[jsyedidia]

Let's take it as a given that the Patriots balls deflated and the Colts balls didn't (we don't actually know that for certain, but I think it's reasonable to assume it's true). We know that if the Patriots prepared their balls indoors and worked on them up until the moment they gave them to the refs as they claimed they did and as is legal, the ideal gas law predicts a deflation of the Patriots' balls approximately equal to what is being rumored.

So the thing making people speculate the Patriots cheated is that the Colts' balls didn't deflate, combined with a lack of understanding of the ideal gas law, or a refusal to take it into account.

I take it as a given that the ideal gas law holds. That means that for the Colts' balls not to deflate when going from indoors to outdoors they must have prepared them differently than the Patriots. A simple explanation is that the gas inside their balls had already equilibrated to the outdoors temperatures before the balls were given to the refs (e.g. the Colts threw them around outside). It is speculation, but it seems to me more reasonable than the assumption that the Patriots' and Colts' balls both managed to evade the workings of the ideal gas law, and the Patriots' balls deflated because the Patriots cheated.