IN THE QUIRKS
Spike This! Creating the American Football. By Glen Mikkelsen, CFE Yards! Inches! Noses! This autumn, in stadiums of all sizes, people
will be focused on brown stitched leather. Wearing the colors of their team, they will be watching footballs. Intensely, people will watch how far they are tossed, punted, lateraled, snapped, kicked, and fumbled. Fans will study the ball’s placements. Fans will hope for a lucky bounce. Indeed, for many people, one of the most hopeful sensations is grip- ping a new leather football. Picking it up, it is nearly impossible not to spin a football in your hands. It simply holds the promise of a game! The leather’s natural tackiness is warming to the touch. The rough laces provide the needed tension to target it through the air. And its aerodynamic shape beckons to be tossed. A football just does not con- tain air, it holds amusement, anguish, and joy.
random bounces. It is erratic, which makes it electrifying to watch. Since 1941, the Wilson Football plant in humble Ada, Ohio, has
manufactured every football used in the National Football League (NFL). With 130 workers, the plant produces 700,000 footballs a year, 3,000 to 4,000 footballs per workday. Here, 90% of the manufactur- ing is “hands on.” That means the cutting, sewing, pressurizing, and ultimately, boxing, is done by gifted craftspeople and loyal employees. A National Football League football is created in three days. First, the ball starts as cowhide. Cowhides are used as the leather wears well over time. Wilson buys 15,000 to 20,000 feet of cowhide per week from Horween, a leather company in Chicago. Each cowhide can make up to 20 footballs. to slice out four identical oval sections. Next, the leather is stamped with the league logo, the Commissioner’s autograph, and “The Duke.”
Wellington Mara, the New York Giants owner who started as a ball boy with the team in 1925. Wellington was named after the Duke of Wellington by his father, Giants founder Tim Mara, and it was Giants players who nicknamed young Wellington “The Duke.” George “Papa Bear” Halas, the fabled Chicago Bears owner and
coach, lobbied to name the ball after Wellington Mara and to reward Tim Mara for organizing the contract that made Wilson the NFL’s game ball supplier. Footballs with “The Duke” on them were used until the merger of
the National Football League and American Football League in 1970, Wellington Mara died in October 2005, “The Duke” returned on the footballs in 2006. Once “The Duke” footballs are labeled in the factory, synthetic lin-
ers are sewn to the interior of the four sections, and then the four sections are sewn together inside-out to create the ball. The balls are sewn inside out to put the stitching within the ball. Jane Hesler sewed footballs at the Wilson plant for 48 years, from 1966 to 2014. For her job, Jane awoke at 3:30 am to be at work at 5 am. Arriving in the plant, she oiled her machine, and then sewed up
30 Facility Manager Magazine
to 150 footballs per day. “The Rule of Thumb is you don’t make a good football sewer until
and they put an ice pack on it. They took me to the doctor, he cut it out, and I went back to work the rest of the afternoon.” Dan Riegle, plant manager, adds, “Sewing the football is proba-
bly the most important part as far as manufacturing.” (The number of stitches used by Wilson to sew a ball together is a closely-guarded secret.) Turned inside right, a polyurethane bladder is inserted inside the ball, and the ball is stitched together. Four-feet of white laces are hand- stitched through the football’s eight holes. Pressurized to 13 pounds the balls are molded and then boxed. The football weighs 15 ounces upon leaving the factory. It is 21
inches round at center, and 28 inches round from end to end. “The integrity of the football is paramount,” Riegle says. “Consis-
tency. We make a consistent product, so that it feels the same to the player every time they pick it up.” - ball League (CFL) introduced the Radically Canadian marketing campaign. As part of the campaign, they highlighted the slogan “Our Balls Are Bigger” – since the CFL had historically used slightly larger footballs than the NFL. The CFL ball was marginally larger, due to slightly bigger speci-
higher end of the allowed tolerances, as opposed to NFL manufactur- ers who built balls to the smaller end. However, the CFL updated its 1995.) Even though the balls were essentially the same, mis-
understandings persisted. For example, in 1990 quar- terback Erik Kramer said, “It feels great to throw an NFL ball again instead of that big balloon they have in Canada.” and CFL balls is that Canadian balls have two one-inch white stripes completely around the football three inches from cen- ter. U.S. college football and high school footballs both specify the use of stripes, but only on two of the football’s four panels (the pan- els adjacent to the laces). Purportedly, the original purpose of the stripes was
to provide higher visibility during night games. Before present stadium lighting, under poorer lighting conditions, the game was sometimes played with a whitewashed football. Teams might practice too in the autumn evenings, using a white- washed ball to help see it in dimming light. With the footballs boxed and shipped, 24 new footballs are opened for an NFL game, 12 balls for each half. Each football is used for less
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52
