Leather University™
Inside an NFL Football: The Duke K-Ball
by Dan Concord
Author, speaker, teacher, and educator on leather working tools and techniques.
Leather University™
Author, speaker, teacher, and educator on leather working tools and techniques.
This is a game-used NFL football, and there is so much going on beyond what we see. We’re going to give you an inside look into how it’s made, the leather used, and the tannery it comes from.
We’ll also check out what makes it special. This is a K-Ball, securely hand-delivered to officials by the manufacturer on game day. Finally, we’re going to cut it open. You’ll get an inside look into the quality of the leather and its construction, and we’ll talk about ideas for giving it a second life as game-used custom leather goods.
So, get ready, let’s dive right in.
Leather is very durable and is key to almost every large professional sport worldwide, including football. While we often call it a pigskin, footballs at the professional level are primarily made from cowhides. The leather used for NFL footballs comes from the Horween Leather Company, which is based in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
The company was founded in 1905 and began making NFL football leather in the 1940s. The founders, two sons, Arnold and Ralph, even played professional football themselves. The specific football leather was developed and produced by Arnold Horween Sr. after playing football and also head coaching the Harvard football team.
The special football leather is a top grade cowhide treated with Horween, a unique blend of extracts and tanning processes that provides its quality and performance elements, making it unique from any other type of leather. The leather then goes to the Wilson Sporting Goods Football Manufacturing Plant in Ohio, where they’ve been making NFL footballs since 1941.
There are around 125 workers at the factory, and for years, only about two to three people stitched all of the balls. So, if there was a ball in an NFL game at that time, it likely came through the hands of just those few people. It’s incredible!
This ball is a K-Ball, and we can tell that because it has a letter K marked on it. It’s different from most NFL footballs, which don’t have that marking. A K-Ball, otherwise known as a kicking ball, is used only for kicking plays in a game. Wilson hand-delivers these balls to the game officials on the day of the game, so they never touch player hands until just a few hours before kickoff.
To give a little more background, Wilson sends new footballs to every team for their upcoming game each week. The team equipment managers usually prepare those balls through varying processes of roughing them up, softening the leather, and any physical alterations that fit the quarterback’s preferences, all while keeping them within NFL standards. The K-Balls, six in total, are specially marked by Wilson and then hand-delivered under security from Wilson to the game crew on game day.
The game officials will then give three kicking balls to each team 2 hours and 30 minutes before kickoff. That allows the kickers and the team staff enough time to make alterations.
So, what looks like a usual football, which it is, has a lot of things going on with it, including:
There’s obviously an incredible story behind this ball, including where it came from and what it did on game day.
Now, let’s take a look inside. To do that, we’re going to use a couple of different tools, including a small knife and a seam ripper. Then we have a piece of football leather. This is a little different than our NFL leather, which will be of higher quality, I believe. So, we’ll check this out and see how it compares to the leather from the football. We also have a swatch ring, which will tell us how thick the leather is.
The first thing we’ll do is take the laces apart, which are all hand-stitched. Here’s how it looks without the laces. So we’ve got these stitches that go on the outside, and then here is another set of stitching.
When we open the ball up, we can see a couple of things going on inside. We’ve got the bladder in the ball and a protective piece on top to protect the bladder from the seams.
With the bladder removed, we can really see the football and that there’s a lining inside, almost like a fabric lining. It looks like some of the panels are numbered individually, and we have some reinforcing for stitching. So, let’s continue taking out the panels, and then we can look at it all opened up.
Using the knife, we’ll gently cut through the stitching that is holding the panels together and pull them apart.
Here are the four panels of a football. So, I think the stitching actually joins a white backing fabric to the leather itself. I’m going to pull this apart, and we can see there’s actually no glue. We just have heavy stitching from this material. It almost seems like a very dense thick heavy canvas. Then, we have our leather underneath. That’s amazing to see.
There’s the inner material, the outside layer, obviously, that we’re familiar with, and the inside is the unfinished or raw side. It’s also referred to as the flesh side of leather. Obviously, the leather is going to start as a flat piece. So, to be able to take on this round form and then structure and maintain it, there are probably some steps in the manufacturing process that will press on this panel with heat and maybe moisture and then let it dry so that it’ll take this form.
Let’s compare the football leather to our purchased sample. The purchased sample has a bumpy texture, and the flesh side is below it, so we can see two edges, the football on top and the other one below. The football leather is pretty thick. We can now take our sample ring and tell you around what thickness or weight this leather is, and it looks like we’re around a 4 to 5-ounce as a match.
Then, if we look at our sample that we can buy online. It’s about a 5 to 6-ounce. So it’s going to be a little bit heavier than what we’re seeing in the actual leather used in the footballs.
Now, it looks like we’ve got a multilayered bladder. I’m not sure of the exact materials. It feels plasticky, but that could certainly relate to a lot of things. I noticed that I could almost pinch and move the two layers. Next, we’ll take the hobby knife and open it up a little bit, and then we’ll explore the inside.
On the inside, there’s another layer of that clear material. So, it looks like it’s a three-layer approach, which are probably puncture-resistant layers. If we look at the air filler part, it has a bead around it, and I grabbed a typical air-filling needle that we could put in it so we could see from the inside what was going on.
So, I’ll essentially put the air needle in and push it through to the inside. That’s where the air will go in to fill the ball and the bladder, and then when it’s done filling, it will come out. That hole will close up, and the ball will have air.
All right, now let’s check out the sensor. On the outside, it looks like it has a basic protective cover. We’ll essentially take apart the plastic cover and the sensor should just pop right out. It also has the FCC ID and other information under it.
It looks like the whole unit probably comes as a preconfigured unit with that ID, the chip, and its cover, which probably then goes into the manufacturing process and is attached via the seal. There is also a metal piece. It’s possible that it functions as some sort of antenna.
So that’s what’s inside an NFL football. Here we have all the pieces in the football: the sensor itself, the bladder and those elements, and, most importantly, we have our leather. If you know what the PS stands for on the ball, please share, as well as if you know what any of the other markings mean, such as the P on the corner. I’m so curious what those are.
To give this leather a second life, these panels could be so many things, from watch straps to wallets, part of a notebook cover, parts of jewelry, or inlaid into rings. Share your imagination; you could likely think of things far beyond what we have. We really want to hear what you’ve got in mind because this could make some really special leather goods.
With that, we could also honor the heritage of football and all that goes into making the leather itself, and the footballs that get used on game day.
There’s a lot that goes into making footballs, and it’s been really fun checking this out. It was a lot of exploring, and there were plenty of surprises along the way. So, if you enjoyed this, please share, and if you have questions, please let us know.
And there you have it. Until next time.
Dan Concord is a professional leather crafter with 15 years of design experience and expertise. He is founder of the successful Liberty Leather Goods studio, and also a published author, speaker, teacher, and educator on leather working tools and techniques. He lives in the USA.
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