Every NFL game starts in Ada, Ohio in a sense.
The Wilson Football Factory is located on Liberty Street, and inside its walls lies an important part of the football season. The footballs that you see during NFL games are made here.
“It’s amazing that nobody knows about us,” said Andy Wentling, the Plant Manager of the Wilson Football Factory. “We are the number one football in the country, and the official game ball of the NFL.
The footballs made here are also used for high school football and college football. Special footballs are made here as well, such as ones that are specially made for the Super Bowl.
This week is one of the busiest weeks for the factory, as they are in the middle of finishing the production of footballs for Super Bowl LV. The footballs that are crafted, refined, and completed will be used by the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“We change the graphic package, obviously we put the LV on there this year versus the traditional red, white, and blue shield they have this year, and that’s about it,” Wentling said on the differences between a regular NFL football versus the Super Bowl Football. “And that’s about it. The bladders are the same, the laces are the same… it’s really the graphic package.”
The process of creating the super bowl footballs start as soon as the AFC and NFC Championship games end. Wentling says that they actually have a crew at the facility watch both games, and as soon as the final whistle is blown on the second game, they get to work. The crew starts labeling the team names onto the footballs as well as the super bowl logo. As shift changes happen throughout the day, balls are then finalized over a with shipments heading out as soon as Monday afternoon.
Extra precautions have been put in place this year in order to ensure the footballs arrive in Tampa Bay, Florida on time. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the factory to implement CDC recommended protocols into their work. Mask wearing, social distancing, and sanitizing stations have been set up across the factory.
“When they are at their work stations it’s a very aggressive work that they do, so we allow them to remove their mask while they are working,” Wentling explained. “When they go to the break room or for lunch, that’s when ‘Hey, put the mask on’. They have done a great job with it.”
Hall-of-Fame players use these footballs on the field, a fact that the factory takes great pride in. Wentling says that the factory workers are always happy to see their finished product on the field on gamedays.
“The passion, the craftsmanship that goes into making these footballs… and they know that they all got to touch that football on Sunday.”
