Until you read it and realize what a micky mouse operation the NFL runs.
1. They have been warned that 'the Patriots may be tampering with balls before or during games' but have not done anything to alert any officials working the game or present in the stadium that there may be issue.
2. The officials do not record the inflation pressure of the balls, but state they check it. And then that same official cannot remember if he put his mark on all six kicking balls or only five. And the one he probably forgot to mark is the one that is used to start the game.
3. You have one official retiring and saving a ball because it does not have his mark, and another official retrieving the same ball and giving it to a Patriot employee to reintroduce into the game.
4. They report that someone can deflate 12 footballs in 90 seconds, but are unable to record air pressure for 24 footballs in 15 minutes.
5. This report speaks about standard deviation - Colts balls have one standard deviation, Patriots balls have another, but fail to report that standard deviation for a series of 4 numbers and a series of 11 (or 12) is not the same. Four is a very small series to extrapolate anything on.
6. Their official has in his possession and they use two pressure gauges that record pressures differing by between 1/3 and 1/2 pound of pressure - and then unsure which of the gauges is used by their official half time testers or whether they record pressures accurately or transposed them.
7. They have a rule that already allows for a 1 pound difference in inflation, they have now learned that game conditions will also affect inflation by about 1 PSI. And have determined that there are other factors that could affect their PSI measurements or the game play measurements like playing with wet balls. Inflation is a mares nest of inconsistency.
8. They obviously inflated the Patriots footballs to 13.5 or more at halftime yet there is no record of anyone complaining during the second half, nor of them playing with a ball over the allowed limit at least according to one gauge.
9. Their official recording of half time measures is so careful that the investigation concludes that one of 30 recorded number must have been transposed.
10. After the game they inspect 4 footballs from each team - no time constraints here - why didn't they record all 24 game balls and why did thy not retain all 12 balls? And why not check the kicking balls while they were at it.
11. Wilson 'generally' prepares K-Balls with week of use and a #1-6, but one assumes the 'generally' means 'sometimes'.
12. No mention made of the NFL employee fired after the game for stealing footballs intended for charity. Nor of any attempt to locate the sources of league leaks to the press including the original text message to a reporter.
13. The NFL has never done either in season testing of footballs before, during, or after games. Seems if this is a competitive advantage/disadvantage issue maybe they ought to. Science is interesting and the variables involved in pressure of a football are not simple. A few scientists had egg on their face when this first broke applying one 'law' and not another. A football stadium is not a lab nor a controlled environment and having actual real observed data with which to draw conclusion might expose 'factors' not foreseen by their scientific consultants.
Uc: Brother....yet another tremendous post. You da champ. Did you have, or did you ever have, wild bushy gray hair in total disarray, and a mustache to match, as you wandered around a certain Gothic campus in NJ some decades back?
Seems like pretty flimsy work. And if Kraft is to be believed - the multiple listings of 'refusal to grant a follow up interview' should actually be written as 'refusal to grant a follow-up, to the follow-up, to the follow-up' interview - but it sure supports the innuendo that is pretty clearly the conclusion.
I would also be curious to see the results of testing of say 200 Wilson delivered NFL footballs to see just what standard deviations exist in say the thickness of the leather the quality of stitching, tightness of lacing, quality of valves and bladders and how they all reacted to different prep work, and altered temperature and humidity and levels of moisture. Taken not all from the same batch, but say over a six month window of production run.
