Footballs
To
someone who has never played football the ball may not seem
very important but in the NFL they take the matter very
seriously. The league has rigid rules put in place to make
sure that the footballs are the for everyone every time
teams play.
Rules
In the rules for
the balls of a football game the NFL covers all their bases.
They state everything from the brand of football to the
lengths of the circumferences, weight of the ball and even
the specific shape, prolate spheroid. Before each game the
referees have to check each teams footballs, the offenses of
each team use their own footballs to have the quarterbacks
be comfortable with the footballs, and see that they abide
by all the rules. Doing this keeps the game on more of a
level plane for both sides. The same goes for having special
footballs just for the kicking teams to use.
(4)
Click here(16) to see for yourself how
strict they are about the football in the NFL.
Controversies
Over the many years that there has
been a professional football league there has almost always
been a controversy about the football. Most of them aren't
that much fuss while there are some that pick up a lot of
media. An older controversy about the ball was that people
thought Ray Guy, the punter of the Oakland Raiders from '73
to '86, had helium put into the footballs because he was
getting so much hang time on the ball when he punted. The
reason people thought that helium would give him more hang
time is because helium has less grams per mole than air
which would make it lighter and be able to fly further
supposedly.
(5)
Another major
controversy about the football that happened more recently
was "deflate gate". During the 2014 AFC Championship game
between the Colts and the Patriots it is supposed that the
Patriots supplied and were playing with footballs that were
under inflated. A couple of reasons that an under inflated
football would be beneficial for a team would be that with
less air in the ball it would be easier for receivers to
catch because the ball would be less elastic when they come
in contact so it wouldn't bounce as much as normal making it
easier to catch. With less air the ball would also be easier
for players to hold onto because they would be able to press
it into their bodies much more. That gives it more surface
area and allows it to have a higher coefficient of friction
like how a car tire can have better traction when it is
inflated so that the tire can sort of mold more to the
ground/rocks instead of just bounce over them. The patriots
claim that the loss of pressure in the balls was from the
temperature change that they underwent from when they were
in the locker room areas to the field. As believable as this
would be because as we all know PV=nRT, and if we assume
that the volume is held constant while n & R are also
held constant then if the temperature were to go down the
pressure would have to go down. For the pressure to have
dropped as much as it did in the Patriot's footballs the
locker room would have had to of been as warm as a sauna(6).