The NFL messed with the wrong team on playing surfaces.
The San Francisco 49ers are an organization committed to keeping grass in their stadium, and coach Kyle Shanahan has been picky about the fields on which he puts his team. And the players, led by one of the league’s biggest names in Nick Bosa, have been militant on the subject, particularly since their 2020 game at MetLife Stadium, when a new, loose artificial surface led to a rash of injuries, including a season-ender to Bosa himself.
Some background here: The NFL secures on-site practice facilities years ahead of time for the Super Bowl teams. In Las Vegas, the Raiders’ palatial new digs were designated for the AFC team while UNLV’s facility were chosen for the NFC team. The Rebels practice on outdoor artificial turf fields. No NFL team does that regularly, which is a real telltale sign in the grass vs. turf debate and a reason why the league committed to laying down sod there.
The problem? The sod was laid down only a week ago and was simply dropped over the turf, giving it a spongy, loose feel, CBS’s Jonathan Jones first reported Monday morning. ’s Mike Silver followed up with more details on it—debunking the idea that the field graded out as a practice field normally would.
It’s not easy to get the playing surfaces right, but the NFL also hasn’t shown in any way that doing so is a top priority.
The reason teams such as the Carolina Panthers and Tennessee Titans are going to turf (despite being in southern climates), and fewer teams are going the extra mile for grass, comes down to the same thing everything else does: money. NFL owners want to pack their stadiums with as many nonfootball events as possible to monetize the increasingly expensive venues. Doing that, in turn, makes maintaining a viable grass surface more difficult, and more expensive.
Given the choice, rather than back off on the amount of events in their stadiums, or spend the extra money to have the right grass surface in place, owners have thrown their hands up and laid down turf. They’ll claim they don’t have data that says grass is safer. But then all 32 teams will only practice outdoors on grass, regardless of whether their games are on turf. And a handful will happily lay down grass fields to accommodate international soccer clubs (in two years, it’ll be the World Cup) that demand it.
At this point, I’d respect it more if they were just honest and said it was about the money. They are businesses, and it is their right to make these decisions.
Either way, what’s happening with the 49ers now is part of a much bigger fight.
