Deflation-gate

7th-grader named Goodell says science project disproves "Deflategate"

quote:

---

"I just took an NFL-sized football and put it in a few various conditions. I put it in humidity, snow, cold, wind chill, in the same temperature that occurred during 'Deflategate,'" Ben said.

​

What did he find?

​

"I found that every time I tested the football, the PSI dropped 2 PSI," Ben said.

​

"So what did that mean to you?" Werner asked.

​

"The lowest recorded PSI during 'Deflategate' was 2 PSI under proper inflation, so that meant that the weather conditions could have affected the footballs during 'Deflategate,'" Ben said.

​

But could a 12-year-old figure out something the NFL did not? We turned to MIT professor and admitted Eagles fan, John Leonard, who reviewed Ben's paper.

​

"I think he's right," Leonard said.

---

Right. Now did he manage to find balls that did not drop 2 PSI? Because let's recall that one teams balls did drop and one team's did not. In short, did the 7th grader really collect evidence that refutes deflate gate?I mean we all know that the balls on the field were flatter when cold. Percy has advanced a proposition that explains how one team's balls could okay at half time while the NE balls did not based on the time spent in the warm environment. I believe he suggests that the NE balls were measured first giving the other balls time to warm up. The experiment described here does not actually test Percy's proposition or any other proposition that would explain the systematic difference between the two sets of measurements.I know it is popular to assume that the NFL does not know that air pressure would decrease in cold weather, but I don't buy that. Most of the involved people have been around footballs forever. I might be willing to believe that the NFL did not take into account the fact that the balls were warming up during the measurement. But an experiment that does not deal with the difference between the two sets of balls does not really demonstrate anything in my view.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

We have no idea what the starting PSI was for all the balls at the game, or the ending PSI for all the balls.

Do you seriously need a test that footballs adjust to ambient temperature gradually, along with the air within them, and along with that the air pressure? When I did my own tests over a year ago (see Message 8) I didn't check the football pressure every minute. I measured the pressure, waited a half hour, then measured it again, but can there be any doubt that pressure changes gradually? There's no way not to "buy that" or not to "believe that." During halftime of the 2014-2015 AFC title game, NFL referees brought the cold footballs into a warm room and measured their pressures while they slowly warmed. Obviously they had no idea the footballs would gradually increase in pressure and invalidate their measurements (not to mention the confusion over different gauges that differ by nearly a half PSI). The absence of protocols for testing football pressure (until this past season) is more evidence that the NFL has never taken temperature into account, or cared much about football pressure at all.And the NFL still hasn't made public their protocols, so we still don't know how they reliably measure football pressures in Green Bay or Minnesota in January, or Miami in September for that matter. At temperatures above 90 and below 50 halftime may be too short (15 minutes) for footballs to reach ambient temperatures. When the temperature dips to 10 degrees it's definitely too short. So how are they doing it? That they won't say tells us all we need to know: they still don't have a handle on it. Does Bill Belichick qualify as "been around footballs forever?" About football pressure a year ago January he said:

quote:

---

"I spent a significant amount of time this past week learning as much as I could learn about bladders, air gauges, stitches, pressure, game-day ball preparation, rubdowns and so forth. Trying to be as helpful as I can here and share with you what I've learned. Having coached for 40 years in the National Football League, played for several years, growing up in a football family, being around this game my entire life, it's clear that I don't know very much about this area."

---

About this: I did advance this idea very early on before it was mentioned in the press, but since then this same scenario has been described in the media countless times, sometimes in excruciating detail. Read up. Try this summary of a report from the Analysis Group: Critical Analysis in "Deflategate" Matter - NFL Players Association, Victorious. Key quote:

quote:

---

Dean Snyder concluded that after properly accounting for timing, there was no statistical difference in the relative pressure drop of Patriots' and Colts' footballs. Subsequent to the hearing, Dr. Moore stressed that Exponent could have easily incorporated time into their original model with all the halftime data and that failing to do so was a fundamental methodological mistake.

---

Earlier you claimed, "I have absolutely no investment in the outcome of the case," but your relentless defense of even the most boneheaded NFL behavior says otherwise.--Percy

"We have no idea what the starting PSI was for all the balls at the game, or the ending PSI for all the balls."With respect to the game balls, we do know the pressures of all of the balls as measured by the referees as prior to game time and at half time. The pressure of the balls at the end of the game would be irrelevant. I am not sure what point you are making.

