Peter King: Footballs were tampered with by human

Sticky Caulk said:

I think what he is saying is that the Pats balls were refilled after the first half and did not drop again. Which doesn't make sense either, but who knows. These guys have made so much **** up at this point.

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Yeah, maybe but there's a lot of variables here, and the NFL's crack team of investigators don't inspire confidence. Four days in, they haven't even talked to Brady.

Unless they took the balls back inside and warmed them up to check them, it actually only makes sense they stayed the same. Colts complain, they check the footballs on sideline and add air. Then the balls remain because they were filled at 40f instead of 70f.

Then they probably bring them inside after the game and NFL investigators check them at 70 after being filled at 40f.


^^^
NFL investigators checking footballs.

reflexblue said:

This is my initial suspici
Todays nfl is all about money letting the patriots be portrayed as the 'bad guys' and seattle the good it draws in the people who are less than casual fans. This story has been on news programs day and night, in the last few days its been a feature story on all the major and minor news outlets so Every One knows about the story. Its free pub,people that never watched or cared about football will tune in. this =$$$$$$$$$$$

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50-yard-line said:

At this point, it has become clear to me that the NFL not only isn't upset about this, they're playing it. Look at the attention the press conferences got yesterday. Lead story on every news station.
WE care about the game. Goodell and company care about the money.
The leaks are keeping the story going - they've got thousands of "reporters"/"detectives" yapping about it 24/7.

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No, you cannot be right.
Rob has repeatedly assured us time & again that bad publicity is just bad, bad, bad.
And that SB ratings, next year's advt $, etc. will go down or stay flat.

Bertil said:

He has obviously started with a conclusion in mind and evolved a tortured justification to support it.

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So did the league.

IllegalContact said:

this officially concludes 'deflate-gate' and now has become 'get-belichik-gate'

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That is what it has always been about.

Anyone remember when Peter King was told, reliably, that the NFL viewed the elevator video, and then IMMEDIATELY retracted it when Goodell claimed otherwise?

I do.

Sticky Caulk said:

I think what he is saying is that the Pats balls were refilled after the first half and did not drop again. Which doesn't make sense either, but who knows. These guys have made so much **** up at this point.

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If he is saying that, then it can easily and plausibly make perfect sense.

The Gay-Lussac Law is all about one thing: PSI is lost as temperatures cool and PSI is gained as temperatures rise.

In every scenario, you've GOT to know at what temperature the footballs were filled (and refilled) at.

You've GOT to know this for every set of footballs, every time they get filled with air.

Otherwise it is criminal to point to the Colt's footballs with their unchanging PSI and exclaim that they are the control group (without knowing at what temperature their footballs were filled at).

Fencer said:

More than 5 -- there's also the "sauna" scenario, in which the Patriots' balls were cleverly inflated at a higher ambient temperature than the Colts' balls were, shortly before the official pressure measurement.

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Yea I bundle the whole "climate" stuff in #2.

How about this one...
Because Brady likes his balls soft, someone inflated at a lower temp, moved to a warm location where the pressure increased to 12.5- measurement taken then once outside/climate change went down to 10.5.

That is sneaky. LOL

PK is just a little upset because no human has tried to deflate his balls for quite some time.

Sticky Caulk said:

I think what he is saying is that the Pats balls were refilled after the first half and did not drop again. Which doesn't make sense either, but who knows. These guys have made so much **** up at this point.

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Umm yeah, if you top them off (maybe outside) after the existing air in the football has cooled to the ambient temperature then you would see minimal change in pressure after that (none if topped off outside).

Silver Blue&Red said:

Something that just occurred to me (as long as the rest of the world has a theory ), is what if the NFL isn't zeroing in on the Pats at all. Tom hasn't been approached. Maybe just maybe they are investigating the colts or even the Ratbirds. There could be a major smear conspiracy here. Oh, the beauty of such a thing. Spygate? What's that?

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That's what I am hoping for. Would be amazing if the NFL found multiple teams guilty of colluding against the Pats and awarded their 1st round picks to the Pats. Imagine having 3-4 first round picks after winning the Superbowl? That would make this whole mess worth it.

