The NFL Has Slick Balls

While reading today's Paul Domowitch article in the Daily News, I finally found an excuse for all T.O.'s dropped balls this season. Slick balls. Take a look at Domo's interesting theory:

Garcia and Feeley aren't the only quarterbacks complaining about the slickness of the Wilson Sporting Goods-manufactured footballs the NFL is using this season. The same complaint can be heard in almost every locker room. Quarterbacks and team equipment managers have been voicing their displeasure to Wilson and the league since the first shipment of footballs, with new commissioner Roger Goodell's signature on them, arrived just before the season.

"The ball definitely is slicker than what it used to be," Eagles equipment manager John Hatfield said. "There's still a problem with them."

The NFL downplayed griping about the football.

"I don't think anyone's hearing a lot of complaints about it, other than the normal ones you hear from time to time from players," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

But Hatfield and three other NFL equipment managers that the Daily News spoke with all said the quarterbacks' complaints are justified.

"They had a problem this summer up in Ohio where they make the balls," Hatfield said. "They had a humidity problem in the curing process [of the leather]."

Wilson, which has been the exclusive provider of footballs for the NFL since 1941, usually produces most of its footballs earlier in the year, when the Ohio weather is cooler and they have a bigger batch of balls from which to select the 720 "NFL-worthy" balls they send to each team.

But after Goodell was named commissioner on Aug. 8, the league informed Wilson it wanted a whole new supply of Goodell-signature balls delivered to teams in time for the start of the regular season.

Doug Wisner, a marketing analyst for Wilson footballs, acknowledged that a summer heat wave in Ohio affected the production of the Goodell footballs.

"When there's a humidity problem, what happens is the pebble definition [on the ball] isn't as great," he said. "That did occur this summer. There was a big heat wave right when we were producing the footballs. It's not that it made the balls slick. But the pebble definition wasn't as great, which makes the ball slicker. Basically, after they brushed them down, they did have a slicker ball. But after Week 3 or 4, we didn't hear many complaints."

Wilson initially thought the NFL would use the old Paul Tagliabue-signature balls for much, if not all, of this season. But the league made it clear both to Wilson and its teams that that wasn't an option. They had a new commissioner and they would open the season with Goodell footballs, even if they were slicker than a greased pig.

"The new commissioner was selected Aug. 8," Aiello said. "Why would we want to go into the regular season with balls that had Paul's name on them when he no longer was the commissioner?"

So, Wilson worked overtime in August to produce a new supply for the NFL. Humidity wasn't their only problem. Under normal circumstances, Wilson doesn't make special footballs for the NFL. It makes a big batch, inspects them and designates the cream of the crop for the NFL. The rest are shipped to retail stores.

According to Wisner, only one out of every 10 balls Wilson makes is deemed "NFL-worthy." But because they had much less time to make and send the new Goodell balls to NFL teams, balls that previously wouldn't have been considered up to NFL standards, now were.

"It kind of goes back to the way we had to handle it this year as opposed to years past," Wisner said. "Last year, the Eagles could get 200 balls up front. They could break them in and they could have them ready [to use] in June. Each game, [Donovan] McNabb or Garcia would have 200 balls to choose from. This year, we've been sending them 12 per week or whatever. And they're kind of at the mercy of the 12 that get sent. It wasn't just a matter of producing enough balls for the NFL. It was producing enough quality balls."

Wisner acknowledged that trying to accommodate the NFL's desire for Goodell balls on such short notice was "problematic."

As soon as the first batch of Goodell balls arrived on teams' doorsteps, most equipment managers realized they were much slicker than usual. Several, including the Eagles' Hatfield, called the league office and tried to persuade them to let them use the old Tagliabue footballs instead of the new ones.

Ray Anderson, a former agent who is the league's new vice president of football operations, said no way. Eventually, he told teams they could use the Tagliabue balls as backup game balls, but the "live" game balls (the ones that are actually used) could be only Goodell balls.

As with most things to do with the NFL these days, the league's decision to have Wilson rush Goodell footballs into production last summer and make teams use them right away was influenced primarily by the almighty dollar. According to one source close to the situation, the league's marketing people wanted to get the Goodell balls on the retail shelves as quickly as possible. And it wouldn't help sales if the league still used the old Tagliabue balls.

The NFL's Aiello said that's nonsense.

"That had nothing to do with it," he said. "It was simply a matter of the ball reflecting that we had a new commissioner. Since the ball has the commissioner's name on it, why would you want to use a ball with the old commissioner's name on it?"

The league also managed to get some good PR out of the ball switch, donating 8,000 of the old Tagliabue footballs to high school teams across the country.

Surprisingly, the slick ball hasn't seemed to have hurt player performance this season. Through 15 weeks, average completion percentage actually is up slightly over last year at this time (from 59.5 to 60.0). Fumbles have dropped from 709 after 15 weeks last season to 676 this year. Same with dropped passes. According to STATS, there were 820 drops last season. Through 15 weeks this season, there have been only 661, which projects to 755 for the season.

Is it me or is this one of the more bizarre stories written this year? I can't believe this guy did so much research to determine the validity of the players' claims that this year's balls are unusually slick. I'm guessing it must have been a slow news day over at the Nova Care complex because there had to be something more interesting to write about than this goofy conspiracy theory.