The New Park In Santa Clara

[dsr4900]

It looks like Niners are gonna move to Santa Clara...With that being said..I wonder if the new field will be grass or that **** astroturf/carpet??. I know some sponsor will put their name on the stadium..But cant niners atleast call the field...BILL WALSH FIELD!!!And have a statue of him there too??? What do you niner fans think?.....If anyones thinks this thread is lame or weak...Will you please delete it for me please....thanks dsr4900

[TheWiz]

First of all, you could've looked around this page and easily found:

http://forums.49ers.com/messageboard/showthread.php?t=23110

As an article.

With that said let me get to an actual response. I see no reason why the team would not choose natural grass. Their current home field is natural grass and synthetic turfs were created mostly to replace astroturf. Astroturf was only used in indoor/dome fields that had insufficient light/conditions for natural grass in the first place. Also, I would personally hold back on the rancor on such turfs if I were you. Sure the old astroturfs led to stuck cleats (i.e. torn ACLs/MCLs) and felt like concrete and led to turf burn on many plays. Current turfs are a world better. I was on a new age turf at a D1 school about 10 days ago and it felt a lot like natural grass. I was impressed. If you bent down and looked it was plastic grass and a rubber surface but it had no more catch than normal grass and felt just as soft when stepping and falling on it.

More directly, as I noted in the linked post, Bill Walsh Field will only get tiresome when attached to a corporate name. Also, give a little leniancy to other famous coaches. PIT doesn't play on Chuck Noll Field, MIA doesn't play on Don Shula Field. Heck, even GB doesn't have a Lombardi Field even though the championship trophy is named after him. If everything were just then the Bears would play at Halas Field, not Soldier Field. It's better to name a portion of the field/stadium itself after a great coach than the field itself.