We’ve learned more about the handling, condition and proper inflation of NFL footballs this week than we ever needed to know.
And what the New England Patriots’ deflate-gate has brought attention to is that NFL players, mostly quarterbacks and kickers, are quite particular about the condition of the footballs they use in games. Longtime kicker Nick Lowery once slapped a Patriots ball boy over it.
You can’t even blame Bill Belichick for this one. It happened in 1995, pre-Belichick (he joined the Patriots as an assistant the next year, and has been their head coach since 2000). According to the New York Times story from then, Jets kicker Lowery wasn’t happy the Jets were kicking balls that had not been rubbed up in the cold. He complained to the Patriots’ 20-year-old ball boy, who told Lowery it wasn’t his job to provide him a rubbed-up football, and then Lowery slapped him. These balls are serious stuff.
But what does it mean, rubbing up balls? Don’t teams just break out new footballs for each game?
No, no and no.
According to the Times story, the balls are rubbed vigorously for 45 minutes to remove the wax and darken the leather (new balls are too slick, quarterbacks will say). The Giants soak the ball with a wet towel. Then it is brushed again. Then it’s off to an electric spin wheel for more scrubbing. Then the process is repeated twice more. They practice with those balls to break them in even further, and then the ones deemed fit for games are protected like the president.
“No one is allowed to touch those balls,” team’s equipment director Joe Skiba told the Times. “They’re precious jewels. Too much work has gone into them.”
Quarterbacks are particular about the footballs they use. In 2006, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady teamed up to lobby the NFL competition committee to allow each team to provide its own footballs for games, so they could be to the quarterbacks’ liking. Home teams provided all the balls before that, and quarterbacks didn’t like the differences in the balls for each road game. The committee passed it, and now each team provides 12 balls for officials to inspect two hours and 15 minutes before the game.
Although much has been made of the edges that teams can get by deflating footballs (it can make them easier to grip and catch), Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers prefers the opposite. CBS’ Phil Simms said during a Packers broadcast (via CSNNE.com) that he prefers his footballs be over-inflated, and he’ll even push the NFL rules on it. Game balls are, by rule, to be inflated with 12.5 to 13.5 pounds of air per square inch and weigh 14 to 15 ounces.
“(Rodgers) said something [that] was unique,” Simms said on CBS, via CSNNE. "[Rodgers said] 'I like to push the limit to how much air we can put in the football, even go over what they allow you to do and see if the officials take air out of it.' Because he thinks it’s easier for him to grip. He likes them tight.”
Are various tricks to break in footballs considered cheating? There have been stories of quarterbacks and kickers putting footballs in the dryer since field goals were invented, sometimes with a wet towel or fabric softener, to break them in.
There hasn't been much of an outrage from many former and current players about this story. Shaun King, a former NFL quarterback who works for Yahoo, said the whole deflate-gate isn’t a big deal. Every quarterback, he said, will do things to break in their footballs.
“Every quarterback does whatever they deem necessary to have their balls the way they like them,” King said. “This is a pure witch hunt the NFL and sports media is on.”
Former NFL quarterback Matt Leinart agreed that the whole story is no big deal, on his Twitter account.
Former NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck, who works with ESPN, shared that sentiment.
Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Brad Johnson bribed someone to scuff the footballs before the Super Bowl in 2003. Each Super Bowl has a new batch of balls with the Super Bowl logo on them. Is that cheating, or is it more in line with what Eli Manning and the Giants do, breaking in balls? Or is this all much ado about nothing, and the Patriots are in a firestorm even though everyone in the NFL manipulates game balls in some way? There’s a long culture in baseball of pitchers putting goodness knows what on the balls, and only the most egregious violators are ever called out on it. But if it was so common, would the Colts – who got word from linebacker D’Qwell Jackson to an equipment manager to coach Chuck Pagano to general manager Ryan Grigson in the press box to NFL director of football operations Mike Kensil to the officials at halftime – be so upset as to call the Patriots out on it?
Whether or not the Patriots were at fault for 11 of their 12 game balls being under-inflated in Sunday’s AFC championship team, we all know much more today about NFL footballs and players’ preferences for them than we ever did before.
- - - - - - -
Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1xYoEyl
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire