OT :Roger "Deflategate" Goodell wants to make decisions based on science
Roger Godell, the guy who propagated "Deflategate" because nobody understood the Ideal Gas Law that I learned in Chemistry Class in 10th grade, now wants to base decisions on science! Subsequent to Aaron Rodgers injury, the NFLPA has called for all stadiums to be natural grass, though some players apparently think Field Turf is great. Goodell says, "the NFL and the NFLPA will lean on science and data before making any leaguewide decisions on the issue." OMG!!
September 13th, 2023 at 7:22 PM ^
Some of these complaints in the article about grass, like there is “better footing on turf” is the exact reason grass has less injuries. Yes you are going to slip on the grass instead of ripping apart your Achilles tendon or ACL.
The other complaints about grass can be solved by doing what they do at the State Farm Stadium in Arizona and now Allegiant Stadium in Vegas with a retractable field…which is super cool.
The only real issue for the NFL and owners is the higher cost of grass.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:26 PM ^
I thought one of the complaints about grass is because you slip more you get more minor injuries, pulled muscles and such. But because turf is stickier, you end up with more major injuries.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:57 PM ^
The retractable field in Arizona, where Michigan lost to TCU, was (essentially) universally blamed by Michigan fans for being too slippery. So whatever...
September 13th, 2023 at 8:21 PM ^
More slippery but less injuries. The slippery part applies to both teams.
The problem with that game (at least as far as the playing surface is concerned) is TCU plays on grass and Michigan plays on field turf. When you play on grass regularly like TCU you have a better idea of how hard a cut you can make without slipping.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:41 PM ^
There's a difference between a stable grass field that has more give and a grass field that is damaged or has a dead root system that has inconsistent or unreliable footing. The Super Bowl had bad footing; places like Soldier Field and Heinz Field (or whatever it is called now) have, on occasion, become disastrous. Places like Tennessee and Baltimore have had to go synthetic because things get so bad late in the year.
September 14th, 2023 at 9:05 AM ^
This is the issue: Grass is a living, changing thing. It requires enormous amounts of care and water. Often, applications of weird stuff, though the science has advanced tremendously. The hippies in the interdisciplinary ecology program at UF once calculated that the UF football field used more water than the city of Kabul annually. (UF has, unsurprisingly, pioneered some amazing grass varieties.) Astroturf is stable, and long appealed to funding entities as cheaper, even when you have to rip it out now and then. You have more major injuries, yes, but my daughter tells me that the newer varieties are safer--you know the manufacturers are working on it. Whether some of those drawbacks are inherent, can really be overcome. . .
Maybe time to go back to grass; initiatives like this could mean beaucoups of jobs if we wanted to give them to pesky people; the push is usually to remove them from the picture. (Who buys all the tinsel when no one has jobs, I'm never sure.) Football consumes a lot of resources. Lotta paving, fossil fuel, rising and falling seasonal levels of consumption, impacts. Mr. Goodell wants go beyond 'science' and consider the public good. . . might be a fascinating initiative in there somewhere, and some shocking stats, too. I know that the amount of chemicals and harms that went with golf courses used to be enormous, have been addressed some. . .
On a somewhat related side note: Was laughing to my wife about how when it rains and games are canceled thousands of cars have to turn around at Tallahassee's soccer fields, sometimes several nights a week, and make the long slog back to town, sometimes leaving local roads a muddy mess. Lot of expenditure of time and fossil fuel. When I was a kid you walked to your local school for practice, and came home if it was too wet, but usually practiced (and that was fun). There's astroturf there which the adult leagues play on in Tallahassee's Meadows fields where the temps were reaching 115 this summer; cleats were melting.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:32 PM ^
The natural turf at State Farm was criticized because of the issues during the Super Bowl as well. The NFL Sodfather couldn’t even prepare it properly
September 14th, 2023 at 8:30 AM ^
universally blamed by Michigan fans for being too slippery.
That field was terrible and the same issues popped up during the Super Bowl. You can have grass fields that don't have 1mm long roots that rip out every time someone plants.
I hate MSU's grass field because it likewise rips apart too easily, resulting in a lumbering QB juking 2 LBs and a Safety on a scramble for 20 yards. Tyler O'Connor looked like Josh Allen a few times because of that field.
It has to do with climate obviously, but some southern grass fields work really well and don't have the shedding issues the Phoenix field had.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:38 PM ^
How would they make it work at stadiums like Ford Field where there is no room for retractable fields?
