It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs

This is one of those facts that the math just seems crazy…until you actually do the math. Wilson Sporting Goods is the official supplier to the NFL and they manufacture around 700,000 regulation footballs each year. Wilson needs about 35,000 cow hides to manufacture all of those footballs. That means a single cow hide can make about 20 footballs. Now the NFL needs about 11,520 footballs for all of its games every season and that doesn't even include practice. Just for regular season games, the NFL needs 576 cow hides. Thats an extra 48,420 footballs for practices and other uses for the year by all of the teams!