Whether it's Tim Tebow's pass efficiency or a the high-definition broadcast into your living room or the aerodynamics of a football, it all comes down to one thing — engineering.

When Pasquale M. Sforza looks at a football and a baseball, he can’t help noticing how similar they are.

It’s worth noting that Sforza is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Florida. So it’s no surprise he sees the world a little different than the average sports fan.

“All the balls have similar kind of so-called ballistic coefficients,” Sforza said by phone. “The ballistic coefficient — which is a measure of the weight compared to the drag-producing capability of the ball in question — is pretty similar for all the sports balls, in particular baseballs and footballs, even though they are completely different shapes.”

Drag slows a ball, which in football can put the offensive team in a precarious position. The faster the football moves, the less chance of an interception. For the Steelers and Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII, it can be the difference between winning and losing.

“You’ve got to be pretty strong and pretty capable to hurl the ball in that speed range which for its diameter gives it low drag,” Sforza said. “When you get that 90, 100 mph baseball, that’s what you can do.

“It’s slowing down, but it persists, because it doesn’t have a lot of drag. Whereas a guy who throws it a little bit slower, it slows down a lot more rapidly. This would be true of a football, why being able to throw very long passes, good passes or even sharp, accurate passes, you’ve got to get a lot of zip on the ball.”

This is why NFL teams prize the strong-armed college quarterback at draft time.

The shape of a football is unique in sports. Its cousin is the rugby ball, but that is rounder in the middle and harder to throw. That’s because it is more difficult to put spin on a rugby ball, and that’s crucial to making a pass.

“The spinning is mainly a stabilizing factor that you get on the ball,” Sforza said. “If you don’t put a spin on it, it wobbles a lot and you can’t really get any speed on it, because it doesn’t seem to go where you want it. That’s the same idea in artillery shells and rifling of a gun barrel to get the projectile spinning which gives it some additional stability.”

Perhaps that is why commentators say a quarterback has a cannon for an arm. And while there have few measurements of how fast a quarterback throws the ball, it is believed they throw it up to 60 mph.

“If you throw a 50 or 60 mph football, you’re pretty much in that (low-drag) range,” Sforza said. “My feeling is that that’s the difference between someone who really stands out and someone who is just a good everyday kind of player. It has to do with being able to deliver the ball with the right spin rate.

“The nature of the flow over the ball dictates where the ball is going to go. When it’s spinning, you have a preferred direction. You have the axis of spin, which is important in determining things. If it’s not spinning, you don’t have anything. You almost can’t throw it without spin. The way the ball is configured, you sort of have to have some spin on it. That tends to keep it lined up in the manner that gives it a much more defined direction. It’s a hefty job throwing one of those things at 50 or 60 mph.”

While the laces of the ball help a quarterback’s grip, it increases drag and hinders spin.

The last bit of information to consider when studying a quarterback’s ability to complete a pass is the ball’s angle of attack. This is the angle between the longitudinal axis of the football above the direction of flight.

The optimum angle of attack is between 10 degrees and 15 degrees

“In that range the lift to drag ratio of the football reaches its maximum thereby enhancing the height and distance achieved in the throw,” Sforza said.

Sforza noted that temperature, altitude and weather can affect the ball. That can change the angle of attack.

“Players are not out there like engineers calculating everything,” Sforza said. “They have a neural network. They learn. They do it a lot and they get real good at it. They’re artists. I’ll bet that that’s built into their makeup, how to throw. That’s the difference between a star and an average player. There are things that are difficult to put your finger on, you see somebody who’s so good, but there’s still physics behind it.”