🏈 The Most Expensive Football You’ve Never Heard Of

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I’m going to be honest with you: my mood for the entire weekend will be dictated by something that has already happened. Real ones know why; my prediction is at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The Most Expensive Football You’ve Never Heard Of

📉 Biggest Loser: How Alabama Made $400K By Losing 3 Games

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How the Packers’ Hidden Advantage Led to NFL History

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🗞 The Big Story

This is the most expensive football you’ve never heard about, and it’s all because of a flaw the ball was designed to have.

Background: In 2016, Wilson, the same company that makes the official NFL game ball, released its first-ever Wilson Connected Football. It retailed for $200, or twice the amount of a regulation NFL ball, but for good reason.

That’s because this “smart football” has a small quarter-sized sensor built into the middle of the ball, which allows it to maintain the same size and weight as a standard NFL ball.

The only difference is this one records and sends metrics on every throw wirelessly to your phone, including:

• Velocity

• Spin rate

• Spiral efficiency

• Time of release

Success… At First: This 1.0 version of the ball was primarily used by NFL players and trainers to help fix bad mechanics. In fact, the league’s most popular QB coach, Jordan Palmer (who I just made a video about on YouTube), used the first version of this ball to help fix Sam Darnold’s long wind-up out of college.

By 2018, Wilson was testing the second version of its connected ball with Palmer and his clients. This ball allowed them to record data from up to 18 balls at once, download it all onto a spreadsheet, or view it in real time.

In fact, Palmer himself called this technology “game-changing” for the sport.

So what happened?

Failure: Well, the best I could tell was that the 2.0 version of the ball Palmer was helping test never came out. In fact, Wilson removed its connected football app from the app store a few years ago, but I think the reason this ball never caught on is actually pretty simple:

Not only is the $200 price point high for anyone not in college or the NFL but these balls can’t be recharged.

Instead, the ball was designed to go into a “sleep” mode when it wasn’t being used, which helped the battery last for around 200,00 throws or around two years of regular use before you had to fully replace it and get a new one.

Maybe next time, Wilson can add a charging port to help these things catch on.

📉 Biggest Loser

Alabama made almost half a million dollars this year by losing three games.

No Fun Allowed: This year, conferences across the country started fining their teams more money when their fans stormed the field or court after a big win, but nowhere are these fines more expensive than in the SEC.

In fact, in 2024 alone, the conference’s teams have already racked up a total of $2.1 million in fines related to fans storming or throwing trash on the field.

• First Offense: $100,000

• Second Offense: $250,000

• Third Offense: $500,000

There’s also a separate $100,000 fine for storming the field before the game is over, all of which is paid to the opposing school.

Upset x3: As of this fall, there have been eight major instances of field storming in the SEC, with Ole Miss being fined $350,000 after storming the field twice against Georgia and South Carolina, LSU, and Arkansas each being fined $250,000.

But the team that has been the biggest beneficiary of these new fines is none other than Alabama, which has had all three of its losses happen on the road:

• Oct. 5: 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt, +$100,000

• Oct. 19: 24-17 loss to Tennesee, +$100,000

• Nov. 23: 24-3 loss to Oklahoma, +$200,000 (stormed twice)

That means all three Crimson Tide losses earned them an extra $400,000 this year.

The rich really do get richer.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

The Green Bay Packer’s biggest advantage is one you can’t even see, but it’s the reason for one of the most iconic games in football history.

Original Heated Field: In 1967, Vince Lombardi had the team install electric heating coils six inches under the grass at Lambeau Field to keep the ground thawed during winter months.

This system, which originally cost $969,000 or $6 million in today’s money, was used in Lambeau Field until 1997, when the team replaced the electric coils with 34 miles of PVC pipes buried below a layer of grass, soil, and sand.

Today, these pipes carry a mixture of water and antifreeze from the stadium’s boiler room, which houses 12 boilers—three of which are specifically for the field and nine of which melt snow in other areas of the stadium.

New System: In fact, you can even see these pipes when you walk around Lambeau Field, which carries warm water to the field and cold water back to the boilers.

The field itself is outfitted with 16 thermostats so that each zone can be heated differently based on the sun, but generally speaking, the water flows to the field at around 55 degrees, which helps keep the grass just above freezing at 38 degrees.

Lambeau’s head groundskeeper admits that this intentionally makes the field firmer than other stadiums with a similar heating system, but that’s all part of the Packers' home-field advantage.

Ice Bowl: What wasn’t intentional, however, was when the Packer’s original electric coil system broke before the team’s 1967 Championship match-up against the Dallas Cowboys.

This meant that the 13-below temperature caused the field to become like a sheet of ice, leading to what we know today as the Ice Bowl.

⏱ In Other News

• The career back-up with a $1M side hustle.

• Is the NFL pro or anti-drug testing? I can’t tell.

• The coolest Christmas tradition in sports.

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👋 Happy Friday!

A little peek behind the curtain: I write this newsletter on Thursday and schedule it to come out at 7 a.m. CT on Friday (or 5 a.m. if you’re part of the subject line A/B testing group).

Regardless, that means that I’m writing this before the most crucial night of the year: Packers vs. Lions.

My prediction? The Packers pull it out in a flukey fashion (refs, tip ball, favorable bounce) that Twitter calls a “deal with the devil,” but I don’t mind.

Packers - 24

Lions - 20