There are plenty of FieldTurf fields that are blank green surfaces on which the desired lines are painted on and removed as needed. Two examples that come to mind are Giants Stadium and Qwest Field (the Seahawks' stadium in Seattle).
Which are the only two exceptions to the general rule you can come up with. Every college football stadium with Fieldturf installed to date has permanent football lines and markings. AEG may have negotiated non-permanent markings with U. of H. or it may not have done so. Remains to be seen, but if non-permanent markings are used, it would be a first for a college football stadium.
Great.. Hopefully they will do that in Houston.. Since it will be a new field there's no excuse this time.. Well the excuse may be that it's a "temporary" situation and permanent is cheaper..
Giants Stadium has "spray and replace" Field Turf--but they only do that until August or so, and it costs $$$ every time they do it. No way UofH/AEG is paying those $$$ for spray and replace. I can't see it at all. Besides, the Giants Stadium stuff is like flattened for football. We're looking at Southlake or at best Southlake-lite for THREE YEARS. You should be happy, Jefe, you can better mock the crap field on which your new in-state rivals find themselves. You remember how happy the Burn were to switch to Southlake and play on that crap. Remember those results? I imagine some of the Quakes will feel the same way. It's demoralizing. And day games will obliterate their feet and melt their shoes. And we know MLS will not be smart enough to avoid scheduling day games at Robertson. Hell, it was 90 degrees as late as November in Texas this year. Pure misery to play on that sh!t in the heat.
I'm sure if AEG is willing to pick up the tab there is no problem removing the football lines. Take the Metrodome in Minnesota for instance. The Vikings and Twins seasons overlap, and the football lines are completely removed before every Twins series in August and September. It's purely a matter of whether they want to bother or not, and I'd bet if AEG is installing new FieldTurf, that they'll go ahead and incur the cost to remove the lines between games. But playing on FieldTurf... well, that still sucks. Please don't bother with any afternoon games in the summer.
I think removing the lines are not much of a problem, it is the endzones which are totally painted that are problematic. When the Sounders played in the USL Championships at Qwest this year they scrubbed the lines but not the endzones because of the cost.
How many colleges have had FieldTurf installed with the intent of sharing it with a professional soccer team? Again, how many colleges have had FieldTurf installed with the intent of sharing it with a professional soccer team?
Way to dial up the melodrama. Honestly, most fans wouldn't have given two craps about the field at Southlake if not for the permanent football markings and black endzones that were never painted over. Certainly, there was much less bitching and moaning about the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium this past season than there was about the field at Dragon Stadium. Or for that matter, the field at Giants Stadium before July rolls around and the Giants and Jets start playing preseason games. Do I like it? No. I honestly don't see why UH couldn't keep their grass field. It's not as if it's unheard-of for a soccer team and a college football team to share a grass field. And it's not as if grass is particularly difficult to grow in Houston. It strikes me as a situation where an athletic director is looking to get an otherwise expensive surface for free, which will then in turn reduce his department's upkeep costs for that surface to almost zero. BTW, thanks for the update on what the weather is like in Texas in November. I've only spent 30 of my 34 years in various parts of the state (including Houston), but there was always the possibility that I might've missed out.
Sharing it for three years at most. Presumably the U. of H. football program will continue forward for a lot longer than three years. But again, AEG may have negotiated no permanent football lines. Or may have not. Depends on whether AEG wants to pay the extra cost of continuously putting in and removing the football lines, and whether Maggard is OK with no permanent lines (and the cost of putting the non-permanent paint on and maintaining it) once the MLS team leaves for its new SSS. But if Maggard is really serious about trying to keep the MLS team there longer than three years, as he stated, quite possibly he did agree to no permanent football lines.
True story from the Burn's season in Hell in 2003: Not all of the football markings at Dragon Stadium were permanent. In fact, only the gridiron and endzones were permanent. The rest of the markings, including the numbers and hashmarks, were painted on. In fact, I would've been shocked if they weren't painted on when the field was installed in 2001. And if they were more recent than that, I don't think that cost of touching up those marking was particularly onerous.
UH is saying they want MLS to stay rather than build a new stadium. If that is true then it makes sense that there is a plan that will allow for the the size and esthetics necessary for Roberston to function well as an MLS Stadium. I, like others, am concerned about the Field Turf issue. I look forward to hearing an explination as to why they feel putting in field turf makes good sense.
The athletic director wants a free FieldTurf field, which will then dramatically reduce his department's field upkeep costs. In other words, it really has very little to do with soccer.
I don't think it makes good soccer sense but U of H wanted something out of this deal and this is what they got FieldTurf. I even think the football players will hate this surface when they are doing 2 a days on the turf in August. If they stuck with the grass it would be a perfect situation.
It's my conjecture. Maggard is running an athletic department that is hardly rolling in cash. UH is in a conference, Conference USA, that gets very little money from TV for football or basketball. Meanwhile, because UH has been a commuter school for most of its history, they don't get good attendance for any sporting event. Frankly, Robertson Stadium might be a shade too big for the attendances that UH football gets. So if he can get a field for free that dramatically reduces maintenance costs and that's universally acknowledged as being as good as grass for the main sport that's played at Robertson Stadium, then that has a great impact on the athletic department's bottom line.
You could be right. OTOH I prefer to avoid giving value to a hypothetical conjecture since it is not fact---only speculation. Until we have more information there are many unanswered issues surrounding this move and the realities at Robertson Field. Of course this is Big Soccer so any assertion goes, with or without facts.
The Washington Huskies did it and it cost $1,074,958 but that figure included a practice field.. Perhaps a ball-park (no pun intended) figure is around 700K-800K..
Like most things, it's about money. Here's some of the latest reporting on the deal at Robertson (in particular, see the last paragraph): MLS makes itself at home, Houston Chronicle 12/17 Also, it's well-known here that the UH athletic department loses several million each year. I haven't seen the most recent figures, but I recall reports that UH was losing around $9 million/yr right before Maggard arrived. To his credit, Maggard has significantly increased alumni donations at UH, but UH is a state supported commuter school that simply doesn't enjoy the same sort of massive alumni support as Texas or Texas A&M. I know that Rice, which also plays in C-USA and publicly acknowledged that the athletic department lost about $10 million in 2003, is currently planning several major expenditures on Rice Stadium, including replacing the Astroturf (yes, Astroturf) field. Both natural grass and FieldTurf are being considered, but FieldTurf will almost certainly be chosen because of the comparative maintenance cost savings. Installing FieldTurf isn't about soccer or even football. It's about saving significant amounts of money on an annual basis for athletic departments that are currently bleeding financially.