Wednesday, May 24, 2006

I subscribe for the All-American lists | by Pat

Playboy recently announced their 2006 All-American team and invited a bunch of the best players in the country out to Phoenix for a photo shoot (sans bunnies). Fun fact from the linked article: Playboy picked up the AA team tradition from Collier's Magazine, which had been publishing a college football All-America list since 1898 (!). Collier's was going out of business and Hef didn't want to let such a long-standing tradition die, so he brought Collier's sportswriter over to Playboy and had him continue it.

No Notre Dame players were named to the team; from what we've heard from our connections inside the Mansion, Quinn was invited but declined per ND policy. But ND didn't always have such a policy against appearing on Playboy's team. Check out these photos of ND players on previous teams. (As a disclaimer, all pictures in this post have been re-hosted on this site so don't worry about tripping any IT red flags.)

1963
: Jim Kelly (also Ara Parseghian with Northwestern)
1966: Jim Lynch (#61), Tom Regner (#76), Nick Eddy (#47)
1967: Offense - Jim Seymour (#85); Defense - Kevin Hardy (#74)
1968: Offense - George Kunz (#79), Terry Hanratty (#5)
1969: Defense - Mike McCoy (#75)
1970: Offense - Larry DiNardo (#56); Defense - Clarence Ellis (#23)
1971: Offense - Tom Gatewood (#45), Coach Ara Parseghian (not pictured); Defense - Clarence Ellis (#23), Mike Kadish (#72), Walt Palutski (#85)
1972: Offense - Greg Marx (#75)
1973: Offense - Dave Casper (#86), Frank Pomarico (#56); Defense - Mike Townsend (#27)
1974: Offense - Tom Clements (#2); Defense - Greg Collins (#50)
1975: Defense - Steve Niehaus (#70)
1976: Defense - Ross Browner (#89)
1977: Offense - Ken MacAfee (#81); Defense - Ross Browner (#89)
1978: Offense - Dave Huffman (#56); Defense - Bob Golic (#55)
1979: Offense - Tim Foley (#73); Defense - Dave Waymer (#34)
1984: Offense - Larry Williams (#75), Mike Kelley (#63)
1985: Offense - Tim Scannell (#54)

With hindsight as a guide, perhaps it's for the best that Quinn wasn't named to the team. You never know how time will treat your fashion sense, or when your image will be in the hands of a photographer who is trying just a bit too hard to be creative.