Former baseball slugger Dick Allen once pithily said quote if a horse won’t eat it, I don’t want to play on it unquote, a reference to playing on artificial turf.
It’s a sentiment that made the rounds after quarterback Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles tendon in the New York Jets’ season opener against the Buffalo Bills. Rodgers, who went down four plays into the new season, his first with the Jets after 18 years in Green Bay, crumpled in a heap on the artificial turf of MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands.
Though there’s no proof that what happened to Rodgers was caused by playing on the turf in New Jersey, cries of protest rose nearly immediately about the continued use of fake grass around the NFL.
David Bakhtiari, a Green Bay lineman and former Rodgers teammate, offered a loud and profane criticism on Twitter.
And after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in an interview, he believed some players preferred playing on turf over natural grass, Bakhtiari fired back, wondering quote What kind of toad poison is the commish smokin unquote.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Smilin’ Roger hasn’t been hitting the psychedelics. Indeed, Goodell went onto explain that while some players say they’d rather play on grass, others want artificial turf because it makes the game faster.
It’s been nearly 60 years since AstroTurf, the initial incarnation of artificial grass, was invented to allow games to play indoors at Houston’s Astrodome,
Later, the use was expanded to permit more northern climes like Minneapolis, Detroit and Seattle, where grass doesn’t grow so well past September, to be able to have surfaces that were consistent.
As the multi-purpose stadium came into vogue in places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati where football and baseball teams shared a facility and regular grass suffered under the wear and tear of near daily use, fake grass became more in vogue.
The field composition was a row of plastic grass and an attempt at a cushion atop what was essentially concrete. The result wreaked havoc on players, leaving a rash of rug burns, knee injuries and the premature end of several promising careers.
And, to what end? Well, if you said cost containment, you win the bonus prize.
Maintaining a field with fake grass is a whole lot cheaper than the real stuff, especially for indoor stadiums, because, as a homeowner will tell you, the real stuff goes brown in the fall and winter. Half of the 32 NFL teams play on turf, as opposed to just five of 30 Major League Baseball clubs.
The likely reason is because NFL owners need to maximize revenue by adding more events to their stadiums beyond the 10 games. Turf fields help facilitate that process, even as the league rakes in record profits.
But there are ways to achieve both, Take the Arizona Cardinals’ domed stadium in Glendale, where the grass is grown in trays and rolled indoors for play.
Making a similar move around the league would be a kind gesture on the part of NFL owners. And if you think that will happen, then you’re probably smoking some toad poison, too.
And that’s how I see it for this week. You can reach us via email with your questions and comments at Sports at Large at gmail.com. And follow me on Threads and Twitter at Sports at Large.
Until next week, for all of us here, I’m Milton Kent. Thanks for listening and enjoy the games.
https://www.si.com/nfl/2023/09/13/mailbag-grass-turf-debate-injury-rodgers-jets
