New Turf at the Big House

Its May, ok?

Yes, the Big House will be getting new carpet this season. Apparently this was common knowledge, but this blogger failed to know that. For whatever reason, with all the spring game stuff going on, it was posted and I totally missed it. [via 4/17 mgoblue.com press release]

NEW TURF OLD TURF
At the end of March, vandals broke into Michigan Stadium and cut a six foot by eight inch piece of turf out of the Block M at midfield. The section was replaced for the spring game with a brighter and higher quality version of field turf called Duraspine.

All the turf at Michigan Stadium will be replaced following commencement. The eight-year-old field is one of the first versions of FieldTurf and will be completely replaced with Duraspine by the season opener against Connecticut. 

So, yeah.

The new Duraspine turf can actually be seen right next to the 8-year old turf that will soon become a thing of the past. At the spring game, I was able to get up-close and personal to the vandalized section of the block-M to snap this photo:

Click the image for a high-res version.

The L-shaped strip of the block-M that was torn out was replaced with the new Duraspine turf that will cover the whole field this fall. Clearly, the yellow is yellow-er, the blue is blue-er, I assume the green will be greener-er, and just the whole look of the new turf is thicker and stands a little taller than the old, trampled worn-out turf that clearly needs to go. This is obviously just a patch-job, and I assume the whole field installation will look much more uniform.

So what is Duraspine, you ask? It's made by FieldTurf, the same manufacturer of the current turf installed at the Big House. They actually make most of the turf fields you see in use by college and NFL teams. Duraspine is a new and improved version of the old stuff. Cue handy visual-aid:

http://fieldturfinfo2.chammas.ca:7984/duraspine/img/dura.jpg

You're probably telling yourself, this image is great and all, but a highly informative product video would really help me understand the shear awesomeness of this new turf. Cue overly-produced corporate hype video:



Long story short: Yes, new turf this fall. It's way more super-awesome than the old turf. It will be safer, with more vibrant colors. I assume it will be green...but who knows, it could be blue. It might have a new design. In an email sent to media relations, Bruce Madej only confirmed the new turf, and did not address whether or not any changes would be made to the design of the field. We'll just have to wait and see.