Sport: Pro Prospects

A new coast-to-coast professional-football league is a dead certainty for 1945—if everyone doesn’t get killed in the rush.

Born of surplus wartime dollars and a seductive box-office boom, various plans for postwar leagues had been growing quietly since last winter. By last week three rival groups, each padded with big names and bankrolls, had announced intentions to sponsor such a league, and already had begun battling for stadium rights, coaches and players. The line-up (in order of appearance): All-America Football Conference—organized by Arch Ward, Chicago Tribune sports editor; Trans-America Football League—John Francis (“Chick”) Meehan, ex-N.Y.U. coach; U.S. Professional Football League —Roland D. Payne, Pittsburgh industrialist.

The $64 Question was who gets the playing fields in the key cities?

In New York the Yankee Stadium and its 70,000 seats was the issue. Mrs. Lou Gehrig and Oilman Ray Ryan of the Ward group had put in their bid for the Stadium, would consider Randalls Island, threatened to play pro football in the Plaza Hotel ballroom if all else failed. The Meehan faction, boasting a family tie-in with the Ruppert heirs, professed to have the inside track, would bow out quietly if their bid for the Stadium failed. The Payne group was just hoping.

In Baltimore, Mayor Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin juggled a hot potato. He had all but committed the Municipal Stadium (capacity 60,000) to Gene Tunney of Arch Ward & Co. The Meehan interests, headed by big, bluff James Lacy (Lacy Iron & Foundry Works), bellowed that the bowl should goto his group of Baltimoreans, rather than to an out-of-town ex-heavyweight champ. Here, too, the Payne boys seemed to be whistling in the dark.

In Los Angeles, city, county and state officials were squabbling over who would do the renting of the huge 105,000-seat Coliseum. Waiting for a break in the clouds were Payne’s movietown moneymen, Frank Sinatra and Harry James; Meehan’s onetime Syracuse classmate, Cinema Producer Harry Joe Brown; and Ward’s watchers, Christy Walsh and Don Ameche.

The Pay-Off. There was more of the same in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Chicago, with nobody seemingly set for sure. The one sure thing was that the battle of the stadiums would eliminate at least one and probably two of the blue-printed leagues, leaving the victor to compete next season with the 23-year-old National Football League. And the fruits of victory, judged by National League balance sheets, might have a low sugar content: only four of the ten teams—the New York Giants, Washington Redskins, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers—had made money over the long pull. But the dollar-heavy newcomers ignored past performances, swore by the future.

The Current Crop. All but drowned in the postwar hubbub was the West Coast’s brand-new American Football League, which was finding college box-office competition a hard nut to crack. Last week, a 4,000 handful turned out to see the Los Angeles Mustangs meet the Los Angeles Wildcats in a league tussle, whereas 60,000 fans had braved 105° temperatures the day before to watch the University of Southern California play U.C.L.A. This month, further complicating the customer quest, the four-year-old Pacific Coast Football League swings into action.

The National League, on the other hand, was playing to the largest crowds in its history. But while the dollars clinked in, coaches bemoaned a shortage of seasoned performers to put over the show. Best in the league on performance were the Green Bay Packers, who had beaten Brooklyn (14-to-7), Chicago (42-to-28), and Detroit (27-to-6).