We're really banking on Ian Rapaport being right, which is a scary proposition as I can't remember him ever actually reporting something correctly. But what he is reporting is very intuitive and let's hope there's a first time for everything. Because:
- A ball that was in play is subject to the temperature drop (a little over 1 psi drop) and volume expansion due to wet leather (another .7 psi). If that ball was gauged on the Colts sideline, it would drop an additional .25 psi. It would be around 2 psi under spec, as reported.
- Balls that were out of the bag, and in or out of play, with varying degrees of wetness would be between 1-1.8 psi under.
- Balls that were in the bag and not in play, they might not have come to equilibrium with the outside air, they might be only a "tick" under.
I can't emphasize enough how important it is that Rap is actually right here. It makes sense, its much more logical. On the flip side, you have the Patriots detractors arguing all our balls are around 2 psi under. Both balls that were in play and wet, and those that were out of play and not wet. It makes no sense. It presumes we deflated balls at an unequal amount, some of them by an arbitrarily small amount, and magically, we did it in such a way that no balls in play were deflated enough to be substantially more deflated than the others.
If it wasn't already - it's time for the league to investigate why the Colts balls did not drop. Or rather, why they did not obey the laws of physics. The answer must lie in some combination of these three answers:
- They were inflated [outdoors] with air closer to 50F.
- They were inflated to 13.5
- They were re-inflated when they realized they were going after the Pats for their ball.
All three of those, and some combination, are an acceptable answer. "They defied the laws of thermodynamics" is not.
One piece of information that has been overlooked that just adds to the notion that the NFL was biased against the Patriots and COMPLETELY oblivious to the effects of nature on a football: the Patriots were playing with Colts' balls toward the end of the second half. That means, that without having gauged the other 11 (10 if its true Legarette through his in the stands) the officials decided to force the Patriots to play with Colts' balls based on the Colts reporting one ball being under inflated. That means it never even crossed their minds that temperature could cause depressurization or a wet football would expand to also read as depressurization. It means they saw one ball under, assumed the Patriots were cheating, and without any further evidence, took their balls out of play.
Here we are, three weeks later, and the NFL is still throwing the Patriots into water and seeing if we float to determine if we're witches.
