After seeing the preview for 2016 Certified Football, I am walking away with one quesiton:

WHAT THE FUCK IS PANINI DOING WITH THEIR TOP BRANDS?

That’s about it. You would think they would want to invest in their legacy products, but nope, they leave them to rot with the worst designs around:

2015 Certified Marcus Mariota Auto patch /5

2015 Certified Jameis Winston Auto patch /15

2015 Certified Amari Cooper Auto /10

2015 Certified Todd Gurley Auto /10

For the last few years, Panini has run their most important brands of the year into the ground, or in the case of Elite, just took it off the calendar all together. With 2016 so far, they have done nothing to show they are interested in creating good looking trading cards, instead opting for lazy design work with even worse thematic choices for the programs.

I havent even gotten around to writing a preview for Gala, but holy fuck balls, that shit is ugly. Of course, Gala means about as much to football as Johnny Manziel means to the Cleveland Browns at this point, so its not as big of a deal when they set that product ablaze before it even hits the production line.

Certified on the other hand, has been around for over a decade, and though it has delivered some of the most hideous examples of modern card design in history, people love it. Sometimes a blind squirrel finds a nut, and they get something right, but not in the last few years.

Panini is obsessed with two things in the way they build their cards, and both of them make me sick. Sick that they were given the reigns for my favorite sport, and sick that even with a guide dog, this blind squirrel is still starving for visual appeal. They love separated areas for each element of the card and those goofy ass posed pictures. You can imagine why they need Fathers Day and Black Friday to clear product now.

Much like the rest of the products they do during this time of year, Certified is a certified disaster. The main box hits look terrible. They used a big white box to house the sticker, which is being used instead of on card for the 19th product in a row for them. Aside from a lack of hard signed autographs, the card looks like the player is being sliced off at the waist. I have no idea why anyone thinks this looks good, as a faded area would be much easier to stomach. Alas, this is the way Panini builds their shit, and it bothers the hell out of me.

The fabric of the game looks better than last year, as does the gold team, but considering how much of a dumpster fire they were over the last few years, Im not sure that says much about the product’s potential.

Panini will literally put out 20 of these types of sets this year, and all 20 will not be good. I can already tell you that. If it isnt a super premium product that is designed by the basketball team, the cards will be shit. That’s just the way it works. Topps had their duds too, but they rarely fucked up twice in a row. If something didnt work, they axe it, with Fire being the only exception to the rule.

I can assure you that I am inching ever closer to giving up on football all together, and I dont think I am alone in saying that. The days of Upper Deck and Topps are gone, and here we are, left with the garbage. Someone needs to take it out to the curb, because it smells to high hell.