Throwing cold water on Deflategate & the "weather" excuse
Jan 25, 2015 11:43:03 GMT -5
Jetworks likes this
Post by choon328 on Jan 25, 2015 11:43:03 GMT -5
NY Times
Uh oh Deflatriots fans. Where is your excuse now? I would assume that the league office talked to Wilson first to see if it was even possible for their balls to leak that much air. If so, the Flats* are fucked in my opinion.
Pro Football
A Seamstress Who Handed Off to the N.F.L. for 48 Years
Watching Deflatriots Scandal From Afar, a Retired Football Maker Says Wilson Did Its Job
By KEN BELSONJAN. 21, 2015
ADA, Ohio — The first day Jane Helser went to work sewing footballs at the Wilson Sporting Goods factory in town, Lyndon Johnson was building his Great Society, Johnny Unitas was tossing passes for the Colts, and Apollo 11 was three years from landing on the moon.
Helser, then 19, worked at a bakery near her home in this farm town about an hour south of Toledo. But she wanted to buy a new car, so she took a higher-paying job at the Wilson factory, where her older sister, Lucille, and Lucille’s husband, Merle, worked.
Jane Helser knew little about football or factories. But thanks to her mother and some home economics classes, she knew how to use a sewing machine. That was enough to get a job sewing the footballs used in the N.F.L.
For the next 48 years, as presidents, football players and moon missions came and went, Helser worked four 10-hour shifts every week, stitching leather panels together, four at time, to form the bodies of footballs that would be used in games that she rarely watched.
After all her years at the factory, Helser has never seen a controversy like the one enveloping the N.F.L. now. According to reports by ESPN and others, the N.F.L. found that 11 of the New England Deflatriots’ 12 game balls were underinflated during their rout of the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in the A.F.C. championship game. The balls were approved by a referee before the game but were checked again at halftime. They were reinflated after they were found to have lost about two pounds per square inch of pressure.
The scandal, which some have called Deflategate, has caused some to wonder how and when the balls were deflated after they met the N.F.L.’s exacting specifications and were shipped from the Wilson factory here. Helser said the Wilson employees had done their jobs.
“When it leaves our factory, they may have trouble with a bladder every once in a while with losing some air,” she said. “But when they have 11 out of 12 balls losing air, it’s not Wilson’s fault. I’m sure when it left our factory here in Ada, it was as good as it could be.”
Despite reports that the cold weather or a player spiking the ball might have led to the deflation, the only way to remove that much air that quickly would be to put a needle in the valve and to let the air seep out, said Kevin Murphy, who runs the American football division at Wilson.
Wilson, he said, goes to great lengths to ensure the N.F.L. balls do not leak, even in extreme heat or cold. Every ball has a special three-ply urethane bladder inside, and during production, the balls are filled with 100 pounds of air pressure and then deflated to 13 pounds, the amount required for game balls.
Michael Signora, a spokesman for the league, said the N.F.L. was “continuing our review and will provide information as soon as possible.” To the 130 workers in the Wilson factory, the scandal may as well be occurring in a distant universe. In their low-slung factory the size of a big-box store, they use production techniques refined over decades to eliminate imperfections and meet the league’s exacting specifications. And once the balls are shipped to teams, the workers cannot control what is done to them.
Instead, they are turning their focus to the Super Bowl. Now that the Deflatriots and the Seattle Seahawks have secured berths in the Feb. 1 game, the workers are racing to finish the roughly 10,000 commemorative footballs that are made for the game and are sold for about $130 each.
Yet for the first time since Vince Lombardi led the Green Bay Packers to victory in Super Bowl II, Helser is not on the front lines. Having retired last summer, she now works only on special projects like the Super Bowl. At 67, she has lost some of the hand strength needed to manipulate the stiff leather panels, which are cut from large slices of cow hide cured to Wilson’s specifications by Horween, a leather company in Chicago.
“It was time,” she said, adding that she made about 150 balls a day on average. “I was going to do it last year, but then I decided that physically I was ready, but mentally I wasn’t.”
