Todd M -> RE: Around the NFL (News) - 2013 Season (5/7/2015 11:28:49 AM)
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quote:
All of the balls—Patriots balls and Colts balls—lost pressure by halftime. Significantly, the 11 Patriot balls showed greater decreases than the four Colt balls tested. More significantly, judging by what the scientists employed by Wells told him, eight of the 11 balls tested at halftime fell within the expected range of pressure drop based on the measurements of at least one of the two NFL officials who gauged the pigskins. This, more than anything else, invalidates the conclusions of the Wells Report. Though Ted Wells theorizes a conspiracy to depressurize balls, measurements by NFL referees on the majority of the Patriots balls read precisely where the scientific firm employed by the investigators said a ball inflated to 12.5 psi–the NFL minimum–would fall to (between 11.52 and 11.32) as a result of game-time conditions. Since the psi measurements of the two referees varied somewhat, the opposite–that a majority of the balls failed to meet the expected level–is also true. Remarkably, the report chooses to interpret the data exclusively in a manner that suggests malfeasance. “Most of the individual Patriots measurements recorded at halftime, however, were lower than the range predicted by the Ideal Gas Law,” the report reads. But the fact that by at least one or the other referee’s measurement, the air pressure of eight of eleven balls fell to expected levels undermines the verdict of “probable” guilt.
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