In the 1970s and early 1980s, wide receivers and defensive backs began using Stickum, which was a thick, dark yellow, glue-like material that helped pull the football into their hands, like a magnet. Perhaps most famously, Raiders defensive back Lester Hayes was known to use so much of the substance on his body that Stickum dripped off him. Hayes intercepted 13 passes in 1980 and won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award. “I could catch a football behind my back on one knee,” he later said. “It was tremendous stuff.” Adhesives like Stickum were banned the next year, in 1981. As a result, manufacturers began producing gloves that improved players’ grips on the ball. Technology has since improved to the point that gloves themselves – “sticky gloves” – have enabled receivers and other players to drop fewer passes and make more spectacular-looking, one-handed catches.