Science may have vindicated Tom Brady and the Patriots

Dr. Michael Naughton, the chair of Boston College's physics department, had this to say about deflategate:

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Say you inflate the ball to 12.5 PSI — the NFL minimum — in a room at 70 degrees, and then used the ball outside where it was 50 degrees. That 12.5 PSI would eventually become 11.5 PSI. If you inflate the ball to 12.5 PSI in an even warmer room where it was, say, 80 degrees, and then played outdoors at 40 degrees, that 12.5 PSI would become 10.5 PSI — a drop of two PSIs.

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Dr. Naughton's findings were backed up by a postdoctoral associate at MIT, who contacted the Boston Herald:

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If the ball was sitting outside in the cold for an hour, it is likely that the temperature of the air inside the ball would end up being the same temperature as the air outside of the ball — and if that is the case, you would see between a 1.5 and a 1.6 difference in PSI.

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He even sent in math that predicted a 1.78 drop in PSI by halftime.

Now...I know what you're thinking:

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“Oh, but if this whole science thing is true, then why weren’t the Colts’ balls under-inflated? They played in the same weather, right? EXPLAIN THAT,” the haters shouted as a final resort.

This is actually the easiest part to understand; the Colts pumped up their balls more than the Patriots did. Naughton even argued that the pigskins Indianapolis supplied might have been inflated past the NFL’s maximum PSI limit, but you won’t see the NFL launching an investigation into that.

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The Dailycaller

Also...ESPN's Sports Science aired a segment earlier today (that was later taken off the website by ESPN), which argued that - if anything - a deflated ball in the conditions the Patriots were playing in had a NEGATIVE effect on New England. Luckily for us, someone posted that video on YouTube.

LINK