Patriots never quit

Although I am not really a football fan, our family watched the Super Bowl last night. As a native of New England, I was hoping for a Patriots win.

It didn’t look good for a long while, as the Falcons took a commanding lead, larger than any that had ever been overcome in Super Bowl history.

But the Patriots fought back to tie the game in the final seconds of regulation play and scored a touchdown in the first drive of overtime to win their fifth Super Bowl under current ownership, coach, and quarterback.

I woke up this morning thinking that patriots always fight back.

They do not quit.

And, eventually, despite the odds against them, they prevail.

It gives me hope that, despite the attempts of DT’s administration to dismantle or side-step our Constitutional rights, the balance of power among the three branches of government, and checks and balance, we patriots of 2017 will prevail, as have patriots since 1776.

And the reigning Super Bowl champions.

 

still dealing with deflated footballs?

Months ago, I weighed in more than once about the deflated football issue with the Patriots/Colts AFC championship game.

When the Wells report came out, I was too preoccupied with other issues to write about it, although I thought that its vague findings were in no way proof that should have punishments inflicted on Tom Brady or the team. Seriously, what court would convict on the basis of “more probable than not”  that someone was “at least generally aware of” breaking a rule?  Given the reaction in the press, I guess the court of public opinion…

At any rate, I just saw this link on a New England friend’s Facebook page:  http://blog.masslive.com/patriots/2015/06/independent_study_of_wells_rep.html.  The American Enterprise Institute has conducted an independent critique of the Wells report and found that the difference in pressure between the Patriots’ balls and the Colts’ balls at halftime is because the Patriots’ were tested at the beginning of halftime, when they were still cold, and the Colts’ at the end of halftime, when they had warmed significantly.

It’s our old friend the Ideal Gas Law at work again.

Science rules! Let’s hope that Brady’s appeal will be decided on the science rather than the court of public opinion and the dubious blame game.

I called it!

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about how physics could explain the deflated footballs in the Patriots’ game on Sunday.  I was just watching the evening news and saw coverage of a news conference given by the Patriots’ head coach, explaining that they did an experiment in which they re-created the temperature changes of last Sunday and found that the balls had their pressure drop one and a half psi when they were left outdoors at forty degrees after having been inflated to regulation 12.5 psi indoors.

Maybe the media and the NFL should have been reading my blog! 😉

deflated footballs

Unlike the majority of people in the United States, I don’t care for or about football. However, it’s been impossible to watch a news broadcast without seeing reference to the footballs that the Patriots used on Sunday being underinflated with the implication that someone must have tampered with them after they were tested by the officials.

But isn’t it possible the culprit was physics?

I’m assuming that the balls were prepared indoors, in a warm room, with the minimum psi allowed.  The balls would be properly inflated when they were checked a couple of hours before the game.  If the balls were then immediately moved out into the cold, the pressure would have dropped, given that the temperature outdoors would be fifty to sixty degrees colder. Ideal gas law and all that….

It’s the same mechanism that means that the first cold snap of the year brings a call from Grandma that her low tire pressure indicator in her car is lighting up. It’s not that someone sneaked into the garage and let air out of the tires. It’s just that the lower temperature means the air in the tires is exerting less pressure.

If that is how it happened, I guess you could argue that the Patriots followed the letter of the law rather than the spirit, but I think many fans and media are jumping to conclusions about foul play without any real evidence.

Maybe they should be shaking their fists at science.

This post is part of Just Jot It January: click the link and join in!  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/