Two hours before kickoff, he would bring the balls to the referees' locker room for inspection.
"I recall them having a pressure gauge in the locker room, but most often they just squeezed the balls, turned them over in their hands a few times each, and inspected the laces. I don't recall them ever rejecting one of our balls," he said.
"My thought process was, 'Let's get the balls exactly the way our quarterback wants them, and if the refs reject one or two before the game, no big deal. But there's no harm giving them our ideal balls and hoping they make it through inspection.'"