How the Gamecocks are getting the field ready for game day

Clark Cox has been working with sports turf and landscaping for a while, but this week he’s entering some uncharted territory doing something he’s never done.

He, and the rest of the Gamecocks’ crew, will be replacing South Carolina’s entire football field with less than a week to go before the season kicks off; something he says is the most unique start to a football season he’s ever had.

“I’ve never done this,” said Cox, who is South Carolina’s assistant athletic director of sports turf and landscaping. “I’ve had some other things that have gone down over my career, but I’d say this is probably the most unique, or different one.”

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The Gamecocks have to replace their field after Beyonce and Jay-Z held their On the Run tour at Williams-Brice last Tuesday, and that process started almost immediately after the concert ended.

They started preparing the field to lay down sod Thursday and the process of actually laying down the sod started before 6 a.m. Saturday and will go through the weekend.

By the end of Sunday, more than 90,000 square feet of sod, 26 truckloads worth, will be laid and watered at Williams-Brice.

The crew will take a large industrial roller and use that on the sod multiple times to mesh it together before lining the field Monday and starting game week preparations.

Cox said the sod the crew is using is different than most sods. It’s harvested with the root system still intact, meaning it’ll take root and smooth over quicker than most sods would.

Once it’s laid, it could be ready to play on in a few hours, which gives Cox—and athletic director Ray Tanner—confidence the field will be ready by Sept. 1 when the Gamecocks kick off against Coastal Carolina.

“The way this sod is produced allows it to be laid and ready much faster than traditional sod,” Cox said.

“We could play a football game on it this afternoon if we wanted to.”

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While this is a first for South Carolina, it isn’t a new process for a lot of grounds crews. A lot of NFL crews do this all the time, Cox said, and a few colleges have as well.

Cox spent a lot of time talking and visiting with different grounds crews that have gone through the process to see the ins and outs of performing such a quick turnaround, saying he’s seen international soccer games played on the same surface after just two days turnaround.

Like any other game, fans may see a few divots on the field after plays, but the field will be 100 percent safe for both teams to play on Saturday. Cox said he, or the university, wouldn’t have agreed to host the concert if the field wouldn’t have been ready.

“That’s all great if people think the field looks great, but our number one concern in anything we do is the welfare of our students,” Cox said. “We would not have done what we did if this was not a proven method of getting a safe surface.”

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The issue of replacing the field wasn’t a new one for the Gamecocks, who built that into the contract when originally negotiating the concert last year.

It was “certainly one of the first things we discussed,” Tanner said. He didn’t have an exact figure for how much the process would cost; he estimated anywhere between $150,000 to a couple $100 thousands.

But, for him and head coach Will Muschamp, being a stop on a major worldwide tour had a lot of benefits.

“Your first concern is the field, the safety of the field,” Tanner said. “He was the one who shed so much light on what we needed to do it for, other than having a concert that could generate revenue for us. It’s about the community, it’s about the Midlands, it’s about a worldwide tour.”