This is not our grass job but it’s interesting to read about.  I’m going to link to several articles that talk about the re-sodding of the Rose Bowl field for the National Championship game tonight in Pasadena, CA, between Florida State and Auburn.

Here’s a short article about why they replaced the sod.

Here’s a longer article that goes into more detail about the grass and the installation process.

And one more on the massive effort it took to put in a new field in such a short time.

The field for the actual Rose Bowl was installed in November after the last regular season game there.  Then 2 hours after the Rose Bowl finished on January 1st, they started laying new sod over the old sod which raised the field about 2 inches.  They then also raised the goal posts 2 inches to match.  Apparently the reason they laid new sod over the old was just for time sake.  They didn’t have time to remove the old and install the new and get it painted and ready for the game today so they just went right over it.

The field looks beautiful! They used Tifway 419 over seeded with Rye grass.  Surprised me a little that they were using Tif 419 and not a new bermuda like Celebration.  Anyway, I thought this was interesting and wanted to talk about it.

There are some nice pictures on West Coast Turf’s Facebook page if you care to see those. Maybe I shouldn’t link to another sod farm here but I think we have different customers so it should be okay!  Although it does look like they’ve been in Houston before.  According to this article they helped provide the grass for the NFL when Houston had the BIG game in 2004!