My Science School

Modern footballs are covered with cowhide (aka leather) stretched over a plastic or rubber balloon, so it makes more sense to call them “cowskins” than pigskins. In fact, pig’s skin was probably never used to cover even the earliest balls. But in the days before rubber and plastic, sports balls were made from another piece of pig anatomy: the bladder. Turns out the airtight innards of a pig made a great plaything – as long as you didn’t mind inflating it with your mouth.

 

Picture Credit : Google

 

The technical name for a football’s shape is a “prorate spheroid.” And while you’d think this shape – so perfect for long-distance passing and bouncing willy-nilly during mad scrambles – was the result of careful design by football’s inventors, it really just happened by accident. In the earliest days of football, as the sport was still evolving, the “pigskin” was just an ordinary round ball. During the first college match between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869, the ball leaked and sagged into a lopsided shape. As the sport evolved into more of a passing game, its lopsided ball evolved with it, becoming the prorate spheroid we know today.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Sports historians debate over the origin of football’s name. One explanation is that, in the mid-1800s, American football evolved from the game of rugby, a rough-and-tumble sport that, in turn, evolved from a much bloodier medieval game called campball. In both rugby and campball, players use their feet as well as their hands to move the ball around, although tossing the ball forward is a no-no. Rules changed all the time in the early days of American football. Even forward tosses were illegal until 1906, when they were introduced to make the sport safer. Players’ use of feet in the game’s early days likely played a role in its name.

 

Picture Credit : Google