Helser’s nearly half-century of sewing footballs, though, is just one chapter in the N.F.L.’s most enduring business relationship. Wilson has been the exclusive manufacturer of footballs for the league since 1941.
Almost 75 years later, much is the same. According to N.F.L. rules, the ball must weigh no more than 15 ounces and must be in the form of a “prolate spheroid” that is 11 to 11 ¼ inches long and 28 to 28 ½ inches around at its widest. A urethane bladder inside the ball is covered by a tan pebble-grained leather case.
“The look, feel and size of the ball hasn’t changed,” Murphy said. “The last thing we want is all sorts of records to be broken” because the company altered something.
The production process has not changed much, either.
The leather arrives each Monday from Chicago, where Horween tans it to Wilson’s specifications. The hides are 22 square feet, about the side of a cow, and have been cured in a secret milky, tacky liquid created for Wilson. Before the leather gets to Ada, it is pounded to give it a pebbly feel, and tiny W’s are embossed on the leather to ensure authenticity.
The hides are laid on a table, and a metal form is pressed down to cut out oval panels, which are then weighed and matched for color consistency. A thin layer of leather is peeled off the backs of the panels to reduce their weight.
After they are stacked in sets of four, the panels are stamped with the N.F.L. logo and other design features. Mesh linings made out of rubber and cotton are then affixed to the panels to help the ball maintain its shape.
The panels are sewed inside out in halves, perhaps the most difficult job in the factory. The halves are then sewn together with heavy thread to make an inside-out football, which is put in a steam box to soften the leather and is stretched. The seams are rolled to flatten them.
Lacers turn the balls outside in, stuff a rubber bladder inside and push a nipple through a small hole so the balls can be inflated. Laces are added using an awl. The ball is overinflated to stretch the seams and is deflated to its designed weight.
“I still get goose bumps when I grab a game ball,” Murphy said. “It’s the perfect shape, feel and smell.”
N.F.L. balls are just a small part of the production at the factory. In all, about 700,000 leather balls a year, between 3,000 and 4,000 a day, are made in Ada, with about half of them shipped in the spring to high schools and colleges. (Nonleather balls are produced in China.)
A Seamstress Who Handed Off to the N.F.L. for 48 Years
Watching Deflatriots Scandal From Afar, a Retired Football Maker Says Wilson Did Its Job
By KEN BELSONJAN. 21, 2015
ADA, Ohio — The first day Jane Helser went to work sewing footballs at the Wilson Sporting Goods factory in town, Lyndon Johnson was building his Great Society, Johnny Unitas was tossing passes for the Colts, and Apollo 11 was three years from landing on the moon.
Helser, then 19, worked at a bakery near her home in this farm town about an hour south of Toledo. But she wanted to buy a new car, so she took a higher-paying job at the Wilson factory, where her older sister, Lucille, and Lucille’s husband, Merle, worked.
Jane Helser knew little about football or factories. But thanks to her mother and some home economics classes, she knew how to use a sewing machine. That was enough to get a job sewing the footballs used in the N.F.L.
For the next 48 years, as presidents, football players and moon missions came and went, Helser worked four 10-hour shifts every week, stitching leather panels together, four at time, to form the bodies of footballs that would be used in games that she rarely watched.
After all her years at the factory, Helser has never seen a controversy like the one enveloping the N.F.L. now. According to reports by ESPN and others, the N.F.L. found that 11 of the New England Deflatriots’ 12 game balls were underinflated during their rout of the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in the A.F.C. championship game. The balls were approved by a referee before the game but were checked again at halftime. They were reinflated after they were found to have lost about two pounds per square inch of pressure.
The scandal, which some have called Deflategate, has caused some to wonder how and when the balls were deflated after they met the N.F.L.’s exacting specifications and were shipped from the Wilson factory here. Helser said the Wilson employees had done their jobs.
“When it leaves our factory, they may have trouble with a bladder every once in a while with losing some air,” she said. “But when they have 11 out of 12 balls losing air, it’s not Wilson’s fault. I’m sure when it left our factory here in Ada, it was as good as it could be.”
