The History Behind the Grass in Lavell Edwards Stadium - And Why it Needed to Be Replaced

Casey Lundquist | Sep 20, 2024

The newly installed grass at Lavell Edwards Stadium / BYU Photo

The 2024 season is the 100th season of BYU football. Over the last 100 years of Cougar football, Lavell Edwards Stadium has turned into hallowed ground. Six times per year, regardless of record or opponent, Cougar football fans converge on Lavell Edwards Stadium to watch BYU football. When BYU enters the stadium for a conference game against no. 13 Kansas State, while all the history of the environment will remain the same, the literal ground they will walk on - the newly installed grass inside Lavell Edwards Stadium - is brand new.

In the Spring of 2024, the grass at Lavell Edwards Stadium was replaced with brand new Kentucky Bluegrass sod. 

In 2023, the grass in Lavell Edwards Stadium became a storyline. In home games against Iowa State, the playing surface turned slippery as the calendar approached the winter months. Against Iowa State, in particular, the slippery surface impacted a handful of plays throughout the game. This resulted in negative attention from the public about the field, making mostly incorrect assumptions about the field. The slipperiness was due to the cold night temperatures resulting in dew. Dew can be combatted with specific cleats - the Iowa State players weren’t slipping as much, for example.

Nevertheless, Bryan Hopkins, a certified professional soil scientist and professor at BYU since 2007, says the old grass in the stadium was overdue to be replaced. The previous grass was established in 2009. Hopkins, who consulted on the field replacement in 2009, originally recommended replacing the grass after seven years.

“Typically my recommendation, and it was at that time, is to replace sports fields that are mowed short after seven years,” Hopkins said. The grass at the stadium is necessarily mowed at about 1 inch height. Kentucky bluegrass, according to Hopkins, performs best when it is mowed at 2-3 inches. When it is mowed short for sports performance, it becomes infested by annual bluegrass.

“Go back and look at games from last year, you can see large yellow patches over the field. That's annual bluegrass. Not only is it not very aesthetic, but it doesn't play well. The annual bluegrass is a bunchgrass with shallow roots. It doesn't have rhizomes and stolons, so it doesn't really knit together. The surface doesn't have good tensile strength…in other words, chunks (divots) are more likely. This can result in the field negatively affecting play, as well as increased risk for athlete injuries.”

Grass in Lavell Edwards Stadium during the 2023 season / BYU Photo

Admittedly, Hopkins says, the seven year recommendation is conservative. In 2016, the turfgrass at Lavell Edwards Stadium “was still performing at a high level after seven years,” Hopkins said. “Decisions were made to not replace it and it ended up performing well until the last couple of years, which was really beyond what I would recommend.”

Hopkins has been involved with the turf at Lavell Edwards Stadium dating back many years. A large percentage of his research and teachings over the years has been related to sports turf. “In that first class I taught [in 2007], I had some BYU football players in the class. They told Bronco Mendenhall, who was the head coach at the time, about the things they were learning in class. They knew that he wasn't very happy with the grass, especially the practice field. Mendenhall called me up and engaged me as a consultant and I've been working with athletics and BYU grounds since that time.”

Hopkins was the architect of the sophisticated ASTM spec–sand-based root zone with a perched water table at Lavell Edwards Stadium field. This type of soil is used at very high-end professional and collegiate sports stadiums, which are very similar to the USGA spec soils at PGA and other renowned golf courses. The specialized sand doesn’t compact or get “muddy” as it drains rapidly, even in a heavy rain (e.g., the Texas game in 2013). And yet the perched water table allows the grass to stay hydrated.

Now that new grass has been installed in Lavell Edwards Stadium, it looks better and performs better than it did a year ago. Hopkins was pleased with the performance of the new grass in the season opener against Southern Illinois.

BYU specialists practice on the new grass at Lavell Edwards Stadium / BYU Photo

“I was happy when the field played so well the other night [against SIU], there were only a couple of divots and the surface didn’t impact play negatively.” However, he reminds fans that the grass can still become slippery if the conditions result in dew. 

Resurface all done pic.twitter.com/MOCMtIPxYa

— Bryan G. Hopkins (@BryanGHopkins) April 25, 2024

So, what about the future? The next time that BYU replaces the grass at Lavell Edwards Stadium, it’s possible that BYU could move away from Kentucky bluegrass and use a hybrid bermudagrass instead. When the grass in Lavell Edwards Stadium was replaced earlier this year, this was not allowed by the state of Utah. However, Hopkins and his team have worked to make changes.

“Hybrid bermudagrass is the number one species that's used on sports fields in the south, as well as on some golf greens,” Hopkins said. Funded by BYU Grounds, Drs. Hopkins and Neil Hansen (BYU Professor), and several of their students conducted research studies showing that, despite being a warm-season grass, it is cold-tolerant and survives the winters in Provo. Among their most important findings, their studies in 2023-24 showed that it went as long as 3-6 weeks without irrigation. 

However, bermudagrass was prohibited in most of Utah. “Common bermudagrass is a noxious weed…it’s aggressive and people hate it,” Hopkins said. The hybrid bermudagrass, however, is an excellent grass. “Hybrid bermudagrass is not a noxious weed. It produces seeds, but they're not viable. So it can't spread by seeds and it's not very aggressive in spreading with rhizome and stolon runners.”

Great news today! after a long journey and lots of work, the state of Utah agreed to legalize hybrid Bermudagrass in all of Utah! This picture shows it (top) after six weeks of no irrigation compared to bluegrass (bottom). pic.twitter.com/CqlKw73MLf

— Bryan G. Hopkins (@BryanGHopkins) July 16, 2024

The BYU team, along with Utah State and others, successfully appealed to the state of Utah to get hybrid bermudagrass removed from the prohibited noxious weed list. 

There are a few hurdles that would need to be cleared before hybrid bermudagrass is used at BYU. Hybrid bermudagrass has a shorter growing season (May to November), which means less maintenance for home owners etc., but is less than ideal for fall and spring sports played on grass. The BYU team are doing research to see what could be done to extend the growing season.

Kalani Sitake and the BYU football program will have plenty to worry about as they prepare to take on a top-15 team in Kansas State. The Kansas State rushing attack is formidable and the defense might be the best BYU has faced this season. The playing surface, however, is not on the list of concerns.