As his gaudy passing statistics, Class B state championship and Fitzpatrick Trophy demonstrate, Ben Lucas had little trouble gripping and throwing a football during his quarterbacking career at Cony High School.
So Lucas is questioning why the size of a football is such a hot topic in light of allegations that the New England Patriots may have tampered with their game balls for the AFC Championship game.
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“I think it’s being talked about a bit too much,” said Lucas, who recently started his first semester at Wagner College in New York. “Obviously, the NFL has rules, but at the same time they’re professionals and they should be able to use what they want to when they’re throwing a football.”
Lucas and others who have played, coached or officiated the game seemed more amused than offended about Wednesday’s report that the New England Patriots were using under-inflated footballs during Sunday’s victory over the Indianapolis Colts.
“We’re in this gap week without football and I think it’s the only thing to talk about,” Colby head coach Jonathan Michaeles said.
Gary Parlin, who coached Mt. Blue for 21 years and won over 100 games before retiring in 2013, said the controversy is more about the accused than the alleged offense.
“It’s something that was nothing, and if it involved all of the other teams that were playing, it’s not as big of a deal,” Parlin said.
Parlin, who coached a long list of prolific quarterbacks at Mt. Blue, including 1996 Fitzpatrick Trophy winner Dustin Ireland, said his quarterbacks sometimes preferred one type of ball over another, but it usually had more to do with the material or quality of the laces. Players rarely complained about how inflated the ball was, and teams never tried to skirt the rules to help out their quarterbacks.
“The biggest difference I ever saw was in the kicking game,” he said. “I remember Edward Little had a ball that looked a basketball that they kicked with. One game, Mike Drouin was the referee and the first time they came out to kick off we asked him if they could kick with that and Mike went out and said ‘Nope. You have to use the same ball you’re using in the game.”
Allan Snell, a Madison native who has officiated for over 30 years and serves as the officiating liaison on the Maine Principals’ Association football committee, said he can’t recall air pressure being an issue in high school football.
“All of the years I’ve been doing this,” he said, “I’ve only seen it happen once or twice. And that was when, during the game, somehow a ball would find its way into a game that’s easier to kick or someone would try to get a ball in there that’s skinned and tough for a kick returner to catch.”
Snell said Maine high school football game balls are required to follow National Federation of High School standards and have the NFHS stamp. Those standards are similar to the National Football League in terms of air pressure, which requires each ball be inflated to between 12.5 and 13.5 psi.
Each team provides its own game balls during the regular season and all playoff games leading up to the state championship. The referee and umpire inspect the balls before each game, and most bring their own air pressure gauge to check any balls they might think are under- or over-inflated, Snell said. Any ball that doesn’t meet the standard psi can’t be used until they are inflated or deflated to the correct pressure.
“A football, when it is inflated to 12.5 psi, that’s a very well-inflated ball,” Snell said. “It’s a pretty hard ball when it gets to 10 pounds.”
Snell disputed arguments that NFL officials should have been able to tell by feel that the Patriots’s balls were under-inflated during Sunday’s game.
“If I have a ball inflated to 12.5 and a ball inflated to 10.5 and I gave them both to you, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference,” he said.
For state championship games, each team is given three brand new Wilson GST balls the Monday before the game to take back to their respective schools. Teams can practice with the balls during the week to get used to them. When they get to the stadium on game day, they must turn the balls over to Snell so he can inspect them and check the pressure before they are used in the game.
Lucas, who said he prefers balls that are more inflated because he has big hands, said the only time he had problems with a game ball was in the 2013 state title game, when he led the Rams to a dramatic 30-23 comeback win over Kennebunk.
“The balls were a different design than what I was used to. It was a pretty solid ball, but you just didn’t get a good feel for it. Over time, I got more adjusted to it, obviously,” he said.
Lucas, who transferred to Wagner from the University of Maine this month and attended his first football team meeting on Wednesday, is adjusting nicely to his new school. This despite the fact that Wagner is located on Staten Island, which is no place for a Patriots fan like Lucas to be right now.
“Being in New York, there are more Patriots haters than Patriots fans. There are lots of Jets fans around here,” he joked. “I need to keep quiet or I might get kicked out of my dorm and off the team.”
Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638
rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @RAWmaterial33
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