ADA, Ohio – When the Browns and Bengals take the field in downtown Cleveland this weekend, another product from Ohio will join them on the grass: a handmade leather football from tiny Ada, about an hour south of Toledo.

Every football used in the NFL is made in Ada, population 5,300. That’s about 600 balls per team per year, nearly 20,000 in total -- and that’s just for the pros.

The Wilson Football Factory in Ada also makes footballs for college, high school and pee-wee leagues, and does finishing work on basketballs, volleyballs and soccer balls.

And you can watch it all happen during a factory tour of the 80,000-square-foot facility.

The story of how the country’s premier football manufacturer ended up in small-town Ohio goes back nearly a century to the founding of the Ohio-Kentu

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