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Super Bowl 'pigskins' born in Wilson Football Factory, Ohio

By Andrew V. Pestano
A worker hand builds a football at the NFL Experience in the run-up to Super Bowl XLIX in Phoenix. The New England Patriots will take on the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX on Feb. 1. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI
1 of 7 | A worker hand builds a football at the NFL Experience in the run-up to Super Bowl XLIX in Phoenix. The New England Patriots will take on the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX on Feb. 1. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

ADA, Ohio, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Since 1941, every single NFL ball in a Super Bowl has been made at the Wilson Football Factory.

More than 700,000 footballs are made a year at the Wilson Football Factory in Ada, Ohio. That's about 4,000 a day.

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There are 120 employees in the factory. The NFL is the only major sports league to manufacture its sports balls in the United States.

For creating the footballs, the factory uses the cowhide of young steers, which is more resistant to stretching than dairy cows. The steers are bred in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. One cowhide can create up to 20 footballs.

The factory sews the leather together with a sewing machine and laces each football individually by hand. The factory also manufactures the footballs for the NCAA and other leagues.

For the Super Bowl, Wilson makes 54 balls for each team and about 10,000 commemorative balls for fans.

They do inflate the balls, too.

"Our job here as far as manufacturing footballs is to know that when a ball leaves here, it has 13 pounds of air pressure in it. After it leaves the building, it's out of our control," said plant manager Dan Riegle, referring to the recent "Deflategate" controversy.

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The footballs created by the factory will be displayed worldwide when the New England Patriots take on last year's champion Seattle Seahawks when Super Bowl XLIX kicks off Feb. 1 at 6:30 p.m.

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