Get a window into the rich inner life of Ickey Woods with Pro Set Collect-A-Books

With NFL training camps about to open and the regular season within shouting distance, here’s an odd little remnant from the 1990s to whet your whistle. I have vague memories of these strangle card-booklet amalgams, which opened up to give you brief bios and factoids about the stars of the day. It’s easy to mock the Collect-A-Books for being dopey and an umpteenth product from the people at Pro Set — a company whose name was synonymous with “glut.” But in those dark pre-internet days, when information wasn’t at your fingertips and chances were you didn’t have every team’s media guide right at hand, they were a godsend, especially to the young fan.

So get caught up on Boomer Esiason’s pre-1992 life and times before he starts his new season in the CBS studio.