This is an interesting read.
Rain doesn’t dampen day for Tide at Bryant-Denny
By Michael Casagrande
Sports Writer
TUSCALOOSA — A misty, spitting rain greeted Scott Urbantke when he arrived at work Saturday.
It was 6:30 a.m., and Alabama’s director of athletic grounds could have panicked. Just five hours later, the Crimson Tide football team kicked off against North Texas, but a sloppy Bryant-Denny Stadium field was not in his extended forecast.
The rain continued, but Urbantke remained calm. After all, technology was on his side.
Located in a little room just off the tunnel leading to the Alabama locker room sits a room containing the groundskeeper’s best friend.
That’s where Urbantke can find two big pumps connected to a vacuum system that runs underneath the playing surface. Two-inch pipes with drains located every 8 to 10 feet allows the field to withstand “an incredible amount of water,” Urbantke said.
Those pumps likely will get a workout Saturday, too, when Alabama hosts Arkansas. The forecast calls for thunderstorms.
The vacuum system installed in 1991 was a mystery to Tide coach Nick Saban.
“I don’t know if it could rain a lot more than it did before the game, but the system that we have, whatever it is, really worked well and the grounds people did a fantastic job of having the field in great condition,” Saban said. “So I probably should go over and apologize to all the people I raised hell with about not having a tarp.”
Alabama left guard Mike Johnson plays with one hand on the grass all afternoon. He wanted to thank the grounds crew for keeping the field playable in spite of the weather.
“I was very surprised at how dry the field was,” he said. “I didn’t lose my footing the whole time and I don’t think anybody had a problem.”
The rainy weather of the past two weeks were about as bad as Urbantke said he’s seen since he came to Alabama 11 years ago after working as the superintendent at Greystone Country Club in Birmingham. Still, he never thought the surface would fail. And the success goes far beyond the underground vacuum. The construction, composition and maintenance of the field all play huge factors.
Known as prescription athletic turf, the Bryant-Denny grass is Bermuda 419. It comes from the same turf farm in Foley as the surface found at Turner Field in Atlanta and Land Shark Stadium in Miami. The same Bermuda typically grows on golf course tee boxes.
Growing on top of a layer of sand and surrounded by an ever-expanding concrete structure that blocks sunlight makes maintaining the surface a challenge that Urbantke and his full-time crew of six workers are equipped to meet.
Applying fertilizer is a regular duty because the porous sand allows the chemicals to wash right through the grass.
“There’s a reason why stuff doesn’t grow on a beach,” said Urbantke who is in charge of every athletic practice and game field at Alabama.
Terry Cook, the athletics field technician supervisor who has been on the job for more than 20 years, has an especially close relationship with Alabama’s playing field. He mows the grass every day, rolls it twice a week during the season and keeps it manicured year-round mostly for recruiting visits. Most of the major work is done following A-Day and before the first scrimmage of preaseason practice.
Rain is one of the groundskeeper’s greatest enemies. Large doses of it spoil the regular mowing regimen.
A wet week two years ago threw off the routine, and after Saban saw the grass length was a little high during the pregame walk-through, he called in the Cook’s crew about 90 minutes before kickoff with Arkansas. Two mowers finished the job in less than 30 minutes.
The pride Cook and Urbantke take in their job extends well beyond pleasing superiors and cashing a paycheck. Urbantke said he was honored when he heard how pleasantly surprised Tide players were when they saw how dry the field for the North Texas game.
“That’s the whole reason. Our little piece here factors into the great big piece that hopefully ends up in the Rose Bowl at the end of the year,” Urbantke said.
“It’s our little part.”
Groundskeeping nightmares
Keeping the Bryant-Denny Stadium turf in nearly perfect condition through all the rain Saturday was another triumph for the Alabama grounds crew. But there are times when things go wrong.
# The biggest foul-up 20-year vet Terry Cook remembers came in the early 1990s when a broken tape measure wrecked havoc. The marching band was doing its pregame preparations on the field when they came to the crew asking if the hash-marks had changed. It turns out the faulty tape measure caused the yard markers to be off by a foot-and-a-half.
“Needless to say, before game time, we had to erase all the hash marks and repaint them,” Terry Cook said.
# Rain before the 2001 home opener against UCLA forced grounds crew to paint straight through the night before the game.
# About six years ago, Cook said the crew forgot to paint the extra-point line at the 3-yard line.
# The sod had to be replaced in the middle of the season six or seven years ago, Urbantke said, for a number of reasons. That’s the worse issue he said he has encountered.
