Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Has anyone tracked how and whether the NFL ball has changed over the years, both cosmetically and structurally? And did changes affect play? I contend even a stripe on the ball will make it easier to see and catch. This whole Juiced-ball Era in MLB got me thinking.

Frankly I'm not certain but I do believe slight upgrades were probably made over time to make it more grippable and easier to catch especially in challenging weather conditions

The real big change has been the NFL looking the other way and allowing receivers to use absurd sticky gloves. And they want this so they can have these fake "amazing" catches go viral on the news and social media. Great one handed catches were an incredible rarity at one point. Now guys are throwing one hand up and the ball just sticks. It's absurd and cheapens things

My understanding is the ball has changed dramatically in size, shape and color over the years, especially if one looks back to the early game.
Further, there were differences between leagues playing at the same time.

I would be interested in reading a treatise on the subject...

There was an NFL Films "A Football Life" program a year or so called "The Forward Pass", and my favorite segment dealt with Boomer Esiason on a football field with a bunch of the older footballs they used to use over the past 100 years and his attempts to throw them. It gets into the different balls that have been used over the years. NFL Films probably has it up on their site, I just checked the youtube and it is available there although I will not provide a linkage.

I really dislike the catching gloves, I think the only difference between the gloves and the stickum stuff they used to use back in the 70's is that it's much better than stickum ever was, and the stickum doesn't get all over the ball anymore. I remember in the recent Gronkowski thread, there was a post linking to an article stating something to the extent of he was the most effective tight end or receiver ever, which I didn't read, but I think is absurd due to the fact he gets an abnormal advantage due to those gloves. The problem is, if the NFL tries to ban the gloves now, the players union will fight them over it because it will hurt the stats (read - future bargaining power) of the receivers, because they can't use those gloves anymore, and not just the receivers, but it will also hurt the QB's stats too. I was explaining the issues I had with these gloves to somebody recently, and they were actually trying to justify the necessity of those gloves by saying they were no different than baseball gloves, to which I replied Lynn Swann and Drew Pearson made spectacular catches without those gloves, and try to catch a 100 MPH fastball without a catcher's glove and see how that feels.

Along the same lines, I have also always had a problem with the kicking ball that they use for kickoffs and field goals and extra points, and I presume they also use it for punting. Using a different ball just because it travels further when you kick it just doesn't seem fair; you should use the same ball throughout.

Rupert Patrick wrote:There was an NFL Films "A Football Life" program a year or so called "The Forward Pass", and my favorite segment dealt with Boomer Esiason on a football field with a bunch of the older footballs they used to use over the past 100 years and his attempts to throw them. It gets into the different balls that have been used over the years. NFL Films probably has it up on their site, I just checked the youtube and it is available there although I will not provide a linkage.

I really dislike the catching gloves, I think the only difference between the gloves and the stickum stuff they used to use back in the 70's is that it's much better than stickum ever was, and the stickum doesn't get all over the ball anymore. I remember in the recent Gronkowski thread, there was a post linking to an article stating something to the extent of he was the most effective tight end or receiver ever, which I didn't read, but I think is absurd due to the fact he gets an abnormal advantage due to those gloves. The problem is, if the NFL tries to ban the gloves now, the players union will fight them over it because it will hurt the stats (read - future bargaining power) of the receivers, because they can't use those gloves anymore, and not just the receivers, but it will also hurt the QB's stats too. I was explaining the issues I had with these gloves to somebody recently, and they were actually trying to justify the necessity of those gloves by saying they were no different than baseball gloves, to which I replied Lynn Swann and Drew Pearson made spectacular catches without those gloves, and try to catch a 100 MPH fastball without a catcher's glove and see how that feels.

Along the same lines, I have also always had a problem with the kicking ball that they use for kickoffs and field goals and extra points, and I presume they also use it for punting. Using a different ball just because it travels further when you kick it just doesn't seem fair; you should use the same ball throughout.

It should be but it's a key ingredient in the NFL's agenda to eliminate kickoffs. They want a ball to travel further to make kickoff returns rarer and rarer. Also why they call so many phantom penalties on returns. The referees are instructed to call anything that may look like a hold or a block in the back that would almost never be called on a conventional play from scrimmage.

Because when they finally do ban that play fans will be like "well it's mostly either touchbacks or penalties now anyway"

Rupert Patrick wrote:There was an NFL Films "A Football Life" program a year or so called "The Forward Pass", and my favorite segment dealt with Boomer Esiason on a football field with a bunch of the older footballs they used to use over the past 100 years and his attempts to throw them. It gets into the different balls that have been used over the years. NFL Films probably has it up on their site, I just checked the youtube and it is available there although I will not provide a linkage.

