The Shape of the Ball

The game we love name shares the same identity as the ball that is used to play it. The football itself just like the game has gone through quite the metamorphic ride. We want to share the basic shape evolution with you in this edition.

Historic Facts about the ball itself

Predecessors of the football

Here are some interesting facts on how the actual ball in football has changed over time.

We learned in the PigskinDispatch.com Football History articles that the Ancient Greeks and Romans played games that American football eventually shooted off from. In the Greek epic Odessa,  the daughter of King Alkinoos,  Nausikaa, was found playing a ball game with her servants on the beach. Thereafter, King's sons, Laodamas and Halios, started to play in honor of Odysseus. The first one threw a giant purple ball with both hands while the second, caught it while in the air. We may never know the exact size of this ball but one could assume that using the word giant must take it to near beach ball size.

The Ancient Spartan warriors later evolved the game written in the epic to their own training game called Episkyros. The ball in this game was about the size of a modern soccer ball. FIFA rules deem that a regulation soccer ball is a round sphere 8.65 inches in diameter.

Later in history, the Romans played a similar game of which they called harpastum. Harpastum was known as “the small ball game.” It had similar objectives to its Greek predecessor but it used a ball of about the same size and hardness of a modern softball in its early beginnings. The ASA tells us that a modern regulation softball is a round sphere 11 to 12 inches in circumference. Eventually the Harpastum ball changed in size and hardness as it soon was made from a stitched leather skin and stuffed with chopped sponges or animal fur and eventually and measured about 8 inches in diameter.

This led to the evolution of the soccer ball which we already stated is about 8.65 inches in diameter. This led to the school of Rugby in England to start playing the “Quad Game” that eventually took the name of the school that it was first played at. According to RugbyFootballHistory.com, a couple of men associated with this original Rugby game because they lived near the playing fields, Richard Lindon and William Gilbert started making balls for the sport.  Since the men were owners of a shoe making business the original balls were made of four leather hand stitched panels sewn over an inflated pig’s bladder. The pig’s bladder gave the ball its distinctive shape which was described by the site as being more of a plum shape than oval. Before a match volunteers were reported recruited to take on the undesirable task of inflating the ball. Not a job for the faint of heart as the pig's bladder would be in the pungent “green state” and would be inflated by air directly from the mouth of its inflator. 

Football takes Shape

It is unknown of any written sizes of these early balls, but in 1892 the official size of the ball was recorded to be a length of 11 to 11.25 inches with a circumference end to end of 30 to 31 inches and a width circumference of 25.5 to 26 inches. Total weight was to be 12 to 13 ounces and hand sewn with no more than 8 stitches per inch.

We know from historic records written down by Parke H. Davis that the early versions of football in America bounced back and forth between the round soccer ball and the rugby style ball depending on where the game was played and what rules were used. The bladder evolved into a rubber bladder about the time of the Rutgers/Princeton game of 1869 for the round soccer style ball used but still required a human mouth to directly inflate it. Reports from the second Rutger/Princeton game show that the contest was stopped multiple times in order for players to take turns to  re-inflate the deflated ball. The procedure was arduous, as the ball would have to be unlaced to expose the bladder and then a key would be brought in to unlock a small nozzle to inflate the ball. According to an article in PopularMechanics.com early manufacturers struggled for many years on keeping the balls inflated and the ball’s round shape made it difficult to throw under game conditions.

One witness of the Princeton-Rutgers game in 1869 remembered,

"The ball was not an oval but was supposed to be completely round. It never was, though — it was too hard to blow up right. The game was stopped several times that day while the teams called for a little key from the sidelines. They used it to unlock the small nozzle which was tucked into the ball, and then took turns blowing it up. The last man generally got tired and they put it back in play somewhat lopsided." Could this be the reason the ball is shaped so oddly to this day? The article from the site also says that in 1886 Peck and Snyder Sporting Goods catalog offered a syringe style device aptly named the New Patent Foot Ball Inflator, which allowed footballs to be fully inflated in under five minutes as opposed to the nearly half hour by mouth!

In 1874 the famous Harvard vs. McGill games the ball was more of a watermelon shape, still a difficult shape to throw under duress, but pitches and flips became prevalent in the game which were conducive to the ball's size and awkward shape. The ball stayed about the same size and shape until 1912. Bear in mind the forward pass came about in 1906!  1920 brought in the era of pre-laced footballs whereas the unlacing of the balls was not required anymore for inflation because a stem similar to a tire was connected to the interior bladder but caused a lump under the laces. In 1924 Wilson Sporting Goods with the assistance of Notre Dame Coach Knute Rockne presented the double-lined football which eliminated the stem and started a dramatic shape change of the ball for easier throwing.
Then came 1935, where the NFL shortened the its ball to a short axis between 21-1/4 and 21-1/2 in. The ball's length was shortened that year to between 11 and 11-1/4 in., and the amount of air that it could hold was set at 12.5 to 13.5 psi. Its long axis of 28 to 28-1/2 in., however, did not change. These dimensions remain today, as does the ball's shape, which has been called a "prolate spheroid" since 1890.
The ball and rules may have changed over time, but the fun and integrity had by players and fans has had its core remain. In today's NFL game there are to be 36 footballs ready for use by NFL rules! Football's attraction to the masses keeps growing!