Quote Originally Posted by newfcollins View Post
Page 8 of the report.

The footballs are not supposed to be under 12.5 PSI. Look at the Pats balls. Five of them are in the 10s, according to one of the testers. Of 11 balls being tested by two testers, every one is under-inflated, and only one of the 22 tests had even one of the balls at 12 or higher. Thirteen of the 22 tests had the balls at least one full PSI less than regulation.

Same page, look at the Colts footballs. One tester had all four footballs at regulation, and the other tester said three of the four were under-inflated. So that's three of eight tests (not 3/4). The lowest football came in at 12.15.

So the Colts worst test on a football still had a higher PSI than the Pats highest-inflated football.

If the Pats were hovering around 12.5, this wouldn't be an issue.

But hey, why be a slave to facts and stuff.
But here's the problem. They know which gauges were used at halftime because they used both, and one gauge clearly shows a pressure that is consistently 0.3 to 0.5 psi higher than the other. But the referee (Walt Anderson) doesn't recall which gauge he used to initially test the balls before the game, although the Well's report chooses to state that to the best of his recollection he used the lower pressure gauge, even though he is on record elsewhere stating that he doesn't remember which gauge he used.

Therefore, if you aren't absolutely sure which gauge was used initially (and they aren't), scientifically speaking, you should assume the conservative scenario. Thus we have to assume that the pressure gauge used before the game was the one reading the higher pressure. Based on that gauge, it is entirely possible that the majority, if not all, of the balls were indeed inflated to 12.5 psi before the game and the pressure drop measured at halftime is within the limits of the ideal gas law, which would have caused a pressure drop somewhere in the range of 1.6 psi.

This doesn't even take into account the error of the gauges themselves or any human error that may have occurred during the testing process expanding the potential pressure drop even further.

The information available is just far too shaky to draw any hard conclusions from. Based on the evidence it is possible that the balls were deflated at some point, but there is absolutely no way you can draw any kind of legitimate conclusion from the information available.