If You Read One Article About Gauges Today...

[Koma]

Read this one:

http://emailwagon.blogspot.com/2015/05/how-i-trashed-wells-report-from-swan.html

I saw this tweeted by Bruce Allen today. It's long, but well worth the time. It gives a solid argument for determining which gauge Walt Anderson used and explaining the PSI loss in the footballs. It also points out several flaws in the Wells report that I had never considered.

 

[Bobsyouruncle]

How am I supposed to limit myself to one article about gauges a day?

 

[Jackson 2]

The science of this whole matter has been closed for some time, to me. If not for Beavus' and Butthead's texts and Brady's cell phone, this would be a long gone matter. Goodell hung his hat on those items and should be embarrassed for doing so. But, he's not.

 

[BradyFTW!]

Look back at the quote from Appendix I, pages 39-40 of the Wells report copied above. Exponent took a starting PSI of 12.50, plugged it into the Ideal Gas Law calculator (along with the other required information), and found a target PSI range of 11.32 – 11.52. They then compared that range to the figures shown above, and found that most of the Patriots’ balls were lower than they should have been. There’s just one teensy problem with this.

A starting PSI of 12.50 is not a 12.50 on the Master Gauge. It’s 12.17, per the Wells Report’s own formula. And if we plug that number into the Ideal Gas Law calculator, we get an expected range of 11.00 – 11.20.

Of course, if Exponent made this mistake on the logo side, they must have made it on the non-logo side as well. As we know, a 12.50 on the logo gauge is only a 12.12 on the non-logo gauge. And if we convert 12.12 to the Master Gauge, we get 12.08. Plug that into the Ideal Gas Law calculator, and we’re looking for a range of 11.92 – 12.12.
​

Damn, that's big. Exponent ****ed up its own process by comparing expectations re: the master gauge to logo gauge pressures. That's a pretty elementary mistake, further proof that this entire report was either staggeringly incompetent and/or an open hit piece.

 

[Zuma]

Their is a lot of info there. It wouldn't hurt to e-mail the link of that site to Kessler, Yee or anyone else that might be able to gleen some food for thought from it.

If anyone has an e-mail address to those or other possible interested parties....please forward it to them or send me an IM and I will send an e-mail myself.

Thank you...

Zum

 

[flasox27]

There you go again talking science again. Don't you know in Goodell's NFL if it conflicted with what they wanted to find, they would dispute the existence of gravity.

 

[RunAmok]

Look back at the quote from Appendix I, pages 39-40 of the Wells report copied above. Exponent took a starting PSI of 12.50, plugged it into the Ideal Gas Law calculator (along with the other required information), and found a target PSI range of 11.32 – 11.52. They then compared that range to the figures shown above, and found that most of the Patriots’ balls were lower than they should have been. There’s just one teensy problem with this.

A starting PSI of 12.50 is not a 12.50 on the Master Gauge. It’s 12.17, per the Wells Report’s own formula. And if we plug that number into the Ideal Gas Law calculator, we get an expected range of 11.00 – 11.20.

Of course, if Exponent made this mistake on the logo side, they must have made it on the non-logo side as well. As we know, a 12.50 on the logo gauge is only a 12.12 on the non-logo gauge. And if we convert 12.12 to the Master Gauge, we get 12.08. Plug that into the Ideal Gas Law calculator, and we’re looking for a range of 11.92 – 12.12.
​

Damn, that's big. Exponent ****ed up its own process by comparing expectations re: the master gauge to logo gauge pressures. That's a pretty elementary mistake, further proof that this entire report was either staggeringly incompetent and/or an open hit piece.

There was a lot of charts and tables (smoke and mirrors) in the report to have the appearance of actual data and facts. Another thing that hit me today. At halftime when the 3 of 4 Colt balls were below the minimum, the NFL execs said "they passed on at least one gauge so they are legal" and actually put them back in play. So why doesn't that same ruling apply to the Pats balls? Nine of the 12 were just where the IGL said they would be on at least one of the gauges so why do they just throw that out? If passing just one gauge was fine in the game testing, why was it not fine in the Exponent testing?

 

[Spiral]

Hope Kessler reads this.

 

[cmasspatsfan]

Hope Kessler reads this.

I'd bet he already has all this info, anyone who wanted you spend some time on the report could see this glaring error

 

[woolster22]

Wow. Exponent just got thoroughly dismantled. Someone get this to brady's team ASAP.

 

[Zuma]

Great info Koma. You can never have to much info when it comes to legalities...

If anyone has an e-mail address to those or other possible interested parties....please forward it to them or send me an IM and I will send an e-mail myself.

Thank you...

Zum

 

[Patriot Missile]

Talk about a sham. Just when I start to cool down a few degrees and I read something like that and I get hotter. How much clearer can it get? Or maybe I'm asking the wrong question? Why is this even being talked about? Science explained everything and people are still hating.

 

[eom]

I haven't read this yet, but I just wanted to comment on something that has kind of annoyed me throughout the whole process.

back when the report was that the patriots balls were pretty uniformly 2 lbs short there was maybe something to look at or investigate, regardless of how relevant any of it was to playing football, but since the actual numbers have come out we're apparently actually having all these discussions to maybe track down a third of a pound here or there.

