It's Time For The NFL To Ditch Turf Fields
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It's Time For The NFL To Ditch Turf Fields
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Hey Friends,
The NFL has invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade to increase player safety. Of course, with youth tackle football participation declining at an alarming rate, most of these efforts have centered around head injuries.
The league has paid out nearly $1 billion as part of the NFL concussion settlement program. They have implemented (and enforced) new rules designed to protect defenseless players, limit high-speed collisions, and reduce concussions. And they are now even making players wear “Guardian Caps” in training camp.
But the NFL has seemingly ignored another big problem staring them right in the face: the debate between artificial turf fields and natural grass.
New York Giants Wide Receiver Sterling Shepard tore his ACL while running down the field at MetLife Stadium on Monday night. It was a non-contact injury (no one touched him), and it reignited the argument that turf fields need to be replaced.
For those unfamiliar with the history, artificial turf fields were developed in the 1950s as a way for urban cities to cover the asphalt on their playgrounds and mimic the grass that suburban kids enjoyed. But they quickly caught the attention of sports teams, and the Houston Astros became the first professional sports organization to install the artificial surface in their newly built Astrodome.
This quickly spread across teams, leagues, cities, and the entire country, and today, there are more than 8,000 artificial turf fields in the United States alone. And as for the NFL, 16 out of the league’s 32 teams (50%) have synthetic turf in their home stadium.
The reason for this might be quite obvious — artificial turf fields are more expensive to install, but they are significantly cheaper to maintain than grass in the long run, and they offer NFL owners the flexibility to host other money-generating events like conferences and concerts in their stadium during the offseason.
Put simply, this enables owners to eliminate seven to eight figures in annual maintenance costs and creatively turn something usually seen as a liability into a cash-generating asset.
But like most things, it’s not as black-and-white as you might think. NFL players have been complaining about artificial turf fields since the 1970s, and with players like Odell Beckham Jr. and Nick Bosa blaming their recent injuries on synthetic turf, the NFL Players Association has started to speak up.
NFLPA President JC Tretter (Cleveland Browns) wrote an open letter to the NFL last year saying that “artificial turf is significantly harder on the body than grass.” But then he brought out the data:
“Based on NFL injury data collected from 2012 to 2018, not only was the contact injury rate for lower extremities higher during practices and games held on artificial turf, NFL players consistently experienced a much higher rate of non-contact lower extremity injuries on turf compared to natural surfaces. Specifically, players have a 28% higher rate of non-contact lower extremity injuries when playing on artificial turf. Of those non-contact injuries, players have a 32% higher rate of non-contact knee injuries on turf and a staggering 69% higher rate of non-contact foot/ankle injuries on turf compared to grass.”
So if the data is so obvious, why haven’t NFL owners all switched to grass fields? I mean, their players are multi-million-dollar investments also, right?
Well, the truth is that some stadiums have tried to get creative. Take Las Vegas or Arizona, for example. Both the Raiders and Cardinals play in indoor stadiums, which would typically require a turf field due to the lack of sunlight.
Instead, they have each engineered solutions that make the field retractable, pushing it outside during the week, so it can get required maintenance and sunlight before moving it inside for gameday via a system of electric motors.
The process takes about 60 minutes, and it provides them with ultimate flexibility.
As for the other sixteen NFL teams, the excuses are starting to run dry. Player safety has become a big issue within the world’s most profitable sport, and while owners have the ultimate amount of leverage against individual players, my guess is that this will eventually be something the NFLPA presses on during future CBA negotiations.
I hope everyone has a great day. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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