for countless sports moments has been silenced as John Saunders has died. He was 61.

The Canadian was a junior hockey All-Star and played one game at Western Michigan before a career in broadcasting that began in 1978. He joined ESPN in December 1986 where he had worked ever since as a SportsCenter anchor, studio host and the lead for shows such as The Sports Reporters.

Buddy Ryan’s defensive dominance didn’t translate into much cardboard

He was a coach for two of the greatest teams in NFL history, a defensive mastermind and a coach that his players revered.

He’s Buddy Ryan, a 26-year veteran of the coaching ranks and an innovator in the game. He was a young defensive coach for the New York Jets that won Super Bowl III. He was the brains behind the 46 defense and the dominating Chicago Bears that steamrolled their way to a victory in Super Bowl XX.

“Buddy was such an integral part of the Chicago Bears and the ’85 Bears, it was unbelievable,” former Bears coach Mike Ditka told NFL.com. “There’s no way we win anything without that defense, without his coaching and I think everybody understands that. We won because of our defense, we can never forget that. That’s just the way it was.”

He died on Tuesday at age 82 — and he’s also a legend you won’t find often on cardboard.

Buzz List: Five top Santa Claus cards *serious* collectors need right now

With the holiday season here, cardboard is probably on the minds of many Buzz readers as they wonder what might await them soon.

Others, like Buzz, might be thinking of Cardboard of Christmas Past — you know, some of the Santa Claus trading cards we’ve seen throughout the years. Most of it’s trivial and not all that collectable — but they all stand out in a way compared to our traditional sports cards.

1989 Pro Set Promos #1989
When Dallas-based Pro Set created this card during its first season of making football cards in 1989, it sparked a trend that we saw in not just football cards but other areas in the years that followed. (Boy are there some bad Photoshop jobs there in the 1990s.) For all intents and purposes, though, Buzz would call this one a “Rookie Card.” Yes, there were previous non-sports cards — but this was the one that put cards like this on the minds of the sports-collecting masses after it was mailed out to dealers and selected NFL-related people.