Did you know that Albert Goodwill Spalding was a really damn good pitcher during his time with the Boston Red Stockings and eventually Chicago White Stockings? Apparently the pitchers made and brought their own balls?!?!?!?! And players didn't even use a damn glove!! They thought using a glove was an attack on their masculinity. You wear a glove, you're not a real man!! That changed when Spalding made a better ball that would really fly. That's when the baseball glove came into play.
Onward to the topic ... Thomas Wilson, the founder of Wilson (which was a Meat Packing company before pivoting to making sports equipment) wanted to make a better ball for football. Football back then was more rugby than what we know football to be today. The ball was basically a rugby ball that didn't have much for aerodynamics. The sport was basically a group of five guys smashing the crap out of the ballcarrier. This lead to many deaths annually in the sport.
Wilson reached out to Knute Rockne to help create a more aerodynamic ball. The upstart NFL rejected it. College started using it with a friendly nudge by Theodore Roosevelt. Many thought he was trying to kill the sport of football, but he had a son who played and wanted the sport to thrive and players to survive.
So, anyhow, Tim Mara, the founder of New York Giants noticed this AFL league was taking some good players from the NFL and wanted to tilt the tide back to NFL. Mara thought the Wilson football was better and made it the official ball for NFL. Mara had a son named "Wellington Mara" and to pay homage to Mara, George Hallas urged Wilson to have "The Duke" inscribed on the ball. Granted, that only lasted through 1970 when the AFL and NFL merged. When Wellington Mara passed away in 2005, Wilson resumed putting "The Duke" on each ball.
Pretty freaking interesting stuff huh??
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