Bill Nye Activates Science Guy, Calls Out Patriots Coach/Other Bill’s Science Fail

Saturday found New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick making a scientific pronouncement to reporters re: the air pressure inside footballs as it relates to a pre-game tradition. It was a moment that resulted in Belichick being called “Bill Belichick the Science Guy.”

My friend Bill (Belichick) just gave the GREATEST press conference in the history of mankind http://t.co/W0W3TaGZTe pic.twitter.com/bwsYgK7ah2

— David Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) January 24, 2015

This, of course, prompted Good Morning America to call up the other Bill, the actual Science Guy one, to ask his opinion.

For reference, here’s what Belichick said, in reference to something known as “Deflategate,” wherein the Patriots were/are being investigated by the NFL because of some under-inflated balls (it was even an SNL sketch!):

That process of creating a tackiness, a texture, the right feel, whatever that feel is — let’s just say it’s a sensation for the quarterback — that process elevates the psi approximately one pound based on what our study showed which was multiple balls, multiple examples in the process…. That’s done in a controlled climate. The footballs are prepared in our locker room, they’re delivered to the officials’ locker room, which is a controlled environment. Whatever we have here is what we have there. When the footballs go out onto the field in the game conditions, whatever those conditions are whether it’s hot and humid, whether it’s cold and damp, whether it’s cold and dry … that’s where the footballs are played with and that’s where the measurements would be different than what they are in a controlled environment, and that’s what we found.

We all know that air pressure is a function of the atmospheric conditions. It’s a function of that. So if there’s activity in the ball relative to the rubbing process, I think that explains why when we gave it to the officials and the officials put it at say [12.5 psi], if that’s in fact what they did, that once the ball reached its equilibrium state it probably was closer to [11.5] psi.

Bill Nye‘s response was a relatively succinct: “What he said didn’t make any sense.”

Nye then gave a tragically cut-short explanation of his own that I really wish the producers would have let go on for a while longer. For science!

For reference, here is the SNL sketch:

(via USA Today) (Images: ScienceGifs/Tumblr)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?