PatsWickedPissah said:

No, you cannot be right.
Rob has repeatedly assured us time & again that bad publicity is just bad, bad, bad.
And that SB ratings, next year's advt $, etc. will go down or stay flat.

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Rob will be right, eventually - there is a tipping point at which the NFL will be perceived to be "fixed" like pro wrestling. At that point, everything could change.

They have to maintain a sheen of "integrity of the game," but honestly, well before this, with the ticky-tack penalty baloney, most hard-core fan bases (the people who know football) have begun to shake their heads.

For now, though, they're through the roof. They have a "story," and stories sell. How do you think "Harry Potter" became such a sensation? Great books - don't get me wrong - but it was the story behind the books, amplified by Oprah, that made them must-read.

Galeb said:

That's what I am hoping for. Would be amazing if the NFL found multiple teams guilty of colluding against the Pats and awarded their 1st round picks to the Pats. Imagine having 3-4 first round picks after winning the Superbowl? That would make this whole mess worth it.

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It is odd how there was a rumor that Jackson or another Colts player noticed the Patriots using a Colts ball in the first 1/2.

Did the Colts really blow the whistle after the game started? Did an official really procure a ball from the opposing team during an AFCCG?

Ref: "Hey Colts, I want the Patriots to use your game ball."
Pagano: "Sure! Take all you want!"
Ref: "Coach Belichick, Tom....would it be ok if you use the Colts footballs?"
BB & TB:"Uh, no."

Agree with you & Rob about the tipping point danger

Hell, a lot of people suspected the NFL was fixed with some of the flags ref's threw in various games. One way to sway a close game's results to the NFL's liking......It's WAY OUT there, but not out of the realm of possibility. Why not make this DEFLATEGATE into a REFGATE.....

The REFS never checked the pressure with a gauge...they just gave them the feel test.....

SQUEEZEGATE here we come

The Brandon Five said:

Umm yeah, if you top them off (maybe outside) after the existing air in the football has cooled to the ambient temperature then you would see minimal change in pressure after that (none if topped off outside).

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I don't know where the refs would go to inflate footballs during a game. who knows. The only thing we do know is f@#$ Peter King. everything else is hearsay.

Also notice what King doesn't say. He does not tell us whether a pressure gauge was used on the 12 footballs when they were inspected before the game. He only says the pressure was between 12.5 and 13.5. He only says they used a gauge to measure the pressure in the footballs at the end of the game and at halftime. Was that a guess or did they actually use a pressure gauge. If so, did they tally the readings? You would think they would make a record since the supposedly knew about this from November 16th, when the Colts supposedly first complained.

Danger Zone said:

1:45 mark

And yet here are the Sport Science guys saying they exposed a football to 10 degree weather for one hour and the PSI dropped over twenty percent.

Doubting they initially filled their football with 110+ degree air.

If you assume they used 70 degree air, then they noticed a 20% drop in PSI over a range of 60 degrees of temperature acclimation.

That results in a 3.3% drop in PSI per 10 degree change in temperature. Oddly enough, this is super close to the broad rule of thumb that people like Goodyear give out to the people that drive on their tires.

The Sport Science findings dont seem to support your attempt to debunk this math -if you saying that there can only be an 18 percent drop over the course of a 100 degrees of temperature change.

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Do the math yourself, don't rely on someone else then:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-temperature-pressure-density-d_771.html

There is nothing assumed in the actual scientific calculation using real numbers aside from assumeed room temp of 75 degrees for the locker room and a potential low of 45 degrees for the sideline. These numbers are a much closer match to the situation than whatyou linked. I'm not debunking anyone's math, I'm presenting factual numbers that speak for themselves.

I think this is much more a case of Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is probably true.

No one really gives much thought to any of this, they spend .001 percent of their time worrying about the football and not think about them again...

