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OHIO'S FOOTBALL FACTORY Wilson Sporting Goods factory in Ada, Ohio is the world's only dedicated football factory
Staff writer
ADA, Ohio - Match the terms "professional football" and "Ohio."
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Chances are, you won't think of Ada.
Ada who?
The question should be, "Ada where?"
Ada, Ohio, is the home of the world's only dedicated football factory, where the National Football League's game balls are manufactured by Finnish-owned Wilson Sporting Goods Co.
If you've never heard of Ada, it's a college town, population 5,847, and home of Ohio Northern University, into which flow 5,000 students during the school year. Ada is north of Dayton, south of Toledo and east of Lima.
As far as Wilson plant manager Dan Riegle is concerned, all those footballs stamped "Steelers" come from deep in Browns' territory.
He's a big fan of all the Cleveland teams, and his office shows it. Another wall features autographed photos of Jerome Bettis and Ben Roethlisberger, who hails from nearby Findlay. Big Ben hasn't toured the plant, but a close family member has been there, greeted by the rat-a-tat-tat of sewing machines and the constant hum, clanks and puffs of a labor-intensive place.
"This is the only factory in the entire world that makes Wilson leather footballs," said Barb Ulrey, quality control auditor, and the 120 employees produce about 4,000 of them each workday from 5 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., four days a week.
"It's the last football factory left in the United States. All the rest of the football companies are overseas now. So we're very proud about that," she said. "And we make about 80 percent of the footballs that are used by all the high schools and colleges, so we're very proud about that, too.
"You don't want one to go flat when it gets kicked or anything horrible like that. When they say, 'There's something wrong with that ball,' we're personally offended by it."
Making a football, Ulrey said, is a 21-step process that involves cutting leather with what looks like giant, football-shaped cookie cutters powered by a hydraulic press and splitting the pebbly-surfaced cowhide. Then there's embossing, striping, stamping, lining, punching holes for laces and valve, stitching and steaming.
Ulrey explained why footballs are lined.
"If it didn't have that lining on it, inflated leather would stretch and become misshapen, losing its point," she pointed out.
Which brings one to the name "pigskin" for a football, which is actually cut from cowhide.
"It's always been cowhide," Ulrey explained. "Pigskin is a little bit too fragile. It's not durable enough for the football. An older gentleman that I took on a tour told me that his football, when he was a child, had a pig bladder inside that held the air. When that bladder would go bad he would get one from the farmer down the road to replace it."
Summer, before the start of football season, is a hot time in the factory. When embossing a logo on the football, the metal plates reach 500 degrees. Steam puffs from a countertop box as the footballs are turned, a process known as coning.
NFL game balls have a strong lock-stitch that would have to be laboriously picked out one stitch at a time to take them apart. Every one of those stitches is put in place by Glenn Hanson or Jane Helser operating hulking sewing machines the size of, say, Casey Hampton's arm.
The Ada plant makes footballs in seven sizes, and each ball is sewn three times, making halves, wholes and closing it up.
Precision is important because finished footballs must be within a certain weight "so when their quarterback is going to throw a ball, every football that they pick up is the same. They don't have them feeling different in their hands," Ulrey explained.
A media onslaught from the cities of the contenders tends to arrive in Ada during the run-up to the Super Bowl, and the game itself can be both gratifying and nerve-wracking for Riegle, the plant manager.
If he feels a little apprehensive before the big game, it's "because there are so many millions of people watching. We want that ball to perform."
But the Super Bowl is also the highlight of the season for everyone who works at the Wilson plant because "without this little town of Ada and our hard-working people out here, they wouldn't be having the Super Bowl," said Riegle, who was twice named "Mr. Football" at Arlington (Ohio) High School, where he played wide receiver.
"I lived 20 miles from here and never knew there were footballs made over here. It was kind of like a secret."
To most of the world, the word "football" is what Americans call soccer, so the rest of the world tends to call our Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening and Monday night game "American football."
It's appropriate, then, that the ball itself is an American-made product, with Riegle proudly pointing out that the cows from which the hides are tanned come from Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa via the Horween Leather Co. in Chicago.
"Today, everybody wants their name on the ball," Riegle said. "I can do that. You can order a football from me today and I ship it this week to you."
That's not necessarily the case if a team is dealing with a manufacturing plant overseas.
"Custom work, putting team logos on, is just a huge part of my business," Riegle said. "Our goal is to give them really great service. We can get them to them really quickly."
From a factory with a poster in its reception room that reads, "We've had a ball at every Super Bowl," the manager had better have a farewell line so a visitor leaves with a smile.
He doesn't disappoint.
"Hey, don't forget," Riegle said. " Keep your eye on the ball."
