Professional football is filled with many colourful nicknames that include the curious name for the football itself. For decades, players and fans have called the ball a “pigskin,” despite the fact that the ball is most definitely not made from the skin of a pig.
It might surprise you to learn that footballs were at first inflated with the bladders of animals. This includes those from swine. In later years, these animal bladders were put inside a leather cover, which gave rise to the term “pigskin”. The pig bladder (or another animal) was inflated into more of an oval shape as opposed to the familiar pointed tips of today’s football game balls.
The procedure of inflating these early pigskins was quite distasteful as you might imagine! Straw and other material would often be stuffed in the pig bladder instead however this tended to create balls with lumps as well as strange shapes which made official game play quite challenging.
Luckily, blowing up pig bladders fell out of fashion for both pro and recreational football players with the invention of vulcanised rubber in the 1860s.
What Is Vulcanised Rubber?
Charles Goodyear had spent absolute ages trying to find a way to make rubber resistant to heat as well as cold. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, he finally stumbled across a mixture which worked. Before turning out the lights one evening, Charles accidentally spilled some rubber, sulphur and lead onto a stove resulting in a mixture which charred and hardened however could still be used. The resulting mixture became vulcanised rubber.
Vulcanised rubber is utilised in order to manufacture all types of products at the moment. Perhaps the best-known – as well as most prevalent usage of vulcanised rubber – is vehicle tyres. In these types of tyres, vulcanised rubber is most commonly combined with the reinforcing agent carbon black in order to produce even greater strength. More than a billion tyres are manufactured worldwide each and every single year, making the tyre industry one of the foremost consumers of vulcanised rubber.
Other common vulcanised rubber uses include:
- Rubber hoses,
- Shoe soles,
- Toys,
- Erasers,
- Conveyor belts,
- Shock absorbers,
- Rubber-lined tanks,
- Vibration dampers, as well as
- Insulation
What Does The Modern Football Look Like?
Ironically enough, though they are still called “pigskins” today, all pro and collegiate footballs are really made with cowhide leather. In addition, recreational and youth footballs, on the other hand, are frequently made with synthetic material or vulcanised rubber, as was previously the case.
All Big Game footballs are made up of handcrafted cowhide leather. if you play on a college, high school, youth, junior or pee wee team or – alternatively -you’re merely interested in tossing the pigskin around in the yard, purchasing directly from America’s number one manufacturer of FBS College footballs is definitely the way to go!
The footballs which you’ll receive are the same quality that are used by top college programs all over the country, such as LSU, Texas A&M, SMU, the Nebraska Cornhuskers and many others.