I really hope the general public understands that these are fairly generic ball gauges and not ****ing electron microscopes.
you cannot use these tools to accurately measure air pressure to the tenths or hundredths of a pound anymore than you would try to preheat your oven to 350.36 degrees.

to be generous, these gauges are manufactured with an error range of around +/- .2 pounds, and maybe even more.

what is happening is that apparently somebody is rubbing their balls pregame, which can artificially raise the pressure about a half pound due to heat from friction.
these balls are then set to roughly 12.6 over a period of a few min, when a few of them have already started to come back to 'normal', and this is being done on a gauge that reads =/- .2, and we don't even know how accurate it is relative to a 'master gauge'.

when these balls are turned over to the refs they are most likely 12.4 - 12.8 before losing somewhere between 0-0.5 additional psi, and I feel like a complete ******* even talking about tenths of a psi of a football like somebody outside matt murdock would possibly be able to tell the difference.
we're now at a point where some guy maybe measures the balls with one of 2 gauges that read 0.4 psi apart, and he's reading +/- 0.2 psi on balls already in a range of maybe 11.9 - 12.8, after the minor natural deflation --- the actual measured range on these balls at this point is possibly very nearly a pound, but once he's done adding in his degree of error they are almost certainly a solid pound apart, and maybe even as low as 11.7 psi just due to measuring error, before we even start talking about which gauge was used.

if we now assume he uses the gauge that adds 0.4 psi our low end balls at 11.7 get pimped up to 12.1, and that's on just the random 1 or 2 on the tail end of this bell curve, which I'm 100% sure every ref in the nfl considers close enough for govt work.

I'm not blaming walt anderson in any way, but when he says a large number of balls were exactly 12.5 and another batch coincidentally exactly 13.0, just like everybody wants them --- that is physically ****ing impossible, when measured by these gauges, as evidenced by the 3 different readings on the single ball the colts intercepted.

there is nothing in this entire process labeled as 'science' that is remotely 'scientific' other than the actual existence of natural laws of thermodynamics.

there is actually NO psi loss unaccounted for by nature and measuring error, but we are apparently having a conversation about some guy sneaking off to a bathroom to let something like 3/10ths of a pound of ****ing air out of a bag of footballs as measured by a gauge that's +/- 0.2 psi to smuggle into a game where they will further lose ~1.5 psi due to temperature.

at this point, why could I possibly care about a single random text some guy sends in the middle of the offseason, or whether brady wants to give up his phone to some guy in the process of railroading them?

 

[cmasspatsfan]

The science of this whole matter has been closed for some time, to me. If not for Beavus' and Butthead's texts and Brady's cell phone, this would be a long gone matter. Goodell hung his hat on those items and should be embarrassed for doing so. But, he's not.

He hung his hat on them because the Wells report was able to obfuscate the science, if the science was solid none of the other stuff would have mattered because it shows no tampering.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

All this...

And Kraft caved unilaterally & completely at the starting line.

Stated his allegiance was not to the Patriots organization, not to its coach and QB who have literally bled for him over a decade and not to the fans who have multiplied his net worth but to 31 members of the good old boys club who could not care less about the aforementioned.

J'Accuse'!

 

[Patriot Missile]

About the most spot on psi theory/science I've been able to comprehend 100%. I'm thinking even with Goodells limited Washington and Jefferson College experience, he might even understand and do the right thing. But we know that's not gonna happen. He'd have to hang Wells out to dry and that's not gonna happen. Owners and commissioners stand together as we all know.

Hope the CBA is brought down brick by brick until it's nothing but barren wasteland with separate entities messing with all their interests. Would absolutely love to see them pay even more taxes on their product.

 

[Mack Herron]

This is great stuff. He brings even more critical insight to the Wells report and the deeper you go the darker it gets. For instance, the starting pressure of the balls offers pretty clear evidence about which gauge Anderson was using (and it matters). According to this analysis, in the end, after invoking the IGL, we are left trying to explain 0.18 PSI deflation in Patriots balls. And this still does not take into account the measurement error (which is considerable according to the three different measurements made with the same gauge on the intercepted ball). And, oh yes, the IGL also cannot account for 0.81 PSI inflation in Colts balls. The point is, for the price of a few hours over a couple of beers, the NFL could have gotten more valid analysis and conclusions from a couple of laymen than they got for millions of dollars and months of time from Wells and Exponent. Makes it even more clear that valid analysis and conclusions is not what they were after.

 

[juny]

We got this guy, Drew Fustin (phd), and nobel winning chemist shooting holes in wells report science. Seriously, this should be case closed.

 

[Marko]

The biggest farce is that they would have us believe that the amount that McNally deflated the balls was coincidentally the same amount that the gauges differed. That's some effing coincidence!

 

[Tony2046]

The only reason we needed a Wells report to begin with was because they re-inflated the Pats footballs at half time instead of keeping them as evidence.