The Jets game I went to during that time was the Monday Night Miracle. (I even stayed to the end!)
Grass looks better than in the NFCCC above, but is already starting to not look super great and it’s only week 8 of the first year of grass.
Before grass, that almost sadistic astroturf crap. From the 97 wildcard round, Vikings @ Giants:
To last week’s game that the 49ers complained about:
That field surface the 49ers complained about looks to me like the best possible option.
And, just for information’s sake, the Packers have been using a “hybrid” grass surface for some years now. it’s still a natural grass surface, but the sod is reinforced and stitched together with polyethylene fibers, making the overall surface more durable, while still giving the benefits of natural grass.
They currently use a SIS turf system, which is popular for soccer and rugby fields in Europe, but they were the first U.S. stadium to use it.
If there is a better solution than FieldTurf for MetLife Stadium, count me as an enthusiastic supporter for changing to it. Grass ain’t it, but if there’s a newer, better artificial turf system to be tried, hell yeah, give it a shot.
EDIT: SISGrass might be it but I’m honestly not interested enough to read that link. I’m always interested enough to go look at Giants highlights, of course. heh.
If you look at the second article I linked to in post 8, they rank various artificial turf types for injury rate. FieldTurf has among the highest rates of injuries, while some others, like Matrix Turf and AstroPlay, are closer to natural grass on injury rates.
Well, SISGrass is still natural grass, so it’s still going to pretty much be dead grass in December, but it holds together better than just a field of grass that got re-sodded in the spring.
I wonder if the issue is that FieldTurf is so much extra grippier than real grass that guys can plant and push so much better that a) they’re colliding harder, and b) any foot that gets caught, gets caught bad.
I was in St. Louis during the “Greatest Show on Turf” era of Warner & Faulk. It totally depended on Faulk having learned how to make super-human cuts on the super-grippy artificial surface before the rest of the league had learned to do the same. And they also had the injuries to show for that.
The larger point being that all teams and all players want a surface that maximizes their home performance since that’s half their games. And both players and teams are unrealistically optimistic about how few injuries they’ll actually suffer from playing on that higher performance.
The end result is an arms race towards dangerously grippy surfaces.
Or at least that’s my crazy idee du jour.
One of the linked articles (or possibly something I googled) mentioned that the FieldTurf at MetLife was new, and that it hasn’t been “broken in” yet which is why it’s prone to causing more injuries. I’m not asserting that as the gospel truth, but it sounds reasonable.
If true, then the original sin was the opposite of cheaping out, springing for a whole new surface a few months ago. But then, also if true, what the fuck were they thinking putting in a new field this past summer? Gotta get that shit done in February or March. (Unless, I guess, the world shuts down due to a pandemic?)
I’m not convinced that spending time in close proximity to crushed up tires is a good idea.
Artificial turf–cancer hypothesis.
Also, there is a house up the street that has artificial grass in their front yard. It looks like it always needs to be vacuumed.
Nope. The Diamondbacks switched to turf last year. Which is silly, as they have a retractable roof. And we get a LOT of sun.
Wasn’t there a system where the natural grass field in a stadium was a series of square or hexagonal tiles, each containing the grass and the soil? The idea was individual tiles could be easily swapped out if there was any damage.
Huh, I had no idea Arizona switched.
I had lunch there once, on a business day. They were shining sun lamps on parts of the field. Even with the roof open, the stadium is so vertical and oddly shaped that some corners didn’t get enough sun.
That system has been used to put temporary natural grass surfaces into stadiums with artificial turf (like for World Cup matches), but I don’t know if it’s ever been done as a permanent solution.
I mean they are in the desert. From this AZ Central article:
Artificial turf is a bit more ‘green’. I know when they built Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta there was discussion that in order to be certified LEED, they needed artificial turf to save on water usage.
Not that I’m complaining about that.
But one wonders how much golf Hall and his cronies play, and golf sucks more water than almost anything. True desert courses are few and far between.
The original turf for the Houston Texans used the squares of grass.
Reliant Stadium now boasts removable Astroturf surface to increase non-NFL events.
They switched out to turf after a lot of claims of injuries.
@PetroDude, that second link is just the first one repeated.
That’s because I wanted to paste the same link twice. Or that I copied the same address twice. One of those. Here’s the correct second link to when they switched to artificial turf.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that choosing the word “turf” which actually means “grass” as a generic for stuff that’s anything / everything but grass was/is friggin’ stupid and was/is probably meant to be deliberately misleading?
I get that “Astroturf” was a decent marketing moniker. In the Space Age artificial was always better than natural.
But that sure that shouldn’t have triggered “turf” as the generic term for fake grass, nor “WhateverOtherNaturalOrganicSoundingWordsTurf” as the go-to trade names for ever more sophisticated fake grass.
Harrumph!!
Not a football fan, and no idea what Soldier Field (Chicago) does now, but I recall in the past that they would periodically resod portions of the field as the season progressed. If a game happened during a rain/snow storm, after the active growing season, the grass would get torn up. Then, any sod that was placed to fix it, wouldn’t have time to become rooted, and would tend to become loose and tear up in subsequent games.
Growing grass in Chicago in November and December is not a high success proposition.
Occasionally, they would host a concert or something over the summer, which would tear up the field, and there’s be a question of liability and insurance.
Didn’t RGIII destroy his knee because FedEx has terribly maintained grass?