Shrine Bowl footballs: Slip-sliding away

After all the talk about how slippery the new Reebok balls were in Saturday’s Shrine Bowl game between North and South Carolina, we found some pretty convincing evidence of that in a last go-over of the official stat sheet.

The game, a 24-14 victory by the Tarheels, featured a dozen fumbles, seven by the Sandlappers. But according to the stats, there were only four forced fumbles in the game, three by NC and one by SC.

That means eight balls were simply dropped in one way or another.
Six of the 12 fumbles were lost, and the recovering team went on to score points every time.

--Stan Olson