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Reading too much into it
Ed, I'm pretty sure you're alone in a crowd on this one. Let me see if I can expand on the place where the disconnect is, and if anyone disagrees with me, that's fine, too.
The case plays you cite, where a team wants to use a "different" leather ball are interpreted by all of us to mean a nice, new Wilson 1001 is being sent off so an old, smooth pumpkin that used to say Spalding is sent in to punt. Both are leather, but they're "different." Everyone here would agree that aint gonna happen.
But if a crew has checked a team's footballs before the game, marked them all, and they are all fully inflated, new nike footballs, we can replace one nice new football with another identical new, marked and approved football whenever we dang well please and it's not a "different" ball. Physically, it's not the exact same football, but in essence, it is.
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Trying to maintain order during a legalized gang brawl involving 80 toughs with a little whistle, a hanky and a ton of prayer.
-Anonymous referee, explaining his job
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