How long after leaving the field did it take to measure pressure in the first and last football? How gradually?How long did this take? In what order were the measurements taken? How long did the balls sit before any measurement was taken? You are making lots of assumptions about what actually happened while concluding that the referees were idiots.One thing we can tell is that the amount of time allowed before measuring the balls was enough to allow one set of balls to measure very close to its initial pressure. Your assumption is that that time was not long enough to allow the Patriot balls to do the same. Is that really true? Does it really take more than a few minutes to measure the pressure in 12 footballs using two gauges? That does not seem obvious to me. They haven't said anything at all. Your conclusion about why is nothing but speculation. I have some suspicions that the reasons for destroying the records might have something to do with the court case, but I am not going to state a conclusion based on knowing absolutely nothing. Isn't the only relevant point what happens to the balls in the conditions that existed. Who cares what happens in more extreme weather.We have reason to believe that half time was plenty long enough for at least one set of balls to reach equilibrium. Your speculation is that the time was not long enough for both sets and that the referees missed that. You simply do not know. You don't really even know which balls were measured first. Or whether either set was completely measured before the other. Perhaps I am just responding to your expressed hatred for all things NFL and your vilification of people while not actually knowing diddly, Percy. Despite having my own opinion on whether Brady cheated, nothing he has done has affected the fortunes of the team or teams that I root for. I just don't have the emotional investment you have in this case.

Do we have an actual documented pressure for all the balls before the game?
Does such a a document exist or are you just taking the word of the referees that they all were at a certain pressure?I am not sure, but I have never seen anything documenting each balls pressure before the game started. I could be wrong.

Yes. The pressures of all 24 of the game balls were measured and recorded prior to game time and again at half time. The questions left surround the explanation for the discrepancies between the initial measurements and the ones taken at half time. All of those measurements were part of the Wells report. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Maybe you can show where it shows that in the Wells report. I did not see it and neither did NESN. We could be wrong.

quote:

---

PSI wasn’t recorded before the AFC Championship Game
This is the biggest issue with any data trying to prove the Patriots deflated footballs. Referee Walt Anderson, after being told football pressure could be an issue in the AFC Championship Game, didn’t record his pregame measurements. The Wells report bases all data on the Colts’ footballs being 13 PSI before the game and the Patriots’ footballs being 12.5 based on Anderson’s recollection. If the Patriots’ footballs were a tick under 12.5 PSI or if the Colts’ footballs were a tick over 13 PSI, then it throws off all data. Anderson said he didn’t add or release pressure from the Colts’ footballs. One Colts football measured at 12.95 PSI on one gauge, so it seems extremely unlikely that football began at 13 PSI.

---

Five Biggest Issues With Evidence Against Patriots In Wells Report - NESN.comThe referee's recollection does not equate recording. Seemingly not.

I may be remembering incorrectly and it might be that we have only the word of the officials as to the measurements of the footballs. I cannot find the Wells report, but all of the commentary I see is as you describe it. The individual pressures of the balls were not recorded but were only reported by the refs. I believe it is also the case that not all of the other team's balls were measured.But even that does not support a statement that we don't know the pressure of the balls before the game.The discussion on Wikipedia confirms that the initial readings were not logged.

quote:

---

The Wells report physics argument, based on multiple experiments as well as theoretical modeling, runs as follows.[8]:Appendix 1, 63-68 Several conjectured sources of variability (differences in game use, alleged "vigorous rubbing" by the Patriots before play, leakage during the game, and variations in football volume) can be set aside as they have no discernable effect. Based on documented habit, as well as the recollections of referee Walt Anderson, the Patriots balls were (as usual) set around 12.5 psi, and the Colts balls around 13.0 psi, before their games. The ideal gas law shows that footballs inflated in a warm environment will drop in pressure in a cold environment; however, a football is not a thermos, and the footballs would have rapidly started to re-inflate when taken to the officials' locker room for halftime testing. (Wells estimates that the Patriots balls had 2-4 minutes to repressurize before measurements began; the measurements themselves spanned an estimated 4-5 minutes.[8]:70)

