--- title: Super Bowl: How a Digital Pigskin Could Have Saved Us From Deflategate description: Footballs have come a long way from their days as pig’s bladders. But the Patriots scandal shows it may be time for them to go digital. canonical: https://time.com/3687952/super-bowl-deflategate-digital-pigskin/ author: Ainissa Ramirez article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-29T22:43:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:01.072Z article:section: Ideas og:title: How a Digital Football Could Have Saved Us From Deflategate og:description: Footballs have come a long way from their days as pig's bladders. They can go further still. og:url: https://time.com/3687952/super-bowl-deflategate-digital-pigskin/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt77e56398b8ab630b/6986a722f983e7556f0500d1/nfl-los-angeles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3008 og:image:height: 1692 og:image:alt: NFL Football og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How a Digital Football Could Have Saved Us From Deflategate twitter:description: Footballs have come a long way from their days as pig's bladders. They can go further still. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt77e56398b8ab630b/6986a722f983e7556f0500d1/nfl-los-angeles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How a Digital Football Could Have Saved Us From Deflategate > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Inside TIME: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Inside TIME is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A closer look at TIME's latest cover and our most compelling stories. Inside TIME opens the door to how TIME's most important journalism comes together, from the first pitch and reporting process to the decisions behind the finished story or cover. Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs takes readers inside the newsroom, revealing the journalists, ideas and editorial choices behind the stories shaping the global conversation. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution [Watch (HLS stream): Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ArcR8sPL.m3u8) (2:19)  _Published 2015-01-28. The history of how helmets arrived on the football field_ by [Ainissa Ramirez](https://time.com/author/ainissa-ramirez/) ## Ainissa Ramirez Jan 29, 2015 10:43 PM UTC  Laces out Laces out Getty Images by [Ainissa Ramirez](https://time.com/author/ainissa-ramirez/) ## Ainissa Ramirez Jan 29, 2015 10:43 PM UTC Pick up a football and run your fingers over the pebbled texture. Hold the ball back and notice the shape of the ball and see how it invites your hand to wrap its fingers around it. We call it a “pigskin,” but the football’s cover says cowhide. So where did this unusual name spring from? When I co-wrote [_Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game_](http://www.randomhouse.com/book/225667/newtons-football-by-allen-st-john-and-ainissa-g-ramirez-phd) with Allen St. John, we discovered that the name comes from the ball’s origin. When football began, the ball was fashioned from a pig’s bladder and was rounder than what we know today. A mathematician would call the shape of the modern-day football a prolate spheroid, which is just a fancy way to say that it is longer in one direction than it is in the other. A lemon is a prolate spheroid, a grape is a prolate spheroid, and so is a watermelon. **MORE**: [The Simple Way to Make Football Safer](http://time.com/3686040/super-bowl-nfl-helmets/) The design of the football evolved as the game did. The rounder shape in the days of actual pigskins worked well for a game based on carrying the ball. But as the forward pass was introduced, the ball grew more aerodynamic and became more pointed and prolate. Rocket scientists weep when the modern football travels through the air, because it displays the same physics needed for missiles to stay in the air and for rifles to shoot a bullet. But the ball was designed to be thrown, and all fans love to see a great pass between a quarterback and a receiver. When the ball drops, however, these warrior-like football players reduce to kindergarteners as they scramble for the fumble, since the bounce of the football is unpredictable. In a word, scientists would call it random. This unpredictability and randomness of the bounce brings drama to the game, making fumble recoveries a time when everyone’s heart pressure goes up. Unlike a baseball or a basketball, it is nearly impossible to predict where a football will go when it plummets to the ground. Try the experiment yourself. Let go of a football a few times from the same height and in the same way. The prolate spheroid will not land identically, and it is this randomness that keeps the coders at EA Sports up at night. In order for a video game ball bounce to seem real in the simulated world of Madden NFL, the ball alone requires about 10,000 lines of code to produce a flight pattern and a bounce we can believe. But this week, we have stumbled onto the science behind the football that we often overlook—the ball pressure. Deflate-Gate highlights the connection between temperature and pressure. Scientists would lovingly call this link the Ideal Gas Law. If you suffered through a chemistry class, you might have heard of it. But if you didn’t, or your memory fails you, don’t worry, because you already know the Ideal Gas Law intuitively. The law states that the pressure and temperature are in a dance: as one goes up, the other goes up. As one goes down, the other goes down, too. Think of it this way, if you put a balloon in a sub-zero freezer, you will find that it looks wrinkled and is undersized when you return. The cold deflates the balloon. As soon as you take the balloon out of those Arctic-like conditions, it will return to its old shape. Those of us who drive in cold weather experience this, too. When you start your car in the morning, the tire pressure will be low. But as the car gets moving, the tires heat up and the pressure indicator light turns off. It is this link between football pressure and temperature that put Mother Nature on trial over the past few days. Did the change in temperature from the locker room to the football field account for the football’s pressure change? Did Mother Nature do it? The answer is no, not fully. A systematic study is called for in order to know what really happened. But a more pressing question is how can we prevent a Deflate-gate from happening in the future? The way that footballs are pumped, equilibrated to the right temperature, and tested for pressure requires uniformity and perhaps transparency. Measuring the ball pressure right after it is pumped up will give you a wrong reading. So a standard recipe will ensure we are not distracted by deflated balls in the future. But, there is a bigger opportunity for footballs to enter the world of science and technology. In the future, the ball might include NASA-based pressure sensors that are embedded in the ball and used to monitor the pressure at all times. Such sensors currently exist in car tires. If they were added to footballs, officials and fans could keep an eye on the pressure through an app. Football has come a long way from its porcine roots, and now may be ready to enter the electronic age. But what has become clear over football’s history is the best way to understand America’s game is to follow the ball. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] We're in the midst of this concussion epidemic. How did we get here? [ MUSIC ] We have to look at the history of the helmet itself. Helmets, you know, if we think of the first helmet, you think of the leather head, or a helmet that doesn't have the facemask. And when Teddy Roosevelt was President ,. There was a year where 18 men died playing football. And the reason why they died is skull fractures. And so Teddy Roosevelt, who loved football, he said this is not gonna be good. So he got together all the teams that were around then, you know, Yale, Harvard, Rutgers. He said look, guys. We have to put some rules in place. And they put it together an institute to just kinda makes the game a little bit more safe. A couple years later they instituted the helmet, but it didn't have face mask. Now when we were studying football's history we saw that we got to this concussion epidemic around the 1950s. Because there's this gentlemen Otto Graham who was a quarterback, he had a huge gash on his face and his coach said look, were, I'm gonna lose this guy unless I protect his face. So his coach was Paul Brown and he made this. This plastic face mask when we put it on, onto the helmet. And soon, the face mask became a standard issue. Now, that doesn't seem like a big deal, it's a safety feature. But, it actually made the game more dangerous. And how did it do that? Well, it changed our behavior. Before, we used to tackle with our shoulders, we were afraid to break our noses and our jaws because we didn't have a face mask. Mask. But when the face mask was instituted. Well, then the helmet actually became weaponized. And we started tackling with our heads. So the helmet was never designed to mitigate concussions. It was designed to stop skull fractures. You can think of it as bubble wrap for the head. If you think of your head as an egg, your brain is the yolk. Your skull is the shell. The helmet is sort of bubble wrap on top of that. Prevents the shell from breaking, but it doesn't do anything to stop your yolk, or your brain from sloshing around. And that's what gives rise to a concussion. So, a lot of people say the concussion epidemic started in the 90s but we would say. That, that trend started in the 50s when the face mask was instituted. 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