00:00Dan Coulson's job is to break in new footballs for quarterbacks on NFL and college teams.
00:08He uses conditioners, heat guns, and mud from New Jersey riverbanks.
00:16Getting the leather the way you want it to is an art form in itself.
00:19But just a few decades ago, pro players couldn't always use these customized footballs in games.
00:25Then, in 2006, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning helped convince the NFL to change the rules.
00:32That inspired teams across America to start testing new ways to customize footballs, too.
00:39But getting one ball ready can take days, so some teams hire outside specialists like Dan.
00:46Today, he and his wife Emily work out of their home in Bayonne, New Jersey,
00:50slathering thousands of balls per season, even for the Super Bowl.
00:55It smells like a swamp down here. It's terrible.
00:58So why do some teams spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on mudded footballs?
01:03And what does it take to get them all to the field?
01:10Dan started Gridiron Football Prep in 2021 after losing his job at Wilson Sporting Goods.
01:17He's in the middle of 48 balls for Ohio State, the country's most valuable college football program,
01:23worth roughly $2 billion.
01:26They've really championed this process of really making a ball that is conducive to their quarterback.
01:32So what we do is we'll get the ball, come over here, get our brush that we use.
01:39So you want to brush in circles because the grain of the leather might be slightly different per panel.
01:45What you're doing is you're kind of opening the pores of the actual leather itself.
01:53Dan applies his own custom leather conditioner, which adds moisture and grip.
02:08Then he uses an infrared thermometer to check when it's dried back to room temperature.
02:14Leather Balm loosens and softens the leather even more.
02:18Leather Balm is kind of our secret sauce, if you will.
02:22So as we compare brand new ball out of the box, conditioned, now balmed, ready to be heat gunned.
02:31NFL and college footballs are made from real leather.
02:35One of the reasons they're up to 10 times more expensive than the average ball at a sporting goods store.
02:44Horween Leather in Chicago has made leather for nearly every NFL and college football for the last 70 years.
02:52People ask me who I'm rooting for in the Super Bowl, and it's always the ball.
02:56Skip Horween's family opened the business in 1905.
03:00It's grown from a small shop to a company with roughly $25 million in annual sales.
03:07Horween's leather comes from the hides of steers, which are male cattle raised for beef.
03:13These hides are stronger and more flexible than the ones from other cattle, so they can withstand tough conditions on a football field.
03:21We pay a premium for them, and it's worth it.
03:25Roughly 2,500 hides arrive every day from Iowa and Canada.
03:30Employees grade each one on a scale of 1 to 10.
03:33The lower the number, the better the quality.
03:36Only grades 1, 2, and 3 are used for footballs.
03:40This particular skin has a bunch of fairly heavy scratches in it, and that would not be suitable for top grade football skin.
03:48Then they throw the hides into drums filled with tree bark extract, oil, and waxes.
03:54This transforms them into leather.
04:00Next, a machine squeezes out excess moisture.
04:11Then workers throw the hides onto glass panels for four hours to dry.
04:16So this whole thing is a giant hot air dryer.
04:25Next is the embossing phase, which gives the football its texture.
04:30A metal press stamps each hide with up to 1,000 tons of pressure, so the pebbles don't fade over time.
04:38Horween makes eight kinds of football leather, and another for NBA basketballs.
04:43Football is the grippier of the two, again, because you've got your skilled players that need to be able to handle the ball.
04:49Whether it's catching, throwing, snapping, or kicking.
04:52Workers spray each hide with up to five coats of dye to give it a slick finish.
04:57All of the football companies we work with have slightly different pattern and slightly different finishes.
05:04Horween ships about 250,000 sheets of finished leather a year, also called sides.
05:11Skip says sales are strong, and he's excited to see what the future holds.
05:17Skip says sales are strong now, but he lost some clients over the years as cheaper, synthetic leather became more popular.
05:25Fake leather is a $39 billion industry, and expected to nearly double in the next decade.
05:32A lot of those retail balls were leather at one time.
05:35Almost entirely synthetic now.
05:38Skip says making leather for different industries helps Horween survive tough times.
05:43This might be football leather today, and shoe leather tomorrow, and jacket leather the next day.
05:52It's not an easy business. None of them really are.
05:54But the idea that I can turn on a game and see something that I had a small part in making, I just get a kick out of it to this day.
06:03Skip delivers leather once a week to Big Game,
06:06a company in Texas that makes nearly all the footballs for America's best college programs and 3,000 high schools.
06:13Welcome to the football wonderland.
06:16Chris Calandro founded the company in 1993.
06:20I'm a nutty professor type, and the things that we can change with the football is really limited to your imagination.
06:28Very few teams in college football and high school football use exactly the same spec that we build.
06:34Even the best cuts of Horween leather have small defects.
06:38So Big Game starts by cutting around them.
06:41We don't want to build a football and get to the end of the line and realize it's got an imperfection on it.
06:48Then we pretty much kill the football.
06:51Then workers cut it into four panels, which will form the outer layer of the ball.
06:57These are now married together forever.
07:01Unlike NFL teams, colleges are allowed to use different sized footballs.
07:06Big Game makes them in three different dimensions, depending on the player they're for.
07:11So we build things on the larger side.
07:14If you're a 6'5 pocket passer or if you're a 5'10 dual threat player, we might have a smaller ball for you.