---

Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

The questions you ask have all been hashed through previously both here and in the press. Asking a cascade of questions from a position of hyperskepticism isn't evidence, and many are revealing of how little you know or have retained about deflategate. Some questions are surprising. For instance, it gets cold in North Carolina - surely you have experience with how long things take to warm up from the cold, or even from the fridge or freezer. You can pretty much figure that out from how fast footballs warm up. You're just playing at defense attorney by throwing out as many questions as you can as a hassling tactic, but this one is easy to answer. I stuck a digital meat thermometer into the inflation hole in a football, cooled it in the fridge, put it on the kitchen table, then measured the change in temperature over 15 minutes, the length of halftime: So the answer to "how gradually?" is approximately 1.3° per minute, pretty much in the range that I expected just extrapolating from normal daily experience with items from the fridge. Without actually going through the math of the Ideal Gas Law it looks like the Patriot balls were measured very soon after being brought in, and the Colts balls were measured about 10 minutes later, just before the end of halftime. Measurement of Colt footballs was brought to a halt by the end of halftime, explaining why only four Colt footballs were measured.This exercise also answers the question of how long it would take the footballs to warm up from 10° during halftime of a game on a cold night in Green Bay. The larger difference between indoor and outdoor temperatures means that during the early stages they would warm up faster than 1.3° per minute, but erring in your favor and guestimating it at 2° per minute for all of halftime, in that 15 minutes they would warm up 30 degrees and just before returning to the field would have been at 40°. If the footballs had been inflated to 13 PSI indoors at 72° before the game then at 40° they would have measured in the neighborhood of 11.0 PSI, well out of the legal range (again, I'm guestimating and haven't gone through the Ideal Gas Law calculation).We also shouldn't forget that water makes footballs cooler than ambient, I assume due to the temperature of the water falling on them being cooler than ambient due to evaporation, and the water continuing to evaporate once on the footballs. Footballs in play would be cooler than footballs on the sideline, which are kept somewhere dry and are cycled regularly into play depending upon precipitation rates. In the AFC championship game New England ended the first half with a 15-play drive, so going into halftime their balls had seen a good amount of rainy on-the-field time.It again makes one wonder what protocols the NFL has put in place for accurately measuring football pressures at halftime during games played in cold temperatures. My guess, of course, is that they haven't, else they would be bragging about it while displaying for one and all how well they understand the Ideal Gas Law. Uh, no I'm not. I don't believe I've said anything denigrating about the referees. I think what they were able to do in so short a period of time while having to invent a protocol on the fly was commendable. They were measuring football pressures at halftime because they were directed to do so by NFL vice president of operations Troy Vincent, who was present at the AFC championship game. But the NFL, most visibly Goodell, is very wrong to insist that the referee data leads to definite conclusions.By the way Troy Vincent testified at Brady's appeal hearing that he had "no idea" that footballs "were automatically going to lose pressure if it was cold outside compared to how warm it was inside."But much more importantly, if you really believe all your questions have no precise answers, then you must agree that it would be improper to reach any definite conclusions about deflated footballs. If the NFL has nothing to hide, why are they hiding it? If they're hiding incompetence then I guess it's consistent with their whole behavior in the deflategate matter. And if their hiding exculpatory evidence, well, that doesn't speak well of them, either. Can you think of another reason for their lack of transparency about a matter which is critical to the "integrity of the game" (in case you've forgotten, that's Goodell's constant refrain). Uh, no we don't. The four Colts balls all measured below their initial 13.0 PSI, and three our of four measured out of legal range using the non-logo gauge, see Message 108. Uh, wrong again. Unless the refs are lying, they measured the Patriot balls first. Casting aspersions of "knowing diddly" is pretty ironic coming from you on this topic. Even that sentence is incorrect. I have no "hatred for all things NFL," and have expressed no such thought. But the NFL has a demonstrated incompetence regarding player discipline and court appeals, their behavior in these areas has been irrational and self-damaging, and their deflategate case that may reach the Supreme Court doesn't even have evidence to conclude deflation ever happened, let alone that Brady led an effort to deflate footballs and hide it from officials. I think you have a large emotional investment in being right but don't have the time and/or inclination for investigating the support for your views, explaining why you forget, ignore or pretend ignorance of so much evidence.--Percy

Or perhaps I don't live and breathe the details like you do. When my errors are pointed out, I have no problem acknowledging them. But at some point I understand that everything I say that disagrees with you will draw an insult even when I am careful to indicate a simple difference of opinion.And I see that I have allowed myself to be drawn back into a discussion that is nothing more than a rehash of old points. I admit not remembering some of that stuff terribly well; at least not as well as when I was going point for point with you months ago. I apologize for not holding up my end. Actually, you cannot do that. What you are doing when you make such an assumption is to declare that all discrepancies are the result of ball temperature changes, when in fact that is the issue being argued. And the judges are stupid, the NFL does not understand that footballs lower pressure in low temp, and the commissioner is outraged beyond having a managerial temperment, etc. Your posts are all laden with this stuff.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

How do we know the pressures before the game for each ball if they were not recorded?
You are going to hang your hat on the refs recollection?
They don't even know if the same gauge was used for each ball.

We can question the quality of the evidence, but not the existence of the evidence. Yes it is the case that the indication of the ball pressure is based on the report of the referees. That is not the same as having no indication whatsoever.

You are definitely remembering incorrectly. Yes, you've got it now. And then there's the two gauges, called the Logo gauge and the non-Logo gauge in the Exponent analysis included in the Wells report, that differed by around .4 PSI.Could you at least check your recollection before posting next time? I refer you back to the two differing gauges again.You know, probabilistic analyses have already been performed taking the differing gauges into account and the uncertainty about which was used before the game, and they show it very likely that no deflation occurred.From your Wikipedia quote: This Wells report claim that footballs could warm that fast looks ridiculous on its face, and as proven by my Message 371 is obviously wrong and not even close. Assuming an on-field temperature of 45 degrees at halftime and not accounting for wetness, my table says that in 2-4 minutes the footballs could only warm up 48°- 51.0°. Over the ensuing 4-5 minutes they would have increased in temperature by another six or seven degrees, introducing a range of variation of maybe 0.5 PSI (again, a guestimate).--Percy