Getting Footballs Game Ready

It doesn’t matter whether you purchase a dozen footballs at a time or 244 like Auburn equipment manager Frank Cox has each of the last five seasons. Once they are delivered, these footballs have to be made game ready. While you could simply throw the footballs out of the shipper’s box and into your players’ hands, there are a few guidelines you may wish to follow. While routines vary from program to program and even season to season, nearly all the equipment managers we spoke with had two similar practices. First, most will use a warm, damp cloth to wipe the new footballs down. This breaks down the waxy residue or slick outer coating of the new football. Then they take a soft bristle brush, which is sometimes shipped with the balls, and brush the football from end to end. Brushing them creates friction and heat, which restores the tackiness to the leather surface. At the