It’s not every day that football is played on something other than turf or grass.
When it is, it’s usually a pick-up game in your neighborhood street, or blacktop on the playground of an elementary school.
Usually, it’s not in the Super Bowl. But apparently, at one point, it was.
According to a Washington Post story on groundskeepers gearing up for the upcoming Super Bowl in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the Minnesota Vikings played Super Bowl IV against the Kansas City Chiefs on woodchips and sawdust painted to look like grass.
The championship game in 1970 was played at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, and while the Post’ story doesn’t give specific reason for the game being played on things that are not usually green, it infers that poor field conditions forced professionals to come up with an alternative.
Quoting the Post: “It may qualify as a small irony that in the run-up to the first outdoor, cold-weather Super Bowl, the people seemingly least threatened about the possibility of bad weather are the folks whose job is to protect the surface on which the game will be played. It should come as no surprise, since the NFL’s groundskeeping experts are used to dealing with the elements — and improvising when they have to….The 1970 game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, crews had to spread wood chips and sawdust across the field and paint it green to look presentable.”
Now that we have found a reason for that 23-7 loss, just three Super Bowls to go to feel completely better about the Purple’s lack of rings.