Despite reports that the cold weather or a player spiking the ball might have led to the deflation, the only way to remove that much air that quickly would be to put a needle in the valve and to let the air seep out, said Kevin Murphy, who runs the American football division at Wilson.
Wilson, he said, goes to great lengths to ensure the N.F.L. balls do not leak, even in extreme heat or cold. Every ball has a special three-ply urethane bladder inside, and during production, the balls are filled with 100 pounds of air pressure and then deflated to 13 pounds, the amount required for game balls.
Michael Signora, a spokesman for the league, said the N.F.L. was “continuing our review and will provide information as soon as possible.” To the 130 workers in the Wilson factory, the scandal may as well be occurring in a distant universe. In their low-slung factory the size of a big-box store, they use production techniques refined over decades to eliminate imperfections and meet the league’s exacting specifications. And once the balls are shipped to teams, the workers cannot control what is done to them.
Instead, they are turning their focus to the Super Bowl. Now that the Deflatriots and the Seattle Seahawks have secured berths in the Feb. 1 game, the workers are racing to finish the roughly 10,000 commemorative footballs that are made for the game and are sold for about $130 each.
Yet for the first time since Vince Lombardi led the Green Bay Packers to victory in Super Bowl II, Helser is not on the front lines. Having retired last summer, she now works only on special projects like the Super Bowl. At 67, she has lost some of the hand strength needed to manipulate the stiff leather panels, which are cut from large slices of cow hide cured to Wilson’s specifications by Horween, a leather company in Chicago.
“It was time,” she said, adding that she made about 150 balls a day on average. “I was going to do it last year, but then I decided that physically I was ready, but mentally I wasn’t.”
Helser’s nearly half-century of sewing footballs, though, is just one chapter in the N.F.L.’s most enduring business relationship. Wilson has been the exclusive manufacturer of footballs for the league since 1941.
Almost 75 years later, much is the same. According to N.F.L. rules, the ball must weigh no more than 15 ounces and must be in the form of a “prolate spheroid” that is 11 to 11 ¼ inches long and 28 to 28 ½ inches around at its widest. A urethane bladder inside the ball is covered by a tan pebble-grained leather case.
“The look, feel and size of the ball hasn’t changed,” Murphy said. “The last thing we want is all sorts of records to be broken” because the company altered something.
The production process has not changed much, either.
The leather arrives each Monday from Chicago, where Horween tans it to Wilson’s specifications. The hides are 22 square feet, about the side of a cow, and have been cured in a secret milky, tacky liquid created for Wilson. Before the leather gets to Ada, it is pounded to give it a pebbly feel, and tiny W’s are embossed on the leather to ensure authenticity.
The hides are laid on a table, and a metal form is pressed down to cut out oval panels, which are then weighed and matched for color consistency. A thin layer of leather is peeled off the backs of the panels to reduce their weight.
After they are stacked in sets of four, the panels are stamped with the N.F.L. logo and other design features. Mesh linings made out of rubber and cotton are then affixed to the panels to help the ball maintain its shape.
The panels are sewed inside out in halves, perhaps the most difficult job in the factory. The halves are then sewn together with heavy thread to make an inside-out football, which is put in a steam box to soften the leather and is stretched. The seams are rolled to flatten them.
Lacers turn the balls outside in, stuff a rubber bladder inside and push a nipple through a small hole so the balls can be inflated. Laces are added using an awl. The ball is overinflated to stretch the seams and is deflated to its designed weight.
“I still get goose bumps when I grab a game ball,” Murphy said. “It’s the perfect shape, feel and smell.”
N.F.L. balls are just a small part of the production at the factory. In all, about 700,000 leather balls a year, between 3,000 and 4,000 a day, are made in Ada, with about half of them shipped in the spring to high schools and colleges. (Nonleather balls are produced in China.)
Uh oh Deflatriots fans. Where is your excuse now? I would assume that the league office talked to Wilson first to see if it was even possible for their balls to leak that much air. If so, the Flats* are fucked in my opinion.