I really dislike the catching gloves, I think the only difference between the gloves and the stickum stuff they used to use back in the 70's is that it's much better than stickum ever was, and the stickum doesn't get all over the ball anymore. I remember in the recent Gronkowski thread, there was a post linking to an article stating something to the extent of he was the most effective tight end or receiver ever, which I didn't read, but I think is absurd due to the fact he gets an abnormal advantage due to those gloves. The problem is, if the NFL tries to ban the gloves now, the players union will fight them over it because it will hurt the stats (read - future bargaining power) of the receivers, because they can't use those gloves anymore, and not just the receivers, but it will also hurt the QB's stats too. I was explaining the issues I had with these gloves to somebody recently, and they were actually trying to justify the necessity of those gloves by saying they were no different than baseball gloves, to which I replied Lynn Swann and Drew Pearson made spectacular catches without those gloves, and try to catch a 100 MPH fastball without a catcher's glove and see how that feels.

Along the same lines, I have also always had a problem with the kicking ball that they use for kickoffs and field goals and extra points, and I presume they also use it for punting. Using a different ball just because it travels further when you kick it just doesn't seem fair; you should use the same ball throughout.

Recently the Steve Largent A Football Life was shown again. Largent didn't use gloves and made no telling how many great catches, along with breaking the records for receptions, yardage, and TDs.

The NFL Films video "The Gift of Grab" had some ridiculous highlights of guys making one-handed catches. I think this is the video that showed Joe Washington making a flat-out, full-dive one-handed catch inches from the ground. It was surreal, maybe the best catch I've ever seen, although Wendell Tyler's mid-air, nearly upside down TD while getting hit against the 49ers is hard to top IMHO.

Bo Rather made a catch while just about upside down too, and I've heard (but never seen) rumors that Lance Alworth made an upside down catch that might have been one-handed.

St. Louis TE J.V. Cain was once the subject of a Football Digest story about how he regularly made one-handed catches.

John Stallworth made them routinely as well, including on balls that were impossible for him to catch inbounds, but he caught them anyway even if he landed OOB.

I think as the passing game took off in the 1960s, that throughout the "pre-glove" era which extended through part of the 1980s, all the better receivers could make bare-handed one-handed catches. They pretty much had to. And the "golf gloves" that some receivers and DBs used probably didn't help all that much. I seem to recall Joe Lavender being the first guy to get noticed for his golf gloves, and others tried them from there.

I remember in the pre-merger years the announcers and press made mention of the fact that there was an AFL ball and an NFL ball, and I seem to remember for the Super Bowl they'd used the NFL ball when the NFL was on offense and the AFL ball when the AFL was on offense. I found some history regarding the AFL ball here, but no mention if the dimensions were a bit different compared to the NFL football.

http://www.remembertheafl.com/J6-V.html

Evan wrote:The NFL Films video "The Gift of Grab" had some ridiculous highlights of guys making one-handed catches. I think this is the video that showed Joe Washington making a flat-out, full-dive one-handed catch inches from the ground. It was surreal, maybe the best catch I've ever seen, although Wendell Tyler's mid-air, nearly upside down TD while getting hit against the 49ers is hard to top IMHO.

Bo Rather made a catch while just about upside down too, and I've heard (but never seen) rumors that Lance Alworth made an upside down catch that might have been one-handed.

St. Louis TE J.V. Cain was once the subject of a Football Digest story about how he regularly made one-handed catches.

John Stallworth made them routinely as well, including on balls that were impossible for him to catch inbounds, but he caught them anyway even if he landed OOB.

I think as the passing game took off in the 1960s, that throughout the "pre-glove" era which extended through part of the 1980s, all the better receivers could make bare-handed one-handed catches. They pretty much had to. And the "golf gloves" that some receivers and DBs used probably didn't help all that much. I seem to recall Joe Lavender being the first guy to get noticed for his golf gloves, and others tried them from there.

If I were a coach, and my team lost a game because some hotshot WR dropped a last-minute pass in the end zone trying to make spectacular one-handed grab when he could have easily caught it had he used both hands, I'd cut him. Fundamentals have to be stressed for the good of the team.

The NFL instituted the "K" football to be used on all kicking/punting plays at the start of the 1999 season. These footballs are brand-new, and have not been broken in by any player. A brand new football does not travel as far as a football that has been broken in. That was the purpose of the League using a separate football for kicking plays. They did not want the football to travel as far.

Prior to that, kickers could "prepare" a game-used football by softening the leather by various methods, so the ball would rebound off the foot better, and thus travel farther. The fact that kickers and punters are able to kick the new "K" balls farther than past players shows how much more skill/ability the new kickers have than those in the past.