News
Source: Turf Producers International E-Newsletter, Vol. 4 Issue 2, February 2011
Hello! Can anybody hear us?
Does anybody really care?
A recent survey of NFL players conducted by the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) during September through November 2010 revealed that 69.4% of the players prefer natural grass to 14.3% who prefer an artificial surface. 9% of the players surveyed indicated they had no preference.
When asked which surface do they think is more likely to contribute to injury 82.4% selected artificial turf. When asked which type of field was more likely to cause soreness and fatigue 89.1% chose artificial turf. And when asked which surface was most likely to shorten their career, artificial turf received 89.7% of the votes.
In a hard-hitting and competitive sport such as professional football in which the average career is only 3.3 years, and often shortened due to injury, it’s easy to understand why the athletes would be concerned about their health and how a playing surface can take a serious toll on their bodies. A total of 1619 active NFL Players from all 32 teams voluntarily filled out the survey. Overall natural turfgrass fields were preferred over artificial fields almost 5 to 1.
Another revealing aspect of the survey, 74.7% of the players indicated that NFL grounds keepers played a very significant role on the performance of natural turfgrass playing fields and only 23.7% believed groundskeepers played a very significant role when it came to the playing surface performance of artificial turf fields.
As more and more colleges and high school sports fields consider artificial turf, one has to wonder, when it comes to the health concerns of athletes, is anyone listening?
Does anybody really care?