Althouse: Deflated balls...

January 19, 2015

Deflated balls...

... probed.

34 comments:

David said...: More Packers!; 1/19/15, 11:32 AM
khesanh0802 said...: What a load of BS. As someone commented in the Globe "Blount could have been carrying a spiral cut ham and it would have made no difference." The Pats will pay no mind.; 1/19/15, 11:39 AM
Jaq said...: Apparently Aaron Rogers likes the ball overly inflated, according to some announcers, and fittingly, this came up in a game against New England.

http://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/2o2yww/shit_the_announcers_say_week_13/; 1/19/15, 11:39 AM
Tank said...: Worse than that, the Pats kept tilting the field so that they were always running downhill.; 1/19/15, 11:40 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Based on the way they were playing it seemed like the Colts players were the ones with the deflated balls.; 1/19/15, 11:41 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Interesting.

The NFL could take this lemon and make lemonade: hold the Superbowl as planned, but the following week, hold a second Superbowl with Seattle v. the Colts.

That way they make more money and they can wait for the investigation to play out.; 1/19/15, 11:43 AM
traditionalguy said...: Talk about low hanging fruit. Or is that low hanging nuts.; 1/19/15, 11:43 AM
Michael K said...: SC got caught doing this one time when Lane Kiffin was the coach. He was always a sort of creepy character. He is now offensive coordinator at Alabama and is rumored to be under consideration for the same job at San Francisco. I would watch any team he is associated with. Not for entertainment but for cheating.; 1/19/15, 11:46 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Or: announce the creation of the brand-new Cheaters Conference. That'd make playoffs confusing...but the games might be really fun to watch-- especially inter-conference games.; 1/19/15, 11:49 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Give each team 15 Cheating Points per game. Slightly deflated balls cost just one point; roughing the passer badly costs 5; getting up after a tackle and running the ball into the end zone costs all 15.

Use your points wisely!; 1/19/15, 11:51 AM
walter said...: At least they've all gotten rid of "juicing", right?; 1/19/15, 11:53 AM
JAORE said...: One hazard of long term steroid use.; 1/19/15, 12:09 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: I don't see how the other team would not have noticed. Why didn't they say anything?; 1/19/15, 12:30 PM
lemondog said...: Not a football fan here, so these may be a stupid questions, but is there a general game football or does each team use its own football?

Wouldn't a deflated ball impair quality of both quarterback throwing and goal kicking ability?

Don't referees test the football?; 1/19/15, 12:38 PM
lemondog said...: Never mind stupid questions. Spoke to someone who explained.; 1/19/15, 12:53 PM
Unknown said...: lemondog...

Each team brings its own footballs to use - 12 per side, 24 in that sort of weather - and turns them over to the league. There are separate kicking footballs and they are provided by the manufacturer (Wilson).

The league inspects and has final say over the balls provided.

A slightly deflated ball would be slightly easier to grip in a rainstorm like that.; 1/19/15, 12:54 PM
Anonymous said...: It sounds like the NFL is just begging for something like this to happen, regardless of whether it's really happened this time. Think of all the money Gaylord Perry could have saved on emery boards if they'd let him bring his own baseballs to the park.; 1/19/15, 1:19 PM
lemondog said...: @C Hopkins, Thanks for the explanation.

I thought in the air the spiral of the football would be adversely affected but was advised deflation would be a minuscule amount.; 1/19/15, 1:27 PM
Big Mike said...: I understand that the NFL specifies a range of pressures (12.5 to 13.5 psi). So the Patriots could have pumped up their game balls to the low end of the range and still been perfectly legal.; 1/19/15, 1:40 PM
Glenn Howes said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/19/15, 1:51 PM
Humperdink said...: Although the NFL has denied seeing it, there is a video floating around the internet of two ball boys deflating a dozen footballs inside a Boston hotel elevator.

The NFL has admitted seeing a video of a bag of balls being dragged out of an elevator door by two male subjects.

One of the male subjects has been tentatively ID'd as the stadium's snowplow operator, Mark Henderson. Henderson is famous for clearing a spot on the snowy field specifically for New England kicker John Smith so he could kick the winning field goal to give the Patriots a 3–0 win over the Dolphins in 1982.; 1/19/15, 1:59 PM
Tibore said...: As a Colts fan who hated yesterday's game and would like nothing more than to see the Patriots get slapped, I have to say this: The accusation is stupid. If they were truly deflated to the point of being a problem, the players would've complained. And it wasn't deflated balls that were the problem yesterday.

Fine, NFL, slap 'em around if you want. But it wasn't the problem or even contributory to the loss for Indianapolis on Sunday.; 1/19/15, 2:10 PM
Yancey Ward said...: The real cheating, which no one has yet discussed, is the fact that the real Colts were kidnapped and replaced on the field by a local high school team from Foxboro.; 1/19/15, 2:10 PM
tam said...: People often think that Judge Landis was too harsh in banning the black-sox players for life. But this seems to me to be an example of why he might have been right.

Belichick is a known cheater. He was fined $500k several years ago for cheating. By letting him continue to work in the league, they open themselves up for this kind of 2nd-guessing after every victory he has.; 1/19/15, 2:18 PM
Big Mike said...: @Tibore, I agree. And, frankly, I'm surprised to find out that any Colts got close enough to Patriots footballs to know whether they were below normal pressure.; 1/19/15, 2:25 PM
Gahrie said...: does each team use its own football?

Not only does each team use its own footballs (at every level all the way down to high school), but the kickers use different balls than the quarterbacks.; 1/19/15, 2:27 PM
I'm Full of Soup said...: This is odd. It's more usual for the losers to have deflated balls.; 1/19/15, 2:40 PM
FullMoon said...: Speaking of footballs,
The Raiders made (Ray) Guy the first punter to be selected in the first round of the draft in 1972. Guy said he never heard the term “hang time’’ until Madden used it to describe his booming kicks, which occasionally took more than five seconds to return to earth.

Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips once swiped a game ball after facing the Raiders and sent it to Rice University to have it tested for helium.; 1/19/15, 2:45 PM
khesanh0802 said...: @tam: Jets fan?; 1/19/15, 3:34 PM
Wince said...: "You've got a lot of growing up to do, buddy. Suck my balls."; 1/19/15, 3:51 PM
Original Mike said...: Humperdink said: "Although the NFL has denied seeing it, there is a video floating around the internet of two ball boys deflating a dozen footballs inside a Boston hotel elevator."

@Curious George: He's joking.; 1/19/15, 4:28 PM
Anonymous said...: tam
Belichick is a known cheater..

Don Shula, the Hall of Famer coach of theColts and Dolphins, recently called him "Coach Belicheat." This is a case of pot meets kettle. When Shula changed coaching jobs from Baltimore to Miami in 1970, the Dolphins were charged with tampering and had to surrender a first round draft choice to the Colts. Which was a similar penalty meted out to "Coach Belicheat." Pot, meet kettle.

More recently, the owner of the NY Jets made a remark about a player on the Patriots - Revis- which has resulted in an investigation of tampering on the part of the owner of the Jets.; 1/19/15, 6:00 PM
Rumpletweezer said...: Do they check the balls for Flubber?; 1/19/15, 7:43 PM
Jaq said...: Remember the days when Don Shula picked his own opponents and they went undefeated?; 1/19/15, 8:39 PM