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.

1896 Chicago-Purdue game ball (UChicago Magazine, Spring 2019)