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Sunday, October 13, 2002

By Ed Bouchette, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

The National Football League has discovered that the grass is not always greener on its playing fields.

Because the Players Association complained long and loud about the dangers of artificial turf, most teams converted their stadium carpets to grass in recent years. When new outdoor stadiums went up, grass was installed.

But the grass, especially in northern climates, won't take hold for those teams that use their stadiums for pro, college and high school games, concerts and Billy Graham crusades.

Some teams are now reverting back to a new-age artificial turf and it may not be long before most of them do it. The Cowboys did so recently in Texas Stadium. Cincinnati may be next. Many have called the grass at Paul Brown Stadium the worst field in the NFL, and the Bengals are considering installing artificial turf.

"That's one of the options," Bengals President Mike Brown said.

"Here, we've had a lot of problems with our field. Visiting players, visiting coaches have complained about our field. We've made your problems look minor, and you've had problems."

The Heinz Field grass, re-sodded twice since it was first installed last year, was called the worst in the league by Cleveland kicker Phil Dawson two weeks ago. The problems seem to be with the sand base. It helps the grass grow, but it easily gets worn down and scraped away by all the play on it. The Bengals, who believe in holding community events and high school games in a stadium built by taxpayers, re-sodded their field twice this year and will do so, Brown said, as often as they must. Even the Carolina Panthers, in Charlotte, N.C., re-sodded their field during this season, mixing in a synthetic grass called DuraTurf.

In the old days, the grass also wore down, but it was on a dirt base.

"An option would be just go to old-fashioned dirt fields," Brown said. "You have mud, puddles, you have frozen fields that were hard as cement -- all the problems from those days. Guys would slip and fall on it. There was no grass on the field at all. Early in the year, what we have now is better before it wears away.

"The other option is go to a new artificial surface."

The Steelers lost a kicker because Kris Brown did not want to play on sandy Heinz Field any longer and opted to move indoors on artificial grass in Houston. The Bengals nearly lost their kicker when he became what Mike Brown called "a celebrated basket case" last year. Neil Rackers made 11 of 18 field goal tries in Paul Brown Stadium in 2001.

"His confidence was shaken [kicking there], to say the least," Brown said. "But he's still here. The thing he knows and we know, this field is very, very hard for a kicker."

Brown agrees with the players that the old artificial turf, the hard carpets that have disappeared except in a few places such as Buffalo and Minnesota, were dangerous. There hasn't been a torn anterior cruciate knee ligament -- among the players' biggest fears -- in Paul Brown Stadium since it opened in 2000.

"We used to have two, three, four or more of them every year over there," Brown said of old Cinergy/Riverfront, "and here we haven't had one. That's a big thing. It's a safer field than we had at Riverfront."

Yet the real grass probably will be torn out at Paul Brown Stadium as it appears it will happen in Heinz Field and most northern stadiums. The new generation of artificial grass has all the benefits of the real stuff without the liabilities. It is soft underneath and has length like real grass. The players love the FieldTurf on the Steelers indoor practice field.

"We're still searching for a better answer," Brown said. "We're going to do something at the end of this year to improve the grass field or go to an artificial field in a year or two."