That’s Thomas Healy, Founder of HeadSmart Labs, a Pittsburgh-based startup that focuses on concussion-related research, products, and procedures. Having previously deduced the invariable misuse pertaining to Riddell’s helmets that causes a safety risk, he’s taken matters into his own hands to quantitatively discern Deflategate–both instances, incidentally, directly involving inflation. The video above demonstrates how he went about conducting his study.
When the allegations originally broke about Deflategate, Healy tells SportTechie that he was “a little surprised,” especially as a punter for Carnegie Mellon University’s football team, where they take air inflation as a serious matter due to it being checked before every game.
“Is it possible that physics or just weather alone had a play in this?,” Healy wondered to himself.
For fans that were at that game or watching from home, it would be “very impractical” for them to have noticed this issue. Casual fans, whom Healy has also asked for help, couldn’t even decipher what football possesses more or less pressure between one at 10.5 PSI and another at 12.5 PSI. Watching video alone, thus, without physically holding the footballs, would be too difficult to tell and not remotely substantive.
Prior to performing the study accordingly, he first took a football that he had laying around and placed it inside the freezer. He looked at the pressure before and after, witnessed that it, indeed, dropped a couple of pounds, making it feasible. With all the instrumentation in place at HeadSmart Labs’ headquarters, it was simply a matter of getting more official NFL footballs and replicating those conditions.
There are two primary aspects of emphasis for this study to keep in mind.
First, the footballs going from an indoor environment to the outside, with a 25 degree temperature drop. The second, the football being wet. Both of these scenarios play a role towards any side effects. For the former, whenever a warm object is moved to a cold climate, it will start to cool down and lose pressure. This, the pressure inside decreasing, occurs because it derives from the ideal-gas-law equation. The water component Healy mentions is the most interesting part. When the football becomes wet, the leather starts absorbing some of the water and the leather also begins expanding, which then increases the volume of the ball as well as decreasing the pressure enclosed within it.
“So, there’s actually two things going on and both of them compound on top of each other; and, ultimately, cause what we saw that about a two pound pressure drop,” says Healy, in terms of how very likely the incident that transpired is from a physics standpoint.
HeadSmart Labs was determined to virtually mimic everything that took place during the alleged Deflategate. Their study began with 12 new NFL footballs housed inside a 75 degree Fahrenheit referee locker room 2 hours and 15 minutes before the game, the referee examining the ball’s pressure to be properly inflated at 12.5 PSI. These footballs were then taken to a 50 degree Fahrenheit room insofar as to simulate the game-like temperatures from the day in questioned. The footballs, too, were dabbled to take into account the rainy conditions. They followed the track record of what an NFL football would go through under those circumstances–making it as realistic as possible–sans for 300 pound players jumping on them.
Although this experiment was convened within a controlled, indoor environment, Healy affirms that had it been performed outdoors in actually downpour, it wouldn’t have an effect on the results. Having the footballs dosed in 50 degree water reflects a similar reaction. By his own experience playing football, a game in the rain, even light showers, creates a football to be “soaked” within seconds, basically a “water log ball.”
Once they ran the study, it became apparent that just those two aforementioned aspects could have the impact of a pressure drop.
The next question: What are the other facets that could potentially affected the football?
Healy realized that the electric pumps used by the teams to inflate these footballs deserved to be analyzed, too. The temperature coming out of these instruments is worth inspection as a stimulator. HeadSmart Labs found that it’s about 130 degrees Fahrenheit that spews out. If the team inflated the balls via these pumps, this, too, proves that the footballs can be warm from the inside, more so than the temperature from the room.
Another conjecture: Why didn’t the Indianapolis Colts’ balls deflate?
A working theory that they’re testing right now is to see if the inflation occurred on the field initially rather than a warm environment. The footballs would, in this case, be transported from the outside then inside, back outside–without providing a chance for them to heat up.
“It could be feasible for you to stay within the limitations of what the inflation is supposed to be in the ball under that scenario,” Healy states.
These are the computations done by HeadSmart Labs to reach their findings:
That said, deflating a football does negatively impact performance, at least for a punter, as Healy can speak on his own experience: “Personally, an inflated football works a lot better than a deflated football. You actually get a lot more distance out of the punt when it has more air pressure, because it has much stronger reaction bouncing off your foot. Personally, I would prefer an inflated football.”
With regards to other positions, there’s been open speculation whether quarterbacks, running backs, or receivers benefit from a deflated football when playing in the rain.
“Deflating a football does give a team an advantage,” Ainissa Ramirez, a Materials Scientist and Author of Newton’s Football, told NPR News.
“Particularly during the game which was very rainy, it’s hard to hold the ball, it’s hard to catch the ball. So by making it a little softer, it’s easier to catch the ball,” she continued.
Yet, if the football is deflated, deceleration happens when thrown could be argued. The degree in which it’s grippable exceeds the mass issue. Such quandaries were not considered by HeadSmart Labs, rather revealing insights into how this incident played out.
Their view is that any kind of temperature change will affect pressure. If the football is ever near those thresholds, it could push it over said thresholds. The study’s results showed that a 25 degree temperature shift, in it by itself, leads to, on average, a 1.1 PSI dropped. Healy believes it would be “impossible” to inflate the balls indoors, bring them outdoors, and not be outside the legal limit of the NFL’s one pound standard. Furthermore, when the leather is wet, the ball sunk another 0.7 PSI, a composite 1.8 PSI loss with a maximum of 1.95 PSI during exposure to game-esque elements.
From watching Bill Belichick’s press conference–despite him not knowing or elaborating on the math–his response just so happens to align with HeadSmart Labs’ study. Both of their respective reasons, Healy confirms, line up rather closely.
Should science then influence NFL policies from here on out?
“I think going forward the NFL is going to have to look at this. And if I had to guess what will happen would be, the footballs would have to be inflated on the field as oppose to in a locker room, which would eliminate that temperature change issue,” says Healy.
Given that the Super Bowl will be held indoors–and under LED lights–any signs of potential rain is eliminated; and so long as the referees inflate the footballs in a similar temperature to what’s on the field, then it should stay throughout the game within the legal limits.
HeadSmart Labs’ study scientifically demystifies #Deflategate.