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Deflate-gate: Patriots Coach Says 'Climatic Conditions' May Have Under-Inflated Balls
ABCNews ^ | January 24, 2015 | DEAN SCHABNER and AARON KATERSKY

Posted on 01/24/2015 4:07:43 PM PST by Steelfish

Deflate-gate: Patriots Coach Says 'Climatic Conditions' May Have Under-Inflated Balls Jan 24, 2015 By DEAN SCHABNER More From Dean »

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick today said "climatic conditions" may have been to blame for the footballs that were under-inflated Sunday for the AFC Championship game, and said the team had not tried to tamper with them.

He said the team "followed the rules to the letter," denying any intentional wrongdoing by the Patriots.

"At no time was there any intent whatsoever to try to compromise the integrity of the game or to gain an advantage," Belichick said.

(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...


TOPICS: Sports
KEYWORDS: globalcooling; whocares
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To: terycarl

I sure hope that Katy Perrys boobs will not deflate before halftime!


61 posted on 01/24/2015 6:56:28 PM PST by GotMojo
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To: over3Owithabrain

What was the psi reading on their footballs?


62 posted on 01/24/2015 7:04:15 PM PST by xzins ( Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It! Those who truly support our troops pray for victory!)
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To: latina4dubya

[quote]but only NE balls... not Indianapolis balls... better to say nothing at all...[/quote]

Well Belicheck is right. Matter of fact here is a simple experiment illustrating that fact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxsXFX3tDpg

So the logical question is how did the Colts defy the laws of physics?

Did they have their balls in a heated container to maintain the pressure of the balls?

Were they over inflated prior to the start of the game?

Were they the ones tampering with the balls?


63 posted on 01/24/2015 7:15:36 PM PST by Leto
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To: babygene

If they are checking 12.5 psi using a digital gauge, then that gauge likely has 0.1 degree increments. I would certainly have to have 0.5 pound increments.


64 posted on 01/24/2015 7:16:43 PM PST by Go_Raiders (Freedom doesn't give you the right to take from others, no matter how innocent your program sounds.)
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To: Go_Raiders

“If they are checking 12.5 psi using a digital gauge, then that gauge likely has 0.1 degree increments. I would certainly have to have 0.5 pound increments.”

You meant .1 psi increments I’m sure...

Pressure gauges for tires do not. They are common and inexpensive. I’m quite sure they don’t make a special one just for footballs...


65 posted on 01/24/2015 7:27:28 PM PST by babygene
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To: FatherofFive

We are presuming the referees did their job of inspecting the balls before the game. The refs have pressure gages and are given the balls 2 hours before the game.


66 posted on 01/24/2015 7:28:52 PM PST by Pikachu_Dad (Impeach Sen Quinn)
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To: Leto

Wow. I hope you’re joking. The Colts brought a deflated NE ball to the league’s attention, which led to both teams footballs being retested at the half. If they were the ones tampering they would not do that.


67 posted on 01/24/2015 7:31:53 PM PST by over3Owithabrain
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To: Snickering Hound
 photo aef3e953-ccb5-42cd-abb2-525a298f479a_zpstlytkpsq.jpg

68 posted on 01/24/2015 7:34:42 PM PST by timestax (American Media = Domestic Enemy)
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To: Delta Dawn

“right up until the time that someone on the sideline let the air out of them...”

And how, on the sidelines would they have let exactly 2 psi out of eleven balls? Don’t get me wrong, it could be done. But you’d have to have a special made apparatus to pull it off. You would have to use an inflation needle attached to a pressure chamber of the right volume for the temperature on the field.


69 posted on 01/24/2015 7:35:40 PM PST by babygene
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To: Steelfish

70 posted on 01/24/2015 7:40:25 PM PST by seawolf101
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To: Pikachu_Dad
It was 45 F at half time when they were checked. They would need to have filled and checked their balls at 50 F hotter. So a 95 F room.

There's a little more going on than that. Suppose the pressure gauges are digital and read to the nearest 0.5 psi (plausible since all reported pressures I've heard were in increments of 0.5). Then you just have to go over 12.25 to read 12.5. Add in that the air warms up when compressed, so a freshly inflated ball in a 75 degree room should read a higher pressure initially than it would an hour later in the same room. The end result from intentionally staying just on the side of arguably following the rules would be 11 psi balls by halftime at 45 degrees F.

