Players prefer grass to turf. Generally, and specifically. Indeed, we’re still waiting to see or hear from even any one current player who prefers fake to real.
Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott made his preference for grass clear last week, linking his 2020 broken ankle to the turf at AT&T Stadium. On Sunday, the man who owns the stadium and the field and the plastic grass was asked about the issue.
“We’ll continue to do really what we’ve always done,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones told reporters after the 30-10 win over the Jets. “That is evaluate, and we do. I’ve served over 30 years on a lot of committees that go over the impact of grass as it pertains to injury and it looks like the obvious answer what it is, but that’s not what it is.”
The NFL loves to make the obvious into something non-obvious, whenever the obvious motivation is to save some money. Which is what Jones is doing by using a surface that permits quick and easy shifting for other events that generate revenue on the 350 or so days per year when the Cowboys aren’t using the place.
The weakest plank for the NFL in its flimsy effort to justify less-safe playing surfaces comes from the willingness of Jones and his ilk to bow down to FIFA and install a grass pitch for World Cup soccer. He apparently wasn’t asked about that on Sunday.
Perhaps, if this debate continues, he will be pressed to address the question of why he’s willing to spend the money for a grass field when the men playing on it are not his employees who would prefer playing on grass.