Today's Tidbit... Three Things I Learned Today

This morning I read a master's thesis written in 1955 by Louis Voris at Eastern Illinois. A Guide to the Purchase of Football Equipment covers the cost and quality considerations related to purchasing football equipment and is a time capsule of football equipment in the mid-1950s. The time capsule taught me three things worth sharing with the football geeks that read these Tidbits.

First, I recently wrote about the history of white, yellow, and striped balls used for night games here and here. Those stories mentioned that the stripes painted on footballs proved slippery, resulting in either their elimination (NFL), removal from two of the four panels (NCAA), or acceptance (CFL). I did not know that the tanning process used to produce white and orange balls caused the balls to become slippery when wet (see Voris, p. 7), which likely contributed to the ultimate rejection of the yellow and white balls.