Teo wrote:In an old early-80s magazine when the fields of each NFL team were listed, it always popped me that Dallas, Pittsburgh and Kansas City had Tartan Turrf, and New England had Super Turf instead of Astro Turf.
I always thought it was odd that there was no uniformity when it came to artificial turf, because in some sense it was a 'player safety' issue. You'd think the NFL would mandate a specific brand/type of turf to be used in league games (hopefully the 'safest' version), but instead you had somewhat of a 'snake oil salesman' aspect with individual companies pitching their artificial turf product to individual NFL owners, citing their own biased scientific studies regarding the benefits of their turf product. The result was that each NFL stadium with artificial turf had its own unique set of problems; what was touted as 'surface uniformity' was in fact the opposite.
The Dolphins had Poly-Turf, which featured longer fake grass blades than AstroTurf. This concept was thought to give more cushion for player impacts, as the big criticism of AstroTurf was its unforgiving feel, but it ended up being a disaster. The fake grass blades would fold over on itself, and the field would become incredibly slick (think Super Bowl V). The Patriots also initially had Poly-Turf, but eventually switched to the shorter Super Turf (while the Dolphins switched back to grass in 1976).
The Steelers' Tartan Turf was weird. As someone else mentioned, it did fit with their roughneck style. If you look at close-up game photos of Steeler games at Three Rivers, the turf looks like cement with stray peanut shells and bits of garbage strewn along the surface. Instead of using fake grass blades like other turfs, Tartan Turf was produced in solid sheets. It was basically a giant, firm square sponge placed atop asphalt. I didn't know this until I looked it up, but 3M stopped producing Tartan Turf in 1974, meaning that Dallas/KC/Pittsburgh installed a product that was immediately discontinued.
