I swear, I will always carry around two footballs when I need to get a "man on the street" interview.
I have never had so many people come up to me out of the blue to talk about DeflateGate (or my personal favorite name for the Patriots flap, Ballghazi).
Here was my plan: go buy two footballs, let the air out of them, park downtown and walk to the Super Bowl XLIX football at 1st Ave. and Washington to get some interviews.
I was done before I even got there and I only went a block.
In the first 100 feet, two people stopped me to say they hoped my footballs were inflated. Then a cop asked if a flat one was easier to throw. So I tossed him one. Surprise! You're on TV.
While I was standing on the corner talking to the officer, a guy drove by in a white truck with the windows down. He yelled, "There had better be air in those!"
By far the most interesting part of the day was figuring out that, while everyone had an opinion on whether a flat football would help you play, half of them couldn't even figure out which ball I was giving them.
Our Phoenix police officer changed his mind. So did a woman we caught in front of Tom's Tavern. But once I told them, they agreed it was probably the easier one to grip.
WATCH: Tom Brady: "I didn't alter the ball in any way"
What I still can't figure out is whether it makes a real difference to a receiver. I threw some passes (badly ... there's a reason I don't play in the NFL) and caught a few (less badly). And when the ball's coming at you at 60 miles an hour, you only feel the impact, not the weight. You still grab the thing as tightly as ever, and if you're actually playing a game, you're grabbing it tightly enough that a defender can't take it away. So it really only makes a difference to the quarterback.
Maybe the best tweet I saw came from Patriots cornerback Brandon Browner. LeGarrett Blount didn't need a deflated ball to hang 45 points on the board.
