This Is Why Under-Inflated Footballs Could Have Given Tom Brady An Advantage

Support Mother Jones

"The profit is the product": Read how hedge funds are decimating newsrooms at a time when quality reporting is needed more than ever—and if you're able to, please help Mother Jones raise $400,000 so we can do all of the reporting this crazy pandemic-plus-election year demands.

"The profit is the product": Hedge funds are decimating newsrooms just when quality reporting is needed more than ever. If you can, please support Mother Jones’ journalism, which exists to make a difference, not a profit, during this critical moment.

Manuel Valdez/AP

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

To those of us for whom the nuances of professional football tactics are a bit of a mystery, there was one question looming over New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s surreal Ballghazi press conference yesterday that went unanswered: What’s so great, in theory, about a deflated football? Seems like, if anything, an under-inflated ball would be less aerodynamic?

Turns out, the potential benefit is all about grippiness. From Fox Sports:

John Eric Goff, professor of physics at Lynchburg College in Virginia and author of “Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports,” told FoxNews.com that the league-mandated PSI range is ideal for playing football. “If, however, there’s rain or snow or something else happening, that would make the ball a bit slicker, so having a bit less pressure in the ball makes it easier to squeeze and the grip improves,” he added.

Interesting!