71 posted on 01/24/2015 7:47:12 PM PST by Pollster1 ("Shall not be infringed" is unambiguous.)
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To: Pikachu_Dad

According to a story by an ex-ball handler for the Chicago Bears that was posted here a couple of days ago...

He said the refs would not always take the pressure with a gauge, but rather feel them and if they felt “ok” would then take possession. They’d only take the pressure with the gauge if the balls felt especially soft or overly hard.

HIS speculation was that the refs knew Brady liked soft balls so figured that’s why they felt softer and let it be.


72 posted on 01/24/2015 7:51:43 PM PST by Alas Babylon!
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To: over3Owithabrain

The Colts did not bring a ball to the league’s attention. D’Qwell Jackson who intercepted Tom Brady took the ball to the sidelines as a souvenir. The media changed the story as if Jackson knew the ball was deflated. Jackson has debunked that storyline. The media should be ashamed of themselves!


73 posted on 01/24/2015 7:53:25 PM PST by jcsjcm (This country was built on exceptionalism and individualism. In God we Trust - Laus Deo)
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To: dalereed

“To cure the problem inflate the balls with Helium instead of air and they won’t deflate or inflate with temperature change like they do with air.”

I wouldn’t go with helium simply because it defuses through rubber faster than any other gas. Use Nitrogen. That would be fine...

BTW, if they had been inflated with CO2 instead of air, you might well have seen that big of a pressure drop at 45 degrees. For that matter, the pressure drop in CO2 from 70 degrees to 45 degrees pretty much matches up with the pressure drop in the balls. Being as though it’s the cheapest and easiest compressed gas to get, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was what happened. Also, by having a CO2 tank and a regulator, this would mean the team would not have to lug around a compressor.

The only problem was that they should have chosen Nitrogen instead, but they wouldn’t have known that...


74 posted on 01/24/2015 7:59:24 PM PST by babygene
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To: montag813

re: Bellichick’s performance at the press conference..

You know what they say about the best defense is a good offense. :)


75 posted on 01/24/2015 8:05:46 PM PST by berdie
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To: over3Owithabrain

Right They did, so how do their balls defy the laws of physics? Help me with that.

What is funny when the 12.5 psi balls were brought into the game the Pats smoked the Colts 28-0 in the second half. Brady was 8-8 to start the second half.

Lot of sour grapes losers here.

The story was leaked to Kravitz by the Colts drug addict owner Isray, who uses Kravitz to get stuff into the public realm.


76 posted on 01/24/2015 8:09:36 PM PST by Leto
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To: Alas Babylon!

Video of the Refs ‘typical’ actions before the game.
— So we get to see what the pressure gage used by the refs look like
— We also get to see the compressor the refs use to pump up the balls that are low.
— All the balls are marked by the refs.
— The refs are working in a bathroom. They are not acting cold - dressed in ordinary cloths.

— Note: Apparently all of the balls used after half time were the correct pressure. The Patriots ran up the score in the second half. So the issue in the first half of the game did not affect the outcome.

“Thu Jan. 22, 2015
How Officials Check Ball Pressure
During our Game 150 series, The MMQB got an exclusive look at the pregame check for proper inflation. You know you want to see it

One week ago it would have counted as deep football nerdery. Now, though, the procedure by which officials confirm the air pressure inside game balls has become a central storyline of the postseason. With the NFL’s having launched an investigation into whether the New England Patriots deliberately deflated the footballs they used on offense against the Colts in the AFC Championship Game, we went back into our archives for exclusive footage of the officials’ pregame process of checking balls for the proper pressure.

In November 2013 The MMQB’s Peter King and videographer John DePetro went behind the scenes with Gene Steratore’s officiating crew before a Ravens-Bears game at Soldier Field. The two were granted exclusive access inside the officials’ locker room during their pregame preparations.

In the video above, the crew inspects the game balls in the officials’ locker room for proper inflation—between 12.5 and 13.5 pounds per square inch. Head linesman Wayne Mackie and field judge Bob Waggoner are seen checking the pressure and taking some of the air out of balls to bring them down to regulation. Back judge Dino Paganelli, working at the locker room sink, reinflates balls that fell below regulation up to the 12.5-13.5 psi range. Line judge Jeff Seeman describes how teams work the K balls, the balls used only on specials teams, which come out of the box on game day and are given to the teams to work up for 45 minutes before the game.

