Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

sheajets wrote:Always hated it, not just from a health/injury angle but I just like the aesthetics of a natural grass field. Places like Soldier Field, Orange Bowl, KC, Foxboro all looked so much better with grass. An Eagles home game at the Vet just looked bad with that awful turf.

I didn't like playing on it (especially the ones with ridiculous crowns) and also didn't like the aesthetics, particularly outdoors.

Though now when I watch an old NY/NJ Knights game or something Giants Stadium makes me laugh, not just the always ridiculous red NJ Meadowlands logo but the color of the field when I put in the old VHS tape and watch it on an HDTV is so bad it's funny.

Heat was another big problem with the artificial surfaces. I remember games when the air temperature was something like 80 or 90 degrees and the temperature of the playing field was 140 degrees.

One of the artificial surfaces also got sticky in sunlight.

Reaser wrote:Though now when I watch an old NY/NJ Knights game or something Giants Stadium makes me laugh, not just the always ridiculous red NJ Meadowlands logo but the color of the field when I put in the old VHS tape and watch it on an HDTV is so bad it's funny.

The 1991 San Antonio Riders also had a ridiculous home turf. The field was so old and worn it looked more tan than green. Alamo Stadium was aptly nicknamed the "Rockpile". The next year the Riders moved to San Marcos and played on a plush, natural grass field.

One of the things I liked about the original XFL was that all of the games were played outdoors and on natural grass fields. The XFL 2020 might be hard pressed to pull that off again as a lot of the league's original cities now have stadiums with artificial turf: Birmingham, East Rutherford, Las Vegas, Memphis, Orlando.

The only place that I liked seeing AstroTurf was at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. The unforgiving surface seemed to fit the Steelers' style of play for so many years. I think Mike Webster, who sadly was incredibly beat up at the end of his career, played more games on AstroTurf than any other player.

As Ralph already mentioned, fake grass holds in more heat than the real stuff. The on-field temperature before the Pickle Juice Game in Dallas back in 2000 were reported to be has high as 170°F. Over the years I've seen plenty of stories about shoes partially melting and feet being burned by hot fields.

A few years ago I whipped a little article about the usage of old-style artificial turf ("AstroTurf") in the NFL on my website: http://www.footballgeography.com/chrono ... n-the-nfl/.

Apbaball wrote:I do understand the cost factor but I have to assume the same is true in baseball which had no qualms about spending more money to have grass surfaces.

I think a couple of differences apply here. One is that football players do a lot more damage to a field than baseball players who do most of their serious cleatwork on the dirt basepaths. Also, grass fields take a real beating when fall and winter come. Most of football's field turf venues are in the north where the grass dies in November and by December the fields are mostly torn-up dirt. So, I'm guessing the maintenance costs for a grass baseball field is quite a bit less than it is for football.

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.

Bryan wrote:

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.

I believe Tartan Turf was originally developed as a track surface. I know that the first installation ever was on the track at Macalester College in Minnesota, near the headquarters of 3M.

It's still manufactured, but 3M sold the name and technology to another company. Its chief use now is on golf mats for driving ranges.

Some of the early ads for it actually claimed it would REDUCE injuries.

In Jack Tatum's autobiography, he wrote of how Woody Hayes trying to convince the Buckeye players that they should switch to artificial turf. The players would be faster, and no more wet, muddy uniforms. One of his teammates, a gullible sort named Strickland easily embraced Woody's logic and voted for it. Every other player (I'll say 44 of them) voted against it.

In Woody's democracy, things were always put to a vote and Woody always voted last. "So by Woody's 44 votes, and Strick's 1, Ohio State switched to artificial turf."
When Strickland expressed surprised that others hadn't agreed with him, and hadn't listed to Hayes about playing faster, one of his teammates reminded him, "Strick, the other team plays on the same field."

conace21 wrote:In Woody's democracy, things were always put to a vote and Woody always voted last. "So by Woody's 44 votes, and Strick's 1, Ohio State switched to artificial turf."

Reminds me of the anecdote that Nixon told at Hayes' 1987 funeral, recounting a meeting between the two: "I wanted to talk football and Woody wanted to talk politics. So we ended up talking about politics."

Reaser wrote:

JohnH19 wrote:I have nothing to back this up but I have long had a bad feeling about the bits of rubber that kick up from field turf surfaces. I feel like there will be health repercussions down the road.

The girls soccer and "possible links" of the rubber causing cancer was a huge story here in WA.

Yes, and I remember seeing a TV segment about the Washington girls soccer and fieldturf situation you described. Haven't heard an update in years about a possible connection. Football players are on the ground more than soccer players, don't know if there have been any health issues. The Pacific Northwest has been using fieldturf for high school and college football for roughly 15 years now.