"It's Wonderful"

In four years of hammer-&-tongs competition for players and grandstand customers, the old, established National Football League and the brash new All-America Football Conference had almost succeeded in beating each other unconscious. To outside pleas for a merger, each side replied through gritted teeth that the other's conditions were unacceptable. Last week they finally came to terms in a hands-down victory for the National League.

After a fourth season of sagging attendance and mounting deficits in both leagues, National League club owners deputized thick-set League Commissioner Bert Bell to deal secretly with Manhattan Attorney J. Arthur Friedlund, the chosen negotiator of the All-America Conference. In two days & nights of almost continuous bargaining in Philadelphia's Racquet Club, the two men reached agreement.

Under the new setup there will be one 13-team organization, the National-American Football League, with Bell as commissioner. All ten of the former National League teams will be in the new league. Of the All-America's seven teams, three--the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Colts and the San Francisco 49ers, joined the new group; three more--the Buffalo Bills, the Los Angeles Dons and the Brooklyn-New York Yankees--will each merge with one or another of the 13 survivors. The players of the remaining team, the Chicago Hornets, will go into a common league pool. The new league will be divided into two divisions, National and American, and starting next year, division winners will meet in a world series.

Most club owners were pleased with the new order. Said Ted Collins, who bought out Dan Topping's Brooklyn-New York Yankees to merge with his own New York Bulldogs: "It can't be rougher than what I've been going through ... In four years I lost more than a million dollars." In a voice trembling with emotion, John Mara, president of the football Giants, cried: "The whole thing is wonderful!"

After four years of fat competitive salaries, the players had less reason to exult. A few days before the merger, Notre Dame's great end, Leon Hart, observed that he would be willing to play professional football for $25,000 a season. At week's end, Arthur McBride, chief owner of the A.A.C.'s high-stepping Cleveland Browns put the new picture in focus: "Some . . . players who got $10,000 and $12,000 this year will be playing for half that--or less--next season."

In Cleveland this week the two top teams of the All-America Conference met for the league's last game. On a muddy, slippery field the Cleveland Browns defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 21 to 7, to win the league championship for the fourth year in a row.

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