Listen, we love Lassie, but forget all that about dogs being man’s best friend. The human race’s all-time BFF is the cow and it’s not even close. While dogs are good for a fetch and a scratch, cows have for millenniums provided us with the fundamentals of survival: nourishment, clothing and those peeptoe pumps that are all the rage this season.

1. Speaking of seasons, they also bestow on us the object and namesake of the world’s greatest sport: football. And don’t get all cute and tell us it’s spelled “futbol” and is the world’s most popular sport. Save the propaganda, Comrade. Nyet interested. We’re talking good ‘ol American “rub some dirt on it,” “Did I forget to activate Brees?” football.

2. Descended from rugby, the first football was actually played on a massive 400×250-foot field with massive teams—25 players to a side. The ball was round and, originally, made from a pig’s bladder, hence the term “pigskin.” But, as you might imagine, what blowing up a pig’s bladder lacks in fun, it more than makes up for in being totally gross. Besides, the balls were notorious for not holding their shape. Enter the cow.

3. Leather was a logical alternative: tough and durable enough to hold its shape, light enough to be carried, kicked and thrown. Numerous tanneries in the U.S. offered leather to football manufacturers with wide variations in composition and quality. It wasn’t until 1960 that Chicago-based Horween Leather Co., exclusive supplier of leather for the National Football League, developed and sold leather as it is used in manufacturing today.

4. Today, a significant amount of Horween’s leather—harvested from places such as Iowa and Kansas—is shipped to the Wilson Sporting Goods factory in Ada, Ohio (population 5,804). Since 1941, Wilson has provided official game balls for the NFL through this facility, the only dedicated football factory in the world.

5. In fact, the NFL is the only major American sports league that has its balls manufactured in the U.S. Major League Baseball gets its balls from Costa Rica while NBA basketballs are made in China.

6. Though the factory is relatively small—about 120 employees—it pumps out between 3,000 and 4,000 footballs a day for use not only by the pros, but colleges, high schools and youth leagues.

7. Those 120 employees also turn out the 120 footballs used in each Super Bowl. Since the balls must contain the names of the competing teams, workers show up during halftime of the second conference championship game. “They have some pizza and soda and make a little TV party out of it,” says Wilson’s Molly Wallace. “When the game is over and we know who’ll be playing in the Super Bowl, they start making footballs.”

8. According to Marty Maciaszek of the National Sporting Goods Assn., American manufacturers sell about 2.3 million footballs each year. A small, but growing, amount of those balls are finding their way overseas annually. American football is popular in places you’d already expect—Canada, England and Samoa—while gaining traction in places you might not imagine: Germany, Netherlands and, yes, China. Ten players born outside of the U.S. were drafted in the NFL 2013 draft.

9. Though American football manufacturers are finding more markets for their products, it’s nothing compared to those markets reached by Hasbro’s line of Nerf footballs. Made in China by molding polyurethane material with open pockets created by CO2 that makes it soft and light, Nerf footballs—and there are legion including the Vortex, Turbo and specially designed Dog Retriever—are shipped to reliable markets in North America and Europe as well as developing ports in South America and Asia Pacific.

10. And though American football manufacturers are finding more markets for their products, it’s nothing compared to the globe’s leading manufacturer of futbols. Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer says the company is projected to manufacture, ship and sell 40 million of its Brazuca balls, the official ball of the World Cup, this year.