The NFL Players Association’s recent tweet regarding the effort to comply with FIFA’s mandate for high-quality grass fields included a link to a recent appearance by NFLPA executive director JC Tretter on the Not Just Football podcast with Cam Heyward.
Tretter elaborated on the real-vs.-fake debate. Which really shouldn’t be a debate, because the vast majority of all players prefer grass.
“What we want is good grass fields,” Tretter said, via Jordan Raanan of ESPN. “Good, solid fields. You don’t just want to pull out the [municipal] golf course grass. On every field, you want high-quality surfaces. I think one thing is understanding what our players care about. And there is something there that the data hasn’t been able to spit back out at us. Which if you ask every player that we polled, 1,700 players, 92 percent say they want grass over turf.”
It’s surprising that eight percent disagree. It could be the kickers and punters. Or, as Chris Simms said on Wednesday’s PFT Live, it could be young players who prefer maximum speed while they still have full tread on the tires. (That’s temporary, once they experience enough NFL-caliber wear and tear.)
“There is something about the feeling of being on grass, the body feels different,” Tretter said. “I think if you ask the coaches, just standing on grass vs. standing on turf for three hours feels different. There is something there that impacts the body.”
The NFL’s statistical fallback is that the injury rate is the same on both surfaces. But the general aches and pains that come from playing on fake grass don’t count as injuries. And, for all anyone knows, the accumulated pounding from having the forces players create ricochet back into their bodies can set the stage for injuries on either surface.
For now, it’s a point for negotiations. Owners want fake grass because it’s cheaper, and because it makes it easier to host other events that generate revenue.
“I think it’s important for us to have metrics to enforce them, making sure the stadiums are being used predominantly for football games, especially when having concerts and monster truck rallies, those are all things owners make money [from],” Tretter said. “The players don’t make money off it. The idea that, ‘Hey, we’re going to host these events that means we have to put a worse surface on there for you and you don’t actually get any of that money for those events we’re hosting’ isn’t a great thing for the players either. And that is what we have to evaluate for the next deal.”
The question becomes what it will take to get the league to agree (as the owners hosting World Cup matches did) to install and maintain high-quality grass for the 10 games per year (minus international games and plus postseason games) to be played at each venue. Is it part of the tradeoff for 18 games?
For the owners who already have grass fields, that’s an easy one. It costs them nothing. For the owners who would have to spend the money to provide high-quality grass when they currently don’t, it becomes an expense. Perhaps a significant one, especially in the stadiums where it would be difficult if not impossible to add (for instance) a system like they have in Arizona and Las Vegas, where a grass field can be slid in and out of the venue.
Through it all, the Bills have decided to swap out fake grass for real grass at their new stadium. That leaves the Patriots, Jets/Giants, Bengals, Browns (for their new stadium), Texans, Colts, Titans (currently, and for their new stadium), Chargers/Rams, Cowboys, Lions, Vikings, Bears (in their new stadium), Saints, Falcons, Panthers, and Seahawks as the teams that play on artificial turf.
Obviously, it can be done, as evidenced by the willingness to do it for soccer. Will the owners agree to do it for football?
They should. Whether they will is a different issue. And it will come down to how hard each side will pull the rope in the coming CBA tug-of-war.
