A History of Game Balls
The NFL uses up to 36 footballs per game. Each team submits twelve balls prepared to meet their quarterbacks' tackiness and other preferences. The team-submitted balls get inspected by the officiating crew before the game to ensure they comply with league standards following the team's preparation. In addition, Wilson, the manufacturer of NFL footballs, sends twelve balls straight from the factory for use on kicking plays. K-balls entered the game in 2007 when the NFL decided teams took too many liberties with the balls used by league kickers.
Using up to 36 footballs in a game would seem preposterous to the game's old-timers. By tradition and then by rule, American football used one ball the entire game. Neither rain nor snow nor any other gloomy circumstance allowed a second ball to enter the game until 1917, when the increased use of the forward pass led the rule makers to amend the rules:
In the case of a wet field the ball may be changed for a new one at the end of the second period at the discretion of the Referee.
Camp, Walter. Spalding's 1918 Official Foot Ball Guide. New York: American Sports Publishing. 1918.
The 1917 rule change allowed the teams to use a second ball for the second half of a game, but it was unthinkable at the time that the game might evolve so that ball boys would shuttle balls in and out of the game to be dried and have mud removed. If a ball became waterlogged or muddy and challenging to punt, pass, or kick, so be it. The "game ball" literally was the game ball. By implication, there was only one game ball to award each game, unlike today's situation in which teams might award game balls to multiple individuals in the locker room postgame.
How the practice of awarding game balls originated is unclear, though it likely followed the pattern of seizing battle flags and equipment as trophies from defeated enemies. From early on among the elite Eastern colleges, the home team supplied the game ball, and the home team captain kept the ball if his team won and awarded the ball to the opposing captain if the home team lost. That did not always happen, which we will cover in a minute.
The earliest references relating to game balls come in several newspaper articles concerning Princeton football, which won many contests in football's first thirty years. The first describes the decorations for Princeton's 1886 commencement in which they draped the rostrum with a banner celebrating their victory over Yale in 1885, along with the "trophy football.”
Six years later, an article reporting on Princeton's athletic clubhouse mentioned a trophy room that included baseballs and football of their winning teams.
…the athletic clubhouse, one of the most magnificently appointed buildings of its kind in the country. There are within it sumptuous dressing rooms, with training tables for different teams. The diet is under medical supervision. The upper stories accommodate the "graduated coachers," who return and coach the team in season. There is of course a room for trophies. It contains the winning baseballs and football with banners and photographs of winning teams.
'The Princeton Boys,' Kansas City Journal, November 25, 1892.
While the winning team was supposed to leave the field with the game ball, boorishness sometimes prevented that from happening. According to an 1899 article, after Princeton lost to Penn for the first time in 1892, Princeton took the ball from the field and cut it into pieces, so Penn never received the ball. Likewise, a Yale player took the ball after losing to Harvard in 1891 and gave the game ball to a spectator, who pierced it with a knife and secreted the ball from the stadium by hiding the deflated ball in a blanket. Feeling guilty, Yale sent the ball to Harvard several months later, though the ball still had a hole in the bladder. In another example, a Harvard player kept the ball after losing to Penn in 1896, though Bert Waters, the Harvard coach, later sent the ball to Penn.
After those incidents, most everyone returned to their senses, and hosts graciously gave the game ball to the victors following losses and some ties. Even offering the game ball after tie games could lead to disputes, as occurred in Fritz Crisler's first season coaching Minnesota in 1930, when they tied a favored Stanford team 0-0. As the coaches met after the game, Crisler offered the ball to Stanford coach Pop Warner, but the irascible Warner refused to accept it, instead telling Crisler where to stick the ball.
Despite more than one game ball nowadays, awarding a game ball to one or more key individuals who contributed to a win remains a wonderful tradition, but let’s ensure they don't become participation trophies.
Postscript
Shortly after publishing this story, I came across information pushing the game ball back to the time of the first American football games.
Following on the 1874 Harvard-McGill games, an All-Canada team comprised of students from McGill and other Canadian universities challenged Harvard to a rugby match in Montreal in October 1875. They also played in Cambridge in May 1876 and in Montreal that October, with Harvard winning all three games. Following one of those games, the All-Canada team presented Harvard with the game ball.
In the Fall of 1876, Princeton and Yale played a game on Thanksgiving Day, one week after the IFA met to approve playing future games under rugby rules. Apparently, no one at Princeton owned a rugby ball, so Harvard gave them the game ball from the All-Canada game. After Yale beat Princeton in that game, the Tigers presented the ball to the Bulldogs. The ball now resides in Yale’s Kiphuth Trophy Room at Payne Whitney Gymnasium.
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