Talk:Deflategate

Please remove or revise unsubstantiated and incorrect claim: "... five of eleven footballs measured below 11.0 pounds, this being less than 90% of the officially mandated minimum pressure and a full two pounds below the claimed original inflation target (a magnitude of pressure loss difficult to account for through environmental factors alone)."

a) there's no source cited for this claim, b) the claim is wrong about the officially mandated pressure and, as a result, wrong about difficulting in accounting for the pressure. For the two-pounds part of the claim to be correct, the officially mandated pressure would have to be 13 psi. Prior to 2006 that 13 was the officially mandated pressure, but the game was played in 2015 and for that season section 15 of the NFL referee manual stated " (source: the NFL's official report on the scandal found here "If the pressure is below 12 ½, inflate the ball to 12 ½ " As a result, if teams submit balls at or below 12.5 psi, the target of the NFL becomes 12.5 on whatever gauge the referee is using. The NFL did not have a gauge calibration program: whatever pressure result from the uses of the gauge is the actual pressure targeted on any given game. The referee's intent was to use the so-called Logo gauge: the report says "Anderson's best recollection is that he used the Logo Gauge" As a result of that intent and of Figure 13 in the NFL report stating that the actual pressure is equal to (the logo gauge readout + 0.2836)/1.050, the actual pressure being targeted under the NFL procedures that night was 12.17 psi. Thus the drop that needed to be explained was not two psi but rather slightly more than one psi. That drop is easily explained by science alone. Figure 21 in the NFL report show that a drop of 21 F (from 69 to 48) under approximate game conditions, including humidity and moisture, result in a drop of 1.21 psi for one of the actual Patriot footballs from the game. Thus at first blush the NFL lab data says there's nothing wrong with a ball being 11 psi. If you want to get fancy, the wet-bulb temperature that night was 45, so that night balls in the ball bag would be chilled to 45. Up until the final minute before inspection, the balls were stored in an area in which the HVAC maintains an average of 72.5. Thus its reasonable that the actual temperature drop was from about 72.5 to 45, prior to the ball having a chance to re-warm during halftime prior to measurement. That's 6.5 degrees more than was tested in Figure 21. Table 10 of the NFL's report indicate that the additional roughly 6.5 degree drop increases the pressure drop by another roughly 0.31 psi. Thus the witness testimony and data supports a natural drop of 1.21 + 0.31 = about 1.52 psi. Thus before warming up the balls should have had a pressure of about 10.65 psi. Witness accounts describe the balls as being in the bag prior to measurement, so their ability to warm up is dramatically less than the amounts shown in Figure 21, which was the result of testing one ball in the open. As a result, if anything 11 psi is oddly high rather than oddly low. The oddity is resolved by using Figure 21 to show that the balls for both teams warmed faster than they would if kept in the bag. The witness testimony of the balls being in the bag immediately prior to testing was incomplete, failing to have mentioned that the officials had for a while taken the balls out of the bag before putting them back into the wet bag. -ryoungnh Rob Young