September 13th, 2023 at 10:46 PM ^
Check out what they did with the new Real Madrid pitch. Would be pricey but that could be a solution for some teams.
September 14th, 2023 at 12:56 PM ^
The grass field in Arizona is terrible. There are plenty of great grass fields out there; I'd never point to that one as an example of the possibilities with grass fields.
September 14th, 2023 at 9:39 AM ^
I'd like to hear from the OP how the Ideal Gas Law somehow allows a team's balls to deflate balls to under the NFL rules requirement without intentional influence? As I tell my kids, if you don't like a law, work to change it. Otherwise, you're obligated to the follow the rules of the society you live in. Does the Ideal Gas Law change the rules, because, as a someone with a chemistry degree, I'm pretty sure that any environmental conditions wouldn't have lowered the PSI by 15%. Now, one could certainly ridicule Goodell for picking and choosing which rules to enforce more ferociously, given the epidemic of domestic and sexual violence in the NFL.
September 14th, 2023 at 12:46 PM ^
Not the OP, but it's pretty simple. PV =nRT. In terms of a football, V, n, and R are constant. Thus, as Temperature changes, the Pressure changes. The air pressure in a ball measured at room temperature (e.g., before they are brought out of the locker rooms) will be higher than the air pressure in the same ball when measured after the ball has been in cooler conditions for an extended period of time (e.g., outdoors in New England during a winter late afternoon/evening). If the former pressure measurement is just above lower limits, the latter pressure measurement will be below. Simple science.
September 14th, 2023 at 1:49 PM ^
Not to be an ass, but I have to question if you're actually a chemist if you don't know how the ideal gas law would have affected the air pressure inside a ball that was outside in New England in winter.
September 14th, 2023 at 3:51 PM ^
He didn't say that he doesn't believe that the air pressure would have been impacted. It's that he doesn't believe it would account for percentage it actually dropped.
Which... the science certainly agrees with. It wasn't a cold new england winter day that day, it was 50 degrees out. A 20-25F drop in temp would not drop the pressure in the ball from 12.5 to 10.5
We know how much the pressure in the ball is suppose to decrease based on temp changes using the Ideal Gas Law.
Let's use 70F, which is 294K
And lets use 50F, which is 283K
That's about a 3% difference in K, which means we would expect to see a roughly 3% reduction in absolute pressure in the ball. Which is not what we see here.
September 15th, 2023 at 8:50 AM ^
Not to be a reciprocal ass, but I did mention that the balls were 15% lower than required, which the Ideal Gas Law would predict requires a decrease in temperature to ~ -10 degrees F (assuming the balls were inflated indoors at ~ 70 degrees F. Also, one (of ~15) the referees looked at remained at the pregame requisite pressure. Hmmm. Common sense would seem to fit a post-check deflation, forgetting one ball. The ideal gas law ("science") would not support a conclusion that this was environmental.
September 15th, 2023 at 6:04 PM ^
A's for Bushwood and YellowDart
PV = nRT
P/T = nR/V
n, V essentially constant; R constant, so:
P1/T1 = P2/T2 (state 1 = room T; state 2 = outdoor game T; P2 is "game pressure")
P2 = (P1 * T2) / T1 --> and as legions of profs have said, put your Temps in Kelvin.
I'm always happy to do a little Gen Chem.
September 13th, 2023 at 6:42 PM ^
Thomas Dolby approves this message.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:38 PM ^
It's poetry in motion.
September 13th, 2023 at 6:43 PM ^
I think they all should be grass too. Not for science but for old school style mud and snow games.
September 14th, 2023 at 8:33 AM ^
How could they run on a muddy field?
September 14th, 2023 at 9:51 AM ^
There was a reason all northern schools switched to field artificial turf. Folks have such short memories of the sods of turf being torn up and the dirt down the center section of field (mud if rain, snow, etc).
September 14th, 2023 at 9:58 AM ^
I'm guessing UM's attempt to reintroduce natural grass in the 90's was abandoned because of our inability to keep a stable field....... and probably cost.
September 13th, 2023 at 6:45 PM ^
NFL and the NFLPA will lean on science
So, Facebook posts
I would like to see how they do all grass in domes.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:04 PM ^
Yeah this sounds more like “science” than science.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:46 PM ^
Not every dome was built to do that though.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:57 PM ^
Ford Field was definitely not built for that but they made the change to natural grass just this past off-season to protect the players. It's not easy, but it's doable.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:21 PM ^
You almost had me. I thought: How in hell are they growing grass at Ford Field?
