Football Break in I recently purchased my son a Wilson GST leather football for Christmas and became enamored with breaking in footballs. When watching college/NFL games I started noticing how dark the leather was on most game balls. So after watching videos on youtube I begin the break in process which included mudding. Every video I watched I noticed right after the mud was scrubbed off the footballs in the tutorial videos, the leather would turn the desired dark brown. When i tried this process multiple times, I didn’t get the same result of leather darkening. Then I tried the process one more time using Lena Blackburne mud instead of the different brand of mud I had been using. As I scrubbed the mud away the leather became the dark brown I desired. The conclusion I’ve come to is that there is some type of dye in the Lena Blackburne mud. Look at football in picture below to see the difference….