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Former Bears Ball Boy Who Has Acted As Expert Has Credentials Questioned

(CBS) Deadspin has questioned the credibility of a former Bears ball boy who has become a go-to expert for national outlets following the Deflategate controversy, in which the New England Patriots were found to have used 11 deflated footballs in an AFC championship win against the Colts.

Eric Kester has appeared on CNN, ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today Show and wrote a piece for the New York Times recently to share his so-called expertise on the responsibilities of being a ball boy and how one might deflate a football. He described in the Times piece that he'd worked for an "extended period of time behind the NFL curtain" for the Chicago Bears more than a decade ago, but upon further examination, Deadspin reports that Kester actually worked for just three weeks in training camp and "at most" two preseason games for the franchise back in 2003.

That was the extent of his experience, Deadspin reported, which doesn't jive with being a national expert on the controversy and his claims to have handled the game balls, which only the most experienced ball boys are typically assigned to do.

Privately, the Bears have disputed Kester's claims.

From Deadspin:

Count the Bears among the quibblers. In fact, team sources pooh-pooh pretty much all of the recollections of game-day ballhandling that Kester has expressed on TV, and blast every syllable of his Times opus. In the team's view, Kester would have trouble filling a pamphlet with his actual NFL experiences, let alone a book.

According to a team source, employment records indicate Eric Kester was a training camp assistant for "three weeks" during the summer of 2003 in Bourbonnais, Ill., worked "at most two preseason games" that year, and never returned. The files support assertions by longtime sidelines personnel that Kester never worked a regular season game for the team. (A photo provided by a source with ties to the Bears training staff and described as a shot of the game-day crew from the 2003 season shows a 22-man group; Kester is not among them. This source requested that the photo not be published.)

For his part, Kester has stood by his credentials.

"I would consider several weeks doing these things is an extended period of time, to the average football fan or New York Times reader," Kester told Deadspin.

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