Laying a new carpet at Franklin Field

As the first ever college football stadium, Franklin Field also boasts a history full of firsts when it comes to playing surfaces.

Franklin Field became the first NFL stadium to install artificial turf for the Philadelphia Eagles in 1969, after the stadium had used a natural grass surface since its construction in 1895.

Then in 2004, Franklin Field became one of the first stadiums to start using SprinTurf, whose natural, grass-like feel contrasted with the tough surface and weak cushioning of AstroTurf.

“We were one of the first schools to put in SprinTurf,” Penn Athletics Director Steve Bilsky said. “It had just become around enough to be reliable. I’m not gonna say we were one of the guinea pigs, but we were one of the earlier ones. From the day it was put in, our coaches, our players, loved it. It plays like natural grass but it’s synthetic, it’s easier to maintain.”

And so, Franklin Field is getting a new SprinTurf field after nine years of wear and tear on the old one. The new playing surface will consist of a synthetic turf similar to the stadium’s original SprinTurf playing surface.

“Because we were able to plan it months in advance, [SprinTurf] had the stock, they had it ready to go,” Bilsky said. “We’re a big customer, the foundation work was done years ago.”

The project to lay down the new field began May 16. While Bilsky doesn’t have a timetable for its completion, he said the installation is on schedule and will be ready when teams return to the field in August.

“There’s no question we could have kept the existing SprinTurf for another year or two,” Bilsky said. “I guess it really wasn’t worn out. But we had an opportunity because of all the renovations we’re doing and all the money we raised.

“We said, ‘Look, let’s be a little bit proactive, let’s put it in now. We’ve been in a construction mode for the last four or five years, why not keep doing that?’ So we’re putting the newest version of it in now.”

The new playing surface will be lined for football as well as men’s and women’s lacrosse. Bilsky estimates the surface will last another eight to 10 years.

The new installation means Penn will continue to have the only SprinTurf football field in the Ivy League. The most common playing surface among Ivy football stadiums is FieldTurf, used by Harvard Stadium, Dartmouth’s Memorial Field, Columbia’s Wien Stadium, Cornell’s Schoellkopf Field and Princeton University Stadium.

While the new SprinTurf field marks the second for Franklin Field, the stadium went through five AstroTurf surfaces dating back to 1969. Before the Eagles’ first game on the brand new AstroTurf surface in 1969, a swarm of grasshoppers began to feast on the new bright green plastic, forcing the ground crew to use high pressure water hoses to clear out thousands of dead grasshoppers.

But count on second-generation SprinTurf looking less like a grasshopper gala and more of a mere gridiron grooming when the Quakers take on Lafayette in the first football contest on the new field on Sept. 21.

“It’s just laying new carpet,” Bilsky said.

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