Last year at about this time, the playing surface at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh looked more like a sandlot than a professional football field.    Four high school football games were played there on that Friday and the University of Pittsburgh played the University of South Florida on that Saturday.  Naturally, the field showed the wear and tear of 20 quarters of football.

Inexplicably, the grounds crew at Heinz decided to completely re-sod the field on Sunday before a Steelers/Dolphins game on Monday night.  It didn’t work.  They just laid the new grass over the old grass, and it didn’t settle before the game.  Add rain.  That equals muck.

With all this rain falling in Southern California, and all those games being played at Home Depot Center this weekend, the question becomes: are we in for a Mud Bowl?

Granted the Heinz story is the extreme, but in a game that means so much, every little thing counts.  What happens if it’s still raining hard during one or two of the games on Friday and Saturday?  Weather reports don’t show a huge chance that we’ll see heavy rain, but hey—they wouldn’t have found Grant on that radar either.  It’s 2008, so anything is possible.

The HDC is home to two Major League Soccer teams and a myriad of other worldly events, so we’re sure they have a fine grounds crew, but still—grass is grass, and 20 quarters is a lot of football.

“They do a good job with the field there,” says Poly coach Raul Lara.  “Yes, we will be the fifth game [the HDC has never seen more than four], and it is natural turf, but we aren’t too worried about it.”

“It was raining last year for the CIF championship game, and it held up well,” agreed defensive coordinator Jeff Turley. 

We’re hoping it does—the HDC grounds crew says they’ll have the field tarped all week to protect it from the rain as much as possible.  Hopefully, even after a week of rain (which was hard enough to flood the Poly practice field and move the team to Vet’s on Wednesday) and four full football games in the 36 hours prior to Poly/Grant, we’ll still be looking at a fresh field at 8pm.  We want to see these teams at their best, and we want to see the State Champion be able to perform like a State Champion.

With the 200 cleats that are going to chew that grass up before the ‘Rabbits/Pacers game, it’ll probably be a miracle if it’s a perfect playing surface—but if we need the turf to make a second-half comeback, we’re definitely sending the right team.