If you think the Dallas Cowboys’ early-90s dynasty was only about Troy Aikman’s laser-quick release, Emmitt Smith barreling through the middle, and Michael Irvin catching everything in sight, you’re probably right. But there’s still a lot more that went behind the quarterback racking up three Super Bowl rings. According to Steve Hoffman, the Cowboys’ special teams coach from 1989 to 2004, the team went to great lengths to tweak the pre-1999 kicking balls rule to their QB’s favor.

“We would take the balls and go into the racquetball court with a baseball bat,” Hoffman told The Athletic. “One guy would toss the ball up in the air and whack, you’d hit it with the bat, and you’d just beat them up with the baseball bat.

“Then we would wet them down and put them in the clothes dryer with some damp towels,” he added. “Then we’d take them out and let them dry, and then we’d go back in the janitor’s closet and get those big spinning disc things the janitors used to polish the floors and turn those upside down. We would polish them up to make them look like they weren’t too beat up…It got to the point where it was just ridiculous. The balls were so fat and broken in.”

Interestingly, once the team was done preparing the footballs, Aikman would then get to choose the ones he wanted to use. The rest of the footballs were given to the special team members to select for themselves. Why the effort? Former Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw explained it the best.

“A brand-new NFL football straight from the factory is not easy to throw or catch. It’s rock hard and very slippery,” an excerpt from his book, It’s Only A Game, reads. “So in the privacy of the locker room before the game, players would take the footballs and rub them and scrub them to remove the glaze, or deflate them, then pump them up with air real big to stretch the leather. On some teams, the kickers would put them through a cycle in the dryer.”

However, things started to change soon. After persistent reports of teams altering balls to affect kicking and kicking distance, the NFL introduced new rules for K-balls in 1999 and stricter controls to limit tampering. The intent was to make the kicking game more balanced and to stop teams from altering balls to change performance. Manufacturer Wilson was reportedly asked to ship the balls straight to the officiating crew. Teams were only allowed 60 minutes to prepare their three kicking balls, with only sponges, brushes, and water. As you’d expect, the kickers absolutely hated this.

Thankfully, rules were changed again in 2008 and 2020, allowing equipment managers to work on the balls before games. But it still meant less control for the specialists than they would have liked. This season, though, we’ve gone back to the ‘preparing’ stage, as each team now receives 60 marked balls before the season. To put things into perspective, the teams received brand-new balls about an hour before the kickoff until now. This year, they received 60 before the season even started. This is as close as we could’ve gotten to pre-1999.

Yet, teams have to be careful, as league rules exclusively state:

• Balls could not be manipulated by subjecting them to high heat (heaters, blow dryers, dryers, etc),
• Submersing the football in water
• Altering the surface of the football (including, but not limited to, use of a buffing machine, attaching a Wilson-branded ball brush to a machine, non-Wilson-branded brushes, wire brushes, or other similar tools)
• Altering the shape of the football (including, but not limited to, kneeling or standing on, bouncing, throwing, using a hard surface or otherwise exerting excess pressure).

This also means that manipulators can create a loophole by using low to medium heat, water can be used as long as the ball is not submersed in it, and you could use as much elbow grease as you possibly could. But the only tool to use will the a new Wilson-branded brush. And mind you, any part of the brush. But why such a ruckus about kicking balls? Stats show it the best.

In the 2024 season alone, 34 regular season and playoff games were won by a field goal in the final minute. Additionally, field goals also accounted for 23% of all NFL points last season. In the Kansas City Chiefs’ AFC Championship win over the Buffalo Bills last season, Harrison Butker’s field goal with just over three minutes remaining was instrumental in moving past the 29-29, ultimately winning the game and making it to a Super Bowl clash vs the Philadelphia Eagles. And this is just us scratching the surface.

With relaxed K-ball rules, more such nail-biting play is surely on the way. Because, like an unnamed special teams coordinator exclaimed recently, “The ball is flying 5 yards further because the balls are broken in well.”