Why are we assuming the balls are inflated before the game. they may just inflate them once when they first open them and then use them in practice for days or even weeks ahead of the game and never check them again as long as the "feel" right. Our balls may be left in an outside facility as opposed to the Colts traveling and their footballs always staying inside. This has always been a very loosely policed thing that only came to light due to bitterness and now the league is seeing that because of that there isn't the ability to make an actual cut and dry case. They don't want to make a ruling that they know will be reduced again because of their over reaction. Kraft was willing to fall on the sword the first time, he obviously has decided he won't again.

stephens44 said:

PSI drops 18% between 100 degrees F and 0 degrees F. Therefore if the balls were filled indoors at 75 degrees and checked at 45 degrees outdoors hours later, the greatest drop would be about 6%, which is NO WHERE near 2 lbs PSI (It would bring the ball to 11.75 PSI, not 10.5). The temperture change was simply not enough to explain this, not even close actually.

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Incorrect. You need to use absolute pressure, not gauge pressure. Add 14.7 to the two measurements.

14.7 psi (atm) + 12.5 psi (gauge pre-game) = 27.2 psi
14.7 psi (atm) + 11 psi (gauge half-tine) = 25.8 psi

27.2/25.8 = 1.054....

You also need to use absolute temp
Temp outdoors = 7 deg C = 280 deg Kelvin

280 deg Kelvin * 1.054.... = 295 deg Kelvin = 22 deg C (72 deg F)

I love the Big Bang Theory, but the sheer number of Occam's Razor and Schrodinger's Cat references that have been used since is getting tiring.

The Brandon Five said:

Incorrect. You need to use absolute pressure, not gauge pressure. Add 14.7 to the two measurements.

14.7 psi (atm) + 12.5 psi (gauge pre-game) = 27.2 psi
14.7 psi (atm) + 11 psi (gauge half-tine) = 25.8 psi

27.2/25.8 = 1.054....

You also need to use absolute temp
Temp outdoors = 7 deg C = 280 deg Kelvin

280 deg Kelvin * 1.054.... = 295 deg Kelvin = 22 deg C (72 deg F)

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Thank you.

I was looking at http://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/2sxul5/deflategate_could_the_weather_have_an_effect_on/ and trying to wrap my head around how he might not be calculating in the absolute gauge and temperature variables.

(it wasn't going to happen and I was going to have to resort to an Appeal to Authority)

[URL='http://www.reddit.com/user/niknight_ml' said:

niknight_ml[/URL]]Science teacher here. Given the conditions of the game, a ball which meets specifications in the locker room could easily lose enough pressure to be considered under-inflated. Some math:

• Guy-Lussac's Law describes the relationship between the pressure of a confined ideal gas and its temperature. For the sake of argument, we will assume that the football is a rigid enough container (unless a ball is massively deflated, it's volume won't change). The relationship is (P1/T1) = (P2/T2), where P is the pressure and T is the temperature in Kelvins.
  
  
• The balls are inflated to between 12.5 and 13.5 psi at a temperature of 70 degrees Farenheit (294.1 K). Let's assume an average ball has a gauge pressure of 13 psi. This makes the absolute pressure of the ball 27.7 psi (gauge + atmosphere). Since these are initial values, we will call them P1 and T1.
  
  
• The game time temperature was 49 degrees F (278 K). We are attempting to solve for the new pressure at this temperature, P2. We plug everything into the equation and get (27.7/294.1) = (P2/278). At the game time temperature, the balls would have an absolute pressure of 26.2 psi and a gauge pressure of 11.5, below league specifications.

*Furthermore, given that it was raining all day, the air in the stadium was saturated with water vapor. At 70 degrees, water has a vapor pressure of 0.38 psi. The total pressure of the ball is equal to the pressure of the air inside the ball and the vaporized water in the ball. At 49 degrees, the vapor pressure of water is 0.13 psi. Up to 0.25 additional psi can be lost if the balls were inflated by either the team or the refs prior to the game. Granted, it's unlikely that anyone would inflate balls from 0, but it easily could cost another couple hundredths of a psi in pressure.

• For a ball that barely meets specifications (12.5 psi gauge), it's pressure would drop to 11.1 psi during the game... enough to be considered massively underinflated.

edit: As the poster noted below, forgot to account for the difference between gauge and absolute pressure. Calculations have been updated.

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