‘That’s our product on the field’: Wilson engineer talks Big Game
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ADA — Each football used by the National Football League in the past 85 years came from the Wilson Sporting Goods Factory in Ada.
“Every point scored in an NFL football game has been made with a football from Ada, Ohio,” said Mike Spring, an engineer for the Ada plant. “Every football, every interception, every missed kick — that is our ball out there.”
The factory is the pride of Ada, producing 27,000 footballs for the league each year — amounting to 780 footballs per team — through its exclusive partnership with the NFL, which dates back to 1941.
Wilson recruited Springer, who spoke to the Lima Rotary Club on Monday, to Ada in 2015 to design a sensor that would allow the NFL to track a football as it advances down the field.
The factory started installing sensors inside its NFL footballs in 2017, Springer said. Players wear two sensors under each shoulder pad, as do officials, field goal posts and the 10-yard crew, to track the ball’s location 10 times per second.
The technology enabled the NFL to phase out the 10-yard “chain crew” this year, he said.
As the country’s sole football factory, Wilson produces footballs for high school, college and international football leagues as far away as Canada, Mexico, Poland and Australia.
The factory made 503,000 footballs in 2025 alone, Springer said.
The NFL’s dominance is evident: The Big Game consistently makes Nielsen’s rankings of most-watched programs in the U.S., claiming 19 of the list’s 20 spots. The series finale of M.A.S.H. is the only other television broadcast to make the list.
A record 127 million viewers, or roughly half of all U.S. households with a television, tuned into the Super Bowl last year, Springer said. Wilson designs a special football for the game each year.
“That’s our product out on the field,” Springer said. “It needs to perform.”
Springer brought the Super Bowl football and a special edition America at 250 football, which made its field debut last weekend, along with him to the Veterans Memorial Civic Center for the audience to see.
The commemorative footballs will only be used in 18 games this season.
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