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Posted By: hankron

Whether it's home team or league or home stadium that owned the footballs or baseball or basketballs in college or the pros, I'm sure they were happy to let the visiting have a few balls so they could award them to the players of the game and take one back home to the trophy room. The gifting would be reciprocated when their team played away. So, the balls belonged to the home team or whatever, but they chose to let the visting team or home player keep some of them. I'm sure that the legal issues were rarely of passing thought, even to the team's lawyer. "Who cares who owns them?," the Chicago Cardinals lawyer might say. "They're stupid dirty footballs. My 9 year old has two from the Sears catalog. I didn't graduate 2nd in my class from Harvard so I could argue the legal merits of a dirty footballs."

However, I bet that if the 1921 University of Chicago football team won the national championship at home and the visiting U of Cincinnati took the winning TD ball home, I'm sure the University of Chicago would want the ball back and would press the issue to get it back for the trophy room.