Scorecard

"Mr. and Mrs. F. B. Andrew, the proprietors, and their children, Warren and Rowena, say that they are the most incredible eels they have come across.

" 'They come right out of the water at dinner time to be fed and they just love having their tummies rubbed.'

"The eels confirmed the Andrews' claim and the reporter...spent a pleasant summer afternoon with a dog and two cats in a dinghy chatting with intelligent eels."

Makes you eel good all over.

BLOOD ON THE TRAIL

If the Super Bowl is famous for anything, it is for producing unsatisfying football. With this in mind—and visions of dollar bills dancing in their heads—NFL executives have toyed for years with the idea of making the game a two-out-of-three affair.

The problems are obvious. If the first game is boring, who is going to watch the second—or a third? Can you keep teams up for more than one game? Most importantly, what city will go to the extraordinary trouble of preparing for a third game when there is no guarantee that there will be one?

John McNally, who reached the Hall of Fame under the name of Johnny Blood, thinks he has a solution: establish a triple crown—a three-game playoff in which all three games must be played regardless of who wins the first two. He believes the odds against winning all three would soon give his playoff system the magic of baseball's triple crown (batting, home run and runs-batted-in titles) and of racing's ( Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont). To insure that the players would go all out, he suggests a $1 million, winner-take-all pot for the third game, whether it is for the championship or the triple crown.

Blood has strong reasons for wanting to see a triple or a similar plan developed. Like all others who retired from professional football before 1958, he receives nothing from the NFL players' pension fund. The old-timers have sued the Players Association for a fair share, but Blood feels they will succeed only if they present the NFLPA with an additional source of revenue.

It is hard to believe that at the conclusion of an already lengthy season enough enthusiasm would be left for three additional games. But the end Blood seeks justifies a serious look at his means.