Secrets of the Super Bowl Quarterbacks
SUPER BOWL XXV
As a quarterback, you're always wondering about the footballs, what kind of shape they're in. New footballs tend to be really slick. There's a film on them, and when your hands get sweaty, they can become very slick. Super Bowl XXV was being played in Tampa, where it's really humid. So in the days before the game, we had to work over all the game balls, 36 of them. We would overinflate them, scrape them on the turf, scuff them up. Then, 30 minutes before the game, they came in with all new footballs. As a quarterback, you're panicking. After all I've gone through, to make it to the game of my life, and the ball could just slip out of my hands? They're screwing with me! But then I thought, "Hey, what are you gonna do?" We tried to work over three balls, and we gave them to the ball boy to rotate over and over throughout the game. And that's what he did -- we only used those three balls. That was a huge, huge part of the game. [Editor's note: In the second quarter, Hostetler stumbled into his own end zone while dropping back, and Bills defensive end Bruce Smith grabbed Hostetler's wrist as he was falling. Though Smith sacked Hostetler for a safety, the QB didn't fumble.] On that play, that ball obviously wasn't a new one! [Laughs.]-- As told to Seth Wickersham of ESPN The Magazine
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