It Pays to Play

Do pros play football for fun? For glory? For fulfillment? No, says Quarterback Norm Van Brocklin, 35, who has played for twelve years and last season led the Philadelphia Eagles to their first championship since 1949. They play, he says in Norm Van Brocklin's Football Book (Ronald Press; $3.50), for money and marriage.

The starting salary for a National Football League rookie just out of college is about $9,000, and stars get more than $20,000 for five months' work. "Contrast that," says Van Brocklin, "with what the nonathletic C student gets along with his sheepskin. I would say that most of them are lucky if they get a $5,000 job, and they have to work 50 weeks of the year to get it." The pro who plays for pay also has time for lucrative sidelines. Notes Van Brocklin: "How about such modern players as Johnny Unitas, who is building three bowling alleys in Baltimore, and is so well fixed in stock holdings that he'll probably come out of this league a millionaire. Or the Colts' Gino Marchetti, owner of a string of hamburger hutches; Alan Ameche, proprietor of six restaurants; and Tommy McDonald, at the tender age of 26, is a director of an Oklahoma bank and also gets a handsome sum from a Southwest bowling alley just for the use of his name."

"On the matrimonial side," says Van Brocklin candidly, "the players don't do badly, either. To name a few: Ron Waller, an ex-Ram, married the granddaughter of the cereal fortune matriarch, Marjorie Merriweather Post. Ron Miller, after a year with the Rams, took Walt Disney's daughter as his bride and moved into Disneyland. Bud McFadin is the husband of a young lady whose father owns half of West Texas. Bud now runs a dude ranch near Houston. Leon Clarke, the Rams' tall end, wed the heiress to the Beechnut chewing gum, baby food and allied products millions."

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