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Two months after the NFL Players Association called for a ban on the type of turf used at Ford Field, the Detroit Lions are installing a new surface for 2023.
The Lions said Monday they are switching from a slit-film turf to a monofilament field turf, which is considered the most grass-like surface of the three kinds of turf used in NFL stadiums.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:37 PM ^
The slit-film-style turf is the specific type of turf that the NFLPA called to ban last year. I believe most such installations have been the Fieldturf product, but other manufacturers produce it as well. The differences between types is more significant than the manufacturers.
Ford Field and Metlife stadium both made this change over the offseason, which over time *should* improve the fields and responses to them.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:35 PM ^
Surely retrofitting would involve, you know, retrofitting.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:59 PM ^
I knew about State Farm but was thinking about Ford Field
Edit: Just read NotaDuck
September 13th, 2023 at 8:16 PM ^
Yeah no. Ford Field most definitely does not have natural grass. They just switched to monofilament field turf from the old slit-film turf.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:43 PM ^
Yeah, the Fords are bean counters and would never make the investment for Grass.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:38 PM ^
It was offered in jest because I still think it's hilarious.
September 13th, 2023 at 10:47 PM ^
The game was played exclusively on grass for 50 years in all these NFL locations from Minnesota to Miami.
The first artificial turf was installed in the late 60s to save money.
And it was Astroturf in, of course,the Astrodome.
September 13th, 2023 at 11:04 PM ^
And the fields were absolutely abominable for 50 years. They didn't call it the "Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field" for nothing; it used to be an absolutely horrible surface in the winter, and Lions fans of Barry Sanders vintage remember him trying to hobble around on that monstrosity with basically no grip to move, run, or cut.
Even more recently, Miami visited Pittsburgh in a glorious abomination of a football game in driving rain that ended 3-0 due to Somme-quality field conditions and featured a punt that landed in the wet mud and did not bounce. (8:50 of the linked video). That was 16 years ago, when Tom Brady was a veteran.
Things have gotten better, and I am very much open to arguments that the time has come to work toward getting grass in all stadiums. But there's still some work to do to make that work.
September 13th, 2023 at 11:24 PM ^
This Dolphins fan hated when the Dolphins and Marlins shared a stadium because of the infield dirt and football players would slip on it.
I was at a Dolphins game and saw the kicker miss a field goal on the dirt and I shouted,” That damn dirt”
If Michigan would ever change back to grass, I know one person who would love to mown the grass
September 14th, 2023 at 1:05 AM ^
It seems like Barry Sanders was even more amazing because of the cuts he could make on grass.
I actually love the unreliable conditions on grass. It’s so much more fun and unpredictable. It can doom either side equally
I do think people/players adapt. I’ve played soccer on grass and turf. I prefer grass because turf is definitely injury prone while the uncertain conditions on grass are equal and can be a fun situation you have to adapt to. I remember a rainy wet day when my full backs could literally slide tackle every striker break away into the mud. What a beautiful thing to watch. I like the mud bowls and the the rain or the snow. It’s equal for teams and I am biased for reducing injuries.
Michigan has gone back and fourth from grass to turf to grass and then turf. When we were there it was turf but it went back to grass for the 90s.
I am also a tennis player and fan. Wimbledon’s grass gets worn down and the conditions are difficult. But everyone deals with that. They also installed a retractable roof for rainy days.
September 13th, 2023 at 7:23 PM ^
So all the players will be wearing guardian caps during games now?
September 13th, 2023 at 7:45 PM ^
“Goodell fines Tom Brady and Bill Belichik for high friction coefficient on Jets field, says it gave Patriots unfair advantage and that Brady was ‘generally aware’ of how physics works. 5 game suspension, $250k fine.”
September 13th, 2023 at 8:22 PM ^
Saturday can't get here fast enough.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:23 PM ^
Fuck Roger Goodell.
September 13th, 2023 at 8:36 PM ^
Players have been complaining for years and I did nothing, soccer comes to town and we are going install grass for them, now I look stupid. I make 65 million per year and I need to do something to show people that I’m not a huge fraud. My skill level at a professional level is only worth about 100k. But hey, we got teams in Vegas now!!!!
September 13th, 2023 at 8:47 PM ^
Ah, yes, the NFL will use * applied science.