April 15, 1984

The United States Football League intends to begin playing a fall schedule by 1987, putting it in direct competiton against the National Football League, according to two prominent U.S.F.L. executives. The sources said that after the current season, which concludes in July, the league would play two more ''spring'' seasons and then wait more than a year before resuming play in September 1987. Several months ago the league formed a committee to study, among other things, the feasibility of making such a change. ''It was an executive decision made by the people who control the league,'' one of the sources said, referring to the change to a fall schedule. ''It is the only logical way for this league to continue. There is virtually no chance that it's not going to happen.''

WEST HARTFORD IN 1946, when Rabbi William Cohen arrived in West Hartford after graduating from Yeshiva University in New York, few members of his congregation were over 40 years of age. Now, more than two-thirds of the approximately 250 families who are members of Beth David Synagogue are in their 60's. ''We used to have a lot of dances,'' he said. ''We don't anymore because older people are not that interested in going to a dance.'' The country's aged, according to the 1980 census, are increasing at a rate 10 times faster than that of any other segment of the population. Nowhere is that statistic more evident than in suburban communities, where many young couples moved to raise their families in the years following World War II.

Three years ago, Yeshiva University began to rethink the use of its extra space at 55 Fifth Avenue, a 19-story building at the corner of 12th Street where it operates the Brookdale Center of Cardoza Law School. Since the university wanted its law school to continue in that location, several options were taken under consideration, including the sale of the Greenwich Village property and an arrangement for a lease-back.

SLOW LEARNER Early Stories. By Thomas Pynchon. 193 pp. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $14.95. IT'S always an occasion when the invisible man comes to dinner. Thomas Pynchon, like J. D. Salinger, is a writer who has been hiding away for years, and in ''Slow Learner'' he cautiously paints himself back into the public view. Indeed, he makes more of an appearance than he has ever done, since the volume not only collects five early works but offers an easygoing, seemingly vulnerable 20-page introduction by the vanishing author himself. Mr. Pynchon is hard on his old faults, and at first seems to find little virtue in what he calls his apprentice work. ''There are some mighty tiresome passages here,'' he warns. ''I was operating on the motto 'Make it literary,' a piece of bad advice I made up all by myself and then took.'' ''Do not,'' he adds later, ''underestimate the shallowness of my understanding.'' Four of these stories were written while Mr. Pynchon was a

WASHINGTON S OME senior officials had warned from the first that aiding the Nicaraguan rebels might backfire. Their fears, stated when the Administration was about to inaugurate the policy three years ago, seemed to be fulfilled last week as the United States role in the mining of Nicaraguan harbors came under attack from American allies and both parties in Congress. The ensuing controversy cast doubt on the President's ability to pursue his policies across the board in Central America, setting the scene for a major foreign policy debate in the Presidential campaign. As unease deepened, the Administration denied reports that United States military pilots had flown into combat in El Salvador and that the Pentagon had contingency plans for American combat forces in the region. Unable to persuade Congress to speed additional aid to El Salvador, President Reagan went ahead and used his emergency ''draw-down'' authority to assign $32 million for helicopters, ammunition, medical equipment and spare parts. The White House hoped Congress would authorize the money within 120 days. But the mood in Congress as it broke for Easter recess last week was not conciliatory and the financial end-run did not help. ''I think it's wrong, wrong, wrong,'' said Representative Clarence D. Long, the Maryland Democrat.