Hand Crafting the Super Bowl Footballs

A few cracks-some more intense than others-gets the massive machine in front of her ready.

Just above an off-white light shines area of the just treated cowhides ready to be put together inside out. With her taped-up fingers holding on tight, Jane Hesler lines up the ends of the pointed oval shaped surface underneath a sizable needle with thread ready to deploy.

"People just don't realize that everything is hand made," said the 46-year sewing machine operator at the Wilson football plant in Ada, Ohio as she gives the pedal below a good push and sends the needle into object below.

Once around the perimeter of the ball-leaving just a gap at the top-ends one of the most tedious steps of creating the object which starts and ends every game in the National Football League.

"Since 1941 every point scored in the NFL has been with a Wilson football," said Ada Plant Manager Dan Riegle. "We want to keep it that way."

But for the past few years those in the plant-numbering somewhere around 100 people-want to make sure their way of creating footballs is known to the millions of fans of the sport. Aside from a few stories done by out-of-town journalists, knowledge process mainly stays inside the walls of the plant in Northwest Ohio.

"A lot of people don't realize how much hands on it is," said football lacer Donna Butnam. "A lot of people think a football just pops out of a machine."

That's why she along with others has been traveling to the NFL Experience for Super Bowls over the past decade to bring the process first hand to fans in the visiting city. Butnam is a seven-year veteran of the event, but not everyone at the plant was as luck to get a chance to travel.

With the Super Bowl in Indianapolis-a three-hour drive from the Ada plant-that will change this year.

"On Friday before the game we're taking all our employees down to the NFL Experience so they get to experience that," Reigle said. "Everybody here is going to have the opportunity to go."

Already on the opening weekend a few of the workers already made their way to Indiana, making the footballs in the same process the do in Ada. The cut the cowhide which the ball is made of, stamp it, turn it inside out and sew it, reshape it, put in a bladder and then lace it.

Add some air and a little bit of reshaping and the footballs were finished in front of a few wide-eyed Super Bowl fans taking in the process for the first time.

"An hour...that's amazing," said Greenwood resident Robert Reese, standing along the production line. "You would think this would be like a day-or-two process. But its really cool-definitely an experience.

For Hensler, who is again hitting the foot pedal and directing the ball underneath the large needle and threat, that's the goal.

"People think they have some kinda robot or something," said Hensler of the process of making the balls. "There's just some things that people have to do themselves."

Being able to do so in front of a nationwide audience is an experience in itself.