You are full of good ideas !
True that. Wet air could give a similar result.
You have two approaches there.
1) Condensation
2) Adsorption
You could pick a gas that will condense a the field conditions.
You could pick a gas that gets adsorbed into the football.
Hmmm. We could even pick a gas that is hard to contain. That it easily permeates through the football. Such as a small touch of Hydrogen perhaps?
This would make a great Myth Busters episode.
“Hmmm. We could even pick a gas that is hard to contain. That it easily permeates through the football. Such as a small touch of Hydrogen perhaps?”
I’m not suggesting that it was deliberate. I could do it... I’d probably use propane. But a honda generator that was running rich powering the compressor would do the same thing.
Lots of folks fill their tires with nitrogen instead of air to eliminate this problem. (it is closer to an ideal gas than air is)
Bottom line, it could have very well been unintentional.
In short, you are in the unenviable position of thinking about preaching Christianity or Buddhism in Teheran. The average clown arguing about "deflategate" is worth just about as much attention as are the typical Allahu Fubar types.
You have more guts than I, mate!
FReegards!