Here’s to football… on GRASS!

An article by BK    1 Comment

Watching both college and pro games this weekend, a thought came to my mind that seems to be there a lot. “Does anyone play on real grass anymore?”

Call me old fashioned, but I enjoy football that way it was meant to be played.  I want to see pouring rain, mud puddles, blizzards, dirty uniforms and bloody faces. Yes, this style of play is horrible for the past time that is Fantasy Football, but I’m a sucker for tradition.

Nearly half of the teams in the NFL play on some sort of synthetic, field turf type of field. I use to think it was cool when these surfaces first came to be because it was fake grass, but you could still see a dirt like substance fly up from the field.  As I have gotten older and have learned to appreciate the game a lot more, I have come to miss the essence that is football.

You can actually play a 60 minute game as a professional running back, and not get one single grain of dirt on your precious white uniform. I know the athletes prefer these synthetic surfaces and probably prefer not to get dirty either. That’s a shame.  Football players are bigger, faster and stronger and science is helping them stay that way.

I like the old fashioned throw back uniforms and logos. I like football fields where you can barely make out the white yard lines because of the giant pizza sized divots from cleats. I like when a players face gets buried so hard on a tackle that he emerges with a mouthful of sod in his facemask.  I like when a player has been hit and battered so much that his once white pants are now brown and red with dirt and blood. This is football to me.

Times they are a changing, and I’m not sure if my children’s children will even see a football field made of real grass.  There are three schools in the Big Ten with real grass fields. The BIG TEN!  One of the most tradition rich conferences in all of college football.  Again, I might be old fashioned, but this makes me sad.

I guess I should have been born in the 40’s. I can sit back with a beer and watch NFL Films all day long. When the Green Bay Packers switch to field turf, you know the world is coming to an end. I hope I never see that day.