PALM BEACH, Fla. _ Bengals founder Paul Brown once mused that records bored him.

But on Tuesday, he no doubt would have been quite interested to hear that the NFL owners agreed to put the statistics of the All-America Football Conference into the pro football record book.

Not that his seven championships break a tie with George Halas, Bill Belichick and Curly Lambeau and put him at the top of Pro Football Reference Wednesday morning 33 years after his death, 58 years after the birth of the Bengals, and nearly 70 years after that first win over the Miami Seahawks to open the Cleveland Browns' 1946 AAFC season.

What would have caught Paul Brown's eye is that his granddaughter, Bengals executive vice president Katie Blackburn, is a member of the competition committee that recommended the addition to the owners at their annual league meeting that came to an end Tuesday.

"It's nice to have all the records together," said Blackburn, who attended a few of these meetings with her grandfather.

Back at Paycor Stadium, her father, Bengals president Mike Brown, who made certain the Bengals were born in Cincinnati as his father's confidant, is thinking as much about Paul's players as the man himself.

"Not only my dad's records, but all the great players who are getting a fair shake," said Mike Brown, 89 years young clicking off statistics he first learned as a junior high schooler in Cleveland. "Look at Marion Motley. He had more yards per carry in his career than Jim Brown."

Brown, who tore off 5.2 yards per carry for the Browns of the '50 and '60s, became regarded as the greatest player of all-time. Motley, who was the Browns running back in the four seasons they won all four AAFC championships and then three NFL titles in the '40s and '50s, had 5.7.

Both played for Paul Brown. On Wednesday morning for the first time, Motley is ahead of Jim Brown on the yards per career list. Both are behind quarterbacks Michael Vick, Randall Cunningham and Lamar Jackson, but Motley now leads all running backs who ever played.

"There were great players in that league," Mike Brown said. "Three of the teams, Cleveland, San Francisco and Baltimore, joined the National Football League and in that first year, 41 percent of the players were former All-American players. That would indicate just how good those players when they came into the league and really helped teams like the Giants."

In that first season, 1950, Paul Brown and his intruders from the AAFC stunned the world going through the NFL at 10-2 and winning it all, giving them five straight titles in two leagues.

They would win two more with Otto Graham as their quarterback during the '50s, and on Wednesday morning, Graham had thrown himself back into a tie with Tom Brady at the top of the record books for quarterbacks with seven championships.

"I guess Otto was my favorite," Mike Brown said. "He was seen as the leader of the Browns, but all those guys were such great players. Marion. Lou Groza. Dante Lavelli, Dub Jones, Mac Speedie. So many others. Hall-of-Famers all of them."

Mike Brown is never very far away from the 13-year-old who loved his Browns. That 1948 undefeated AAFC championship team has always been his favorite and the team picture has followed him. Now it hangs on the wall of his team's library at Paycor.

It also now hangs in NFL history. At 14-0, they join the 17-0 Dolphins of 1972 as the only two teams recognized by the league with a spotless regular season and postseason.

"You look at the receivers on that team. Lavelli. Speedie. Dub Jones. They were big and they were fast. They could run," Brown said. "They would grace any field."

So would Paul Brown, of course, and now history has caught up with his innovations. The man who invented the playbook, the face mask, the radio helmet, and almost everything else you see in pro football today, is now seventh on the all-time coaching list with 213 regular-season wins. He's one of eight to win at least 200 games and one of the guys he passed on this Wednesday morning is Steelers Hall-of-Famer Chuck Noll, his former player with 193.

"It's nice for my father," Mike Brown said. "The statistics speak to what he accomplished. He was out of the game for (six years) when he was really at the top and before he came back here late in his career. Whatever the numbers are, he'll always be number one in my eye."