Bill Nye said he's not buying coach Bill Belichick's explanation on how footballs used by the New England Patriots possibly became deflated during the AFC championship game Jan. 18, but "The Science Guy" showed he may be a little biased.
Belichick, who has tired of the NFL investigation into allegedly under-inflated footballs used in the Patriots' victory over the Indianapolis Colts to reach the Super Bowl, explained on Saturday how his team conducted its own football pressure experiments,
according to Sports Illustrated.
Boston Globe columnist Christopher Gasper wrote that Belichick tried to "blind the NFL with science" in his explanation of the Patriots in-house investigation.
"We found that once the footballs were on the field over an extended period of time … they were adjusted to the climatic conditions and also the fact that the footballs reached an equilibrium without the rubbing process, that after that had run its course that they were down approximately 1½ pounds per square inch," Belichick told reporters, according to the Globe.
The coach said the team then went through the trouble of re-testing the footballs in a controlled environment to prove the theory, noted the Globe.
"Now, we all know that air pressure is a function of the atmospheric conditions," Belichick told reporters. "If there is activity in the ball relative to the rubbing process I think that explains why when we gave them to the officials and the officials put them at let's say 12.5 . . . once the ball reached its equilibrium state it's probably closer to 11.5."
Nye, a popular children's science program host and public science lecturer, told
ABC's "Good Morning America" that Belichick's explanation "didn't make any sense."
"Rubbing the football? I don't think you can change the pressure," said Nye. "To really change the pressure, you need the inflation needle."
Nye, a former Seattle resident and fan of the area's sports teams, then got in a dig by saying "Go Seahawks," a bow to the Patriots Super Bowl opponents and defending champion Seattle Seahawks.
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