Even if you aren’t the biggest sports fan in the world, it has been nearly impossible to ignore the fact that the Super Bowl is this Sunday between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots.
Inspired by the Deflate Gate debacle – which, for sanity purposes we will not rehash here – we’ve decided to take a look at arguably the most important part of playing football: the football itself.
Wilson has been making all of the footballs for the National Football League since 1941. And every single one of them is manufactured in a plant located in Ada, Ohio. This one facility makes more than 700,000 footballs each year. The ones that meet the stringent requirements of the NFL will be used as game balls across the league. Others are sent off for sale as the “official football” for people to purchase for their own backyard games.
PGlmcmFtZSBzcmM9Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmUuY29tL2VtYmVkL0s4a1pQNGRSZTN3P3JlbD0wIiB3aWR0aD0iNjQwIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjQ4MCIgZnJhbWVib3JkZXI9IjAiIGFsbG93ZnVsbHNjcmVlbj0iYWxsb3dmdWxsc2NyZWVuIj48L2lmcmFtZT4=
Watch the video again and this count the number of machines used, the amount of power required to produce one football and you can start to see the clear ties to the oil and natural gas industry. From the electricity required to run the plant to the raw materials used, energy is everywhere. And that of course doesn’t even take into consideration the vast amounts of energy used at the Super Bowl itself between lighting, fertilizer for the field, the pom poms used by the cheerleaders, and not to mention the ink required to make all of those nifty GO TEAM GO signs.
Natural gas is very much a big part of the largest sporting event each year – you just have to know where to look.
