When news first surfaced that the New England Patriots played Sunday night's AFC Championship game with slightly deflated footballs, reaction ran from outrage to titillation, with accusations of cheating and middle-school jokes vying for social media supremacy. Here at Yahoo Sports, we're not above a few deflated-ball jokes, but we wanted to dig deeper into Deflate-Gate. So we decided to try a little hands-on experiment: just how important is air pressure to a football? Join us as we investigate the most enduring mystery of this week.
You know the background: the Patriots allegedly deflated 11 footballs by two pounds per square inch (psi) each. NFL regulations state that balls should be inflated to a pressure of 12.5 to 13.5 psi. Reducing that pressure, logically, would make the ball both easier to grip and throw by hand and tougher to kick and punt by foot.
So with that in mind, we sought to answer several questions:
• Is there a difference in feel between regulation psi and regulation-minus-two pounds?
• Is there a grip and/or kick advantage?
• Is there a visual or weight difference between two pressure levels?
• How hard would such a scheme be to pull off?
• Can I get Yahoo to buy me a football and let me throw it around on company time?
The answer to the last was an emphatic yes. Since the footballs in my garage are stained with the dirt and heartbreak of Turkey Bowls past, I hit the local sporting goods emporium and bought a new, regulation-sized football and pump. (I kept waiting for the cashier to make ANY kind of Patriots joke, but he didn't take the bait. Come on, man, my story needs quirky details!)
I then drove to a local park to do a little private football minicamp. Now, bear in mind that I am not an NFL quarterback (even though I am next in line to be selected to the Pro Bowl if Andy Dalton goes down). I'm also not an NFL kicker. But, like you, I've played enough football and tossed around enough pigskins to have a vague idea of what feels right and what doesn't. So let's begin right there, shall we?
Feel
You have no idea what a properly inflated football feels like. I guarantee it. If you grab a football, squeeze it, and think, hey, that could use a little air, chances are it's less than half its regulation pressure level. If you squeeze it and say, that's good, it's probably still three to four psi low. You cannot squeeze a football inflated to regulation pressure to any more than the tiniest degree, and some of that depends on the sponginess of the football's outer layer.
Ah, but what about a deflated football? I started at 13 psi, midpoint of the NFL's legal pressure window, and deflated the ball to 11 psi. Here's the thing: football squeezeability (scientific term) doesn't descend in a straight line as psi drops. The difference between 13 psi and 11 psi is not nearly as sharp as, say, the difference between 7 psi (mushy but still fine for a backyard game) and 5 psi (lumpy in your hand).
Again, I'm not an NFL quarterback, and I'm certain they can tell the degree of difference between psi with a far greater degree of certainty than I can. But, and this is key, once you get into double-digit psi, you really have to squeeze the ball hard to tell the difference. In other words, referees, particularly in a Gillette Stadium downpour, would have to be actively squeezing the balls, not just picking them up and tossing them to the sideline, to sense a pressure differential.
Verdict: There's a definite change in feel, but it's not nearly as sharp as you'd expect. And in game conditions ... I can't believe I'm saying this, but given the Biblical downpour and the presumption of previous checking, I'm letting the refs off the hook for not noticing the pressure differential once the game had already begun. I mean, look at this dude:
That's Carl Paganelli, umpire during the AFC Championship game, and he looks absolutely miserable, dealing with rain and cold and loud Boston fans all at once. If he assumes that someone on his crew properly checked the balls, the last thing he's going to be worried about is a minute pressure differential. Again, though: the key there is that he's assuming someone on his crew has already checked the balls. We'll get to that part later.
Weight
A football weighs 14.5 ounces, discounting air. At 13 psi, the air inside the ball weighs about one-third of an ounce, or about the weight of two sheets of paper. At 11 psi, the air weighs about one-fourth of an ounce.
Verdict: If you can tell the difference between one-third and one-fourth of an ounce of air inside a one-pound football, you are lying.
Appearance
It's a football. It looks exactly the same at 13 or 11 psi. Take two pounds out of a regulation-inflated ball and it doesn't suddenly become a Salvador Dali-esque melting chunk of leather.
Verdict: Either way, it's a football.
Performance
Now, this is tricky, because as noted above, I'm not an NFL quarterback, and presumably neither are you. (If you are, get in touch and tell me how wrong I am.) I noticed a slight grip improvement on the deflated ball, and my throwing distance was ... well, it's not polite to mention my yardage. This ain't the combine. But kicking a properly inflated ball is definitely a bit harder than the slightly deflated one, though that could be confirmation bias on my part.
Verdict: If a sportswriter decades past his athletic prime can notice a difference in performance, an elite NFL athlete certainly can.
Scheme
So how hard is it to pull two psi out of a ball? Even easier than you'd expect. Pop a needle into the ball and you can drop two psi faster than you can say "two psi." Granted, there are some chain-of-custody issues here; someone looking to do this would have to gain access to the balls, which are supposed to be under the referees' control prior to the game.
Verdict: If someone were to do a Mission: Impossible-style break-in of the football vault, they could deflate all 12 footballs inside of 30 seconds ... or miss one, if they're sloppy.
So what have we learned? This: deflating footballs is a perfect cut-the-corners gambit. It's an advantage that's easy to execute, not easily detectable, but with measurably positive results. Also, throwing around footballs on company time is pretty sweet. Enjoy Deflate-Gate, everyone!
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
And keep up with Jay over on Facebook, too.
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