The balls would be in the officials’ possession until just minutes before the start of the game, at which point they would hand to ball boys on each side of the field. For balls to be tampered with, it would most likely have to take place on the field during the game.

• DEFLATEGATE: Peter King on the investigation and possible repurcussions

One other note: Based on informal tests done at The MMQB offices on Wednesday, our staffers concluded that a difference of one pound per square inch, the acceptable regulation range, would be imperceptible to most people, and that even a ball that was under regulation by two psi, as the Patriots’ balls were reported to have been, would be very hard to detect, especially for someone not looking for it. A ball at 10 psi does not feel “soft,” and it would be understandable for officials not to notice the difference. That was also the conclusion of former NFL wideout Amani Toomer on SI’s Pro Football Now show when a similar test was done on Wednesday. “

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/01/22/deflategate-video-how-nfl-officials-check-game-ball-pressure/


77 posted on 01/24/2015 8:11:35 PM PST by Pikachu_Dad (Impeach Sen Quinn)
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To: Steelfish

Bill Belichick today said “climatic conditions” may have been to blame for the footballs that were under-inflated...
*******************************************
Well... It must have been colder on the field for the Pats offense than it was for the Colts offense; no matter which end of the field they were on.

Both teams’ footballs were checked for PSI at the half and none of the Colt balls were under-inflated, while 11 of 12 of the Pat balls were.

Nature is so freakish!


78 posted on 01/24/2015 8:14:27 PM PST by octex
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To: jcsjcm

The Colts did bring it to the league’s attention, just wasn’t Jackson who did it. It happened when he gave the ball to the sideline. All these facts are out there. The Pats footballs were intentionally deflated after the pregame check by someone on the Pats. We may never know who did it or ordered it but it was done. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors


79 posted on 01/24/2015 8:20:29 PM PST by over3Owithabrain
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To: PGR88

The amount of ignorance on this thread is staggering.

First, disclaimer: I’m a Redskins fan and can’t stand the Patriots.

Secondly, I thought Free Republic didn’t trust the media? Then why are some of you taking the MSM’s version of the press conference rather than watching it yourselves? Oh, I guess being informed is hard work...

So, to the actual press conference:

Belichek said that the equipment managers rough up the footballs before they are handed to the referees in order to create the texture that Brandy likes. This is perfectly within the rules, and every team does it. Belichek says that he had the equipment managers perform the same process on multiple balls, which in some way involves rubbing or scraping the balls. This resulted in an average of a 1.5 PSI elevation in the balls (because friction causes heat). This normalized down by .5 PSI (in their tests) in the time that it would take for the balls to be given to the refs.

The balls were then GIVEN TO THE REFS TO INFLATE. The team asked the refs to inflate the balls to the minimum 12.5 PSI. There is no released information on how much the refs inflated the balls, how they measured the inflation, or how careful they were. None. If the refs did as asked, the refs inflated the balls in a 70+ degree climate-controlled room in the stadium to the minimum pressure, without knowing that the air in the balls was already heated by the previous “preparation” of the balls.

Once outside, the balls could be expected to lose about 1 PSI due to temperature differences and 1 PSI due to the loss of the heat generated by rubbing down the balls, which would explain the low readings at halftime. This is assuming that the refs did inflate the balls to 12.5 as asked.

Depending on how the refs were instructed by the Colts to inflate their balls, if the Colts’ balls were not rubbed down and were inflated to the maximum (13.5 PSI), they could have read a legal 12.5 at halftime, despite undergoing the same thermal compression as the Patriots’ footballs.

At this point I have not seen a single published story with any of the following information (links to this info would be appreciated):

- What pressure the refs inflated the Patriots’ balls to.
- What pressure the refs inflated the Colts’ balls to.
- What pressure the Colts balls were at halftime.
- What method or gauge was used to measure the pressure.
- How much time had elapsed between the footballs being brought inside and their being tested.

At this point, people declaring that this is a clear case of cheating are doing so based purely on prejudice. Which is disappointing, but not surprising...


80 posted on 01/24/2015 8:20:46 PM PST by Charles H. (The_r0nin) (Hwaet! Lar bith maest hord, sothlice!)
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