Bill Belichick took a crack at it. A seventh-grader from Lynn did as well. But nobody debunked Deflategate as cogently as John Leonard, an engineering professor at MIT. In a nearly 90-minute video lecture, Leonard explains how science—specifically the Ideal Gas Law—proves those damn footballs were never deflated at all. Yes, he uses all sorts of formulas, graphs and terms like “transient phenomenon.” However, Leonard is pretty straightforward in his explanation—enough so to earn kudos from level-headed journalists at The New York Times and The Washington Post. You can watch the full lecture on YouTube, but a 15-minute version that’s garnered more than 60,000 views encapsulates the key points, and makes you wonder just what else the NFL is getting wrong
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