Another field complaint has already popped up at Super Bowl 2024 after the grass became a major talking point during last year’s game.
49ers staffers are griping about their practice field at UNLV because they believe the grass that was laid over the college’s artificial turf is too soft, CBS Sports reported Monday morning.
While 49ers players and coaches won’t see the field until a Monday afternoon walkthrough, the report said San Francisco equipment staffers and members of the grounds crew traveled to examine the field last week.
The field meets NFL, union and independent standards, but the 49ers prefer a firmer surface, according to CBS Sports.
San Francisco is the road team for Super Bowl 2024 and is thus practicing on the college field, while the Chiefs are based at the Raiders’ practice facility.
The field is apparently enough of an issue for the 49ers that there have been talks about them finding time to practice at the Raiders’ training center when the Chiefs aren’t there, CBS Sports reported, but that is unlikely to happen.
After the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs in Glendale, Ariz., last year, players and observers alike were trashing the field after players were frequently slipping and changing cleats.
“I’m not going to lie: It was the worst field I ever played on,” Eagles pass-rusher Haason Reddick said at the time.
The Tahoma 31 Bermuda grass for last year’s Super Bowl was grown for two years at a Phoenix sod farm and installed two weeks before the game.
George Toma, the former longtime groundskeeper who prepped Super Bowl fields for the NFL and is known as the “Sodfather,” crushed the league last year for the Chiefs-Eagles field conditions, pointing the finger at NFL field director Ed Mangan for watering the field Wednesday morning before the game and never letting sunlight hit it again.