07:21Even at this early stage, there's already been two major customizations from the quarterback.
07:27What size the ball's going to be and the leather that the quarterback chose.
07:32Then they add team logos, usually by stamping a metal press on a heated piece of metal foil.
07:44After some extra fabric and stitching, the panels are done.
07:49But right now, the football is inside out, and it has to be flipped around by hand.
07:54If you do it the wrong way, you damage the ball.
07:57Rodney's doing an outstanding job.
07:59It is as much about technique as it is about strength.
08:04I recently beat Rodney in an arm wrestling contest.
08:10Laces come in multiple textures and have to be added by hand too.
08:15Some are kind of have this rubbery feel.
08:17Some are sort of have a suede leathery feel.
08:22It is, I think, probably the one thing that quarterbacks are most passionate about is the way the laces feel.
08:29Eventually, workers stick the football into a wooden mold, where a computerized pump inflates it.
08:36We're using more pressure than is allowed so that we can push out all those seams and rough spots.
08:45Big Game makes about a thousand balls a day, even during the football offseason.
08:51For $10, an employee will spend a few hours conditioning a ball to make it feel broken in.
08:57Some little things to help get the leather to feel great, like a nice pair of shoes or a bag or something.
09:07But Dan charges up to $70 per ball because they're customized for specific players.
09:13How do you grip the ball? What do you like on the ball? Do you want it tackier? Do you want it softer? Do you want a combination?
09:19Ohio State, his biggest client, flies him in each season to meet with coaches and quarterbacks.
09:25Ultimately, it comes down to the quarterback, but there are a lot of people that are going to have say in it because they want to be educated. They want to be on top of it.
09:35After Dan's done softening the leather, he applies heat.
09:39This causes the leather conditioner and balm to bake into the ball.
09:43Too hot, you're going to burn the ball and dry it out. Not enough, it's going to be a little gummy.
09:48We found that sweet spot around 650, 700 degrees of a heat gun itself.
09:55Then he coats the ball in mud, which blends all the layers and helps protect the grip from rain or sweat.
10:03And again, bring out that richness color that so many people like.
10:07I like doing it by hand, making sure that it's completely being more or less massaged into the ball and spread evenly throughout.
10:16Ohio State specifically will ask to try to keep the stripes as clean as possible, so we don't mud over those stripes. That's not for everybody.
10:24Dan himself collects this mud from New Jersey riverbanks.
10:28You really want that milkshake, thick milkshake-like consistency.
10:33This is also the smelliest part of the process.
10:36It's an awful smell, specifically if it's raining outside and it's more humid.
10:40It's an acquired smell. I wouldn't invite people off the street to come smell it who aren't used to it.
10:45Sometimes it makes you question why you're working from home, but at the end of the day, it's a sign that we have a lot of business and it's thriving.
10:55He lets the mud dry for at least 12 hours, then brushes it clean.
11:03An electric brush wheel gets deep into the ball's crevices.
11:08You can just run the ball on the wheel itself, get that dust off.
11:17Then one final layer of conditioner.
11:20There's always those little frustrating dust spots. This helps just get that off so that it gives it a really clean, finished look.
11:32Now the 36-hour process is done.
11:35You can feel that tack, but it doesn't have any residue on your hands.
11:41Then they box the balls up and ship them.
11:46Shout out to Reuben and UPS and Keith, my guys.
11:52Summer is Gridiron's busiest season, but demand stays high throughout the year.
11:58The amount of footballs depends on the weather. Rain will kill a football.
12:01Usually a good equipment manager will have 24 to 48 footballs ready to go, and then they'll always send me 24 more so that they're always replenishing.
12:13Back in 2005, NFL quarterbacks couldn't use their own footballs in every game.
12:18The home team supplied all the balls, so visiting quarterbacks were stuck with whatever they were given.
12:23If I have a ball and I have my hand on the ball and maybe that index finger is slipping a little bit or that thumb is not secure, that's what you're going to be thinking about.
12:33Then in 2006, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning helped convince the league to change the rules, allowing all quarterbacks to use their own footballs on offense.
12:44This eventually inspired college programs like Arizona State to take football prep seriously, too.
12:50The team needs 80 footballs for just one practice, and it's essential that every single one is broken in.
12:58For official games, the team's equipment manager, Arthur Hussard, selects 12 of the quarterbacks' favorites.
13:05We give those 12 footballs to the referees, and the referees check them, mark them, and make sure we can play with those.
13:14But do these mudded footballs really make a difference?
13:17Dan thinks they can help keep players focused on the game itself.
13:21You put on a pair of shoes, you know they're comfortable because you're not worried about them.
13:25So our goal is to have them never think about the security of the football.
13:29When it's in their hands, it's to what they want it to be.
13:32But he says he can't substitute for game preparation.
13:36A guy throws a perfect spiral in the corner of the end zone, he probably threw that ball well before he had a ball prepared.
13:42But if there's a comfortability to him, hey, maybe I had something to do with it.
13:47The strangest preference I've ever gotten is somebody who literally told me that the ball smelled funny.
13:52And that it bothered him when he had it up on his, you know, ready to throw, and that he was wondering if I could do anything to help him with that.
14:01So we got creative, and we literally put like essential oil in the mud, and we're like mixing it in so that it had a nicer aroma.
14:09So we got creative, and we literally put essential oil in the mud, and we're like mixing it in so that it had a nicer aroma.
