Football Game Balls during the Cold Rainy Championship Game
The Wells Report was released last week and I have spent 6 hours reading it. The cell phone records of the two aides can be read any way that you care to. The science is more interesting to me. The analysis is well done and is correct if one starts with their assumptions. There are flaws in the assumptions. They use an inside temperature of 70 F and an outside temperature of 48 F. Fine but that outside temperature is recorded by an outside bulb that is kept dry. It is known that very cold rain was falling during most of the first half. The rain clearly fell on the balls and the ground. Thus the temperature of the balls and the ground would not be at 48 F but would rather be at about 40 F. Not all the balls were being used near the end of the first half but the ones that were cycling into the game at that point would have been the coldest and wettest. Only four of the Patriots balls were below 11.4 psi using the Logo gauge. These balls were most likely the ones used near the end of the half. The report details that the ballboys rotated 5 balls into and out of play in a sequence. The report claims that the balls after this sequence return to a state as if they were like the others. I claim otherwise.
Eleven of the Patriots footballs and four of the Colts footballs were checked at half time. The scientists were told to use the Colts balls as a control. A control should never just be four items out of 12 footballs since how could you determine that you are drawing a representative sample from the bag. Next, wet footballs warm at a slower rate compared to drier ones. The Patriots footballs were tested first in the officials’ locker room. Then the Colts’ footballs were tested. Thus the Patriots footballs being wetter and colder would thus act if the Ideal Gas Law had decreased their pressure more. This would also cause a greater variation in the pressure within the Patriots’ footballs since they are being measured during the warming and drying phase compared to the Colts’ footballs which has a chance to warm closer to equilibrium.
Thus I claim as I did months ago. The Patriots’ footballs were not tampered with. There is a difference in the Patriots and Colts’ footballs due to environmental properties and timing of the balls being on the field. Testing the wet Patriot footballs first in that officials’ room is a violation of scientific standards. Moreover, the temperature change was about 30 F making a large pressure drop possible. This drop acts on all footballs during that game. The measurement of 0.6 psi drop between the Patriots and Colts footballs is not significant due to the lack of equal testing.