In another strange twist to everyone’s favorite football deflation scandal, representatives from Wilson Sporting Goods, the official manufacturer of NFL Footballs, made it clear that their footballs would not deflate during a game in atmospheric conditions, as New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick alleged in his Saturday press conference.
In fact, Wilson representative Jim Jenkins, when asked about Belichick’s assertion that the Patriots footballs deflated on their own, said, “That’s BS. That’s BS, man.”
Saturday, if you’ll recall, Bill Belichick put on his special science hat…
…and explained to all present, all watching and to all ships at sea that, in fact, it was mother nature herself who deflated the Patritots’ footballs two Sundays ago, in a nefarious plot to destroy their legacy. Gaia specifically targeted New England’s footballs, leaving the Indianapolis Colts’ footballs alone, for some strange reason. Then also left the Patriots footballs alone after they were properly inflated at halftime. Because, as Belichick succinctly put it Saturday, SCIENCE!
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Jenkins went on to describe how the bladders inside footballs are tested. Sharing information that most of us had no idea we’d ever want to know just two weeks ago.
“The inside of that canister is the size we want the ball to be,” Jenkins said, “So it’s going to stretch. Goes to 120 pounds for one minute, then back down to 13, and then when it comes out, see how nice everything looks? All the seams are perfect, laces are perfect. That’s what that does right there and it comes out 13 pounds per square inch.”
The balls are shipped to the teams that way, then retested by the referees before each game. The only way they could reduce pressure is if a human being reduced it. I’ll let Bill Nye the Science Guy explain it to you.
Bill Nye the Science Guy weighs in on Deflategate, says Bill Belichick’s explanation “didn’t make any sense.” VIDEO: http://t.co/awKdc0gEsr
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) enero 25, 2015
Weird then that at least 11, as reported by Chris Mortensen, or maybe even all 12 footballs, according to other reports, were two pounds under the specified NFL ruled minimum of 12.5 PSI.
Jenkins, for his part, when asked how the Patriots footballs were deflated, said, “Only the New England Patriots know.” Jenkins went on to say that it would take years for the PSI to fluctuate in a football because of the environment, so all you amateur science sleuths out there putting your footballs in freezers, time to work on another excuse.
Wilson director of experimental marketing Molly Wallace said Belichick’s scenario of what happened to the footballs is highly unlikely without being tampered with by the Patriots.
“Well it couldn’t unless something happened to a bladder,” Wallace said. “But that really doesn’t happen and there’s no other real way. All we know is what we can control is when it leaves the factory it’s within an NFL spec, within the PSI of 12.5 to 13.5 pounds of pressure for every single NFL team.”
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Wilson has been supplying NFL footballs since 1941 and since 1955 every single NFL Football comes from a dedicated football production facility in Ada, Ohio. Because of that, they take claims about the failure of their product kind of seriously. Something Belichick probably should have thought of before taking the podium Saturday and crapping all over their craftsmanship.
Will the fact that their own football manufacturer has called Bill Belichick a liar over the DeflateGate scandal make NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell step up and act before Sunday’s Super Bowl? It’s doubtful, since Goodell is still Goodell and the most feckless, despicable commissioner in sports. But at this point there can really be no rational debate that says the Patriots’ footballs were deflated unintentionally. And, if actual science is to be believed as compiled by Warren Sharp over at Slate.com, showing that the Patriots’ prevention of fumbles is nearly statistically impossible, they’ve been doing it for years.
It’s time to pay for it. It’s too bad it might not happen before Sunday.
