The Dallas-Fort Worth area has been dealing with heavy rainfall that led to flash flooding the last two days and it’s wreaking havoc on at least one local college football stadium’s turf.
While daily rainfall records have been broken over the last two days in the region, the field inside SMU’s Gerald J. Ford Stadium has been hit particularly hard and appears to have caused some kind of damage underneath the turf. A photo from Dallas Texas TV appears to show a mound of water underneath the football field at one of the 15-yard-lines.
https://twitter.com/DallasTexasTV/status/1561823274140680194
While that might remind some people of a baseball mound, that’s not normal for a football field. According to The Athletic’s Chris Vannini, SMU officials have said they’ll wait until the rain ends before sending a turf company in to find out what’s happening and how to fix it.
Per an SMU official, a turf company will check things out when the rain fully ends.
SMU doesn't play a home game until Sept. 10, so there's time. https://t.co/3by5fO04yE
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) August 22, 2022
The good news for the Mustangs is that they’ve got some time before they’ll need the field to be football-ready. SMU travels to play North Texas on the road to open the season on Saturday, September 3. Their first home game of the season comes Saturday, September 10 when they host Lamar.
While we wait to see what other issues the rains might cause in the Dallas-Forth Worth area, the college football world had some reactions to that strange site in SMU’s stadium.
Water displacing air in the soil causing a massive air bladder below the (synthetic?) turf field at SMU. I’ve seen this happen on a much smaller scale on shallow-rooted Poa annua putting green turf but nothing like this! 😬 https://t.co/TfHB5Yc9Mp
— James Hempfling, Ph.D. (@JamesHempfling) August 22, 2022
The next season of Stranger Things. https://t.co/d6gxNFIAKl
— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoAP) August 22, 2022
Pitchers mound/possible multi-sport stadium? SMU's way of announcing they are bringing baseball back after a 42 year absence? https://t.co/14Lk9yrTxO
— Craig Miller (@junior_miller) August 22, 2022
This would fit right in with the Pac-12 after all https://t.co/1nHcgPW1kY
— James Crepea (@JamesCrepea) August 22, 2022
I need someone to stab it with a large knife and record it https://t.co/HUKqXwvnmL
— kwade (@KwadeSays) August 22, 2022
https://twitter.com/38Godfrey/status/1561842141042823168
https://twitter.com/russbengtson/status/1561840681840148482
