Andrew Siegel beams with pride revealing he's a 38-year-old man who cannot tie a tie.

Every morning growing up, he watched his father leave for work in a button-down shirt and tie and swore he'd never wear one. Ties are pointless and dumb. Instead, he dons shorts, a t-shirt and even a hoodie when the weather chills while maintaining the grass field at TCU's Amon G. Carter Stadium. Functional clothes and football - what more could a man want? 

But don't mistake casual attire for casual work ethic. There's a daily grind that comes with Siegel's title as TCU's Sports Turf Manager. Eleven of the 13 FBS programs in Texas compete Saturdays on artificial turf. Siegel oversees one of the two that play on grass. Monday through Friday, he's toiling away so the field looks pristine. But come kickoff, his eyes are glued to players' feet. If grass clumps fly up, that's good. He's done his job.

"There's nothing that gets me more excited than watching a guy be able to start and stop on a dime and take off and go," Siegel said. "Or the time when you need there to be a divot because it's like, 'Oof, man. That could've been someone's knee or Achilles if they planted like that somewhere else.'"

The NFL Players Association has advocated for their league to mandate grass surfaces for all stadiums, citing NFL injury data from 2012-2018, which found players have a 28% higher rate of non-contact lower extremity injuries on artificial turf. ACL tears are an unfortunate part of football that're inevitable no matter the playing surface, but grass has proven to limit them. NFL and college athletes are bigger, stronger and faster than ever before, which means they're exuding greater force into the ground. 

So Siegel exhales when the mighty force causes a grass clump to dislodge instead of a ligament to snap.

"All that energy you put from your body into the ground has to go somewhere," Siegel said. "When you're playing on a grass field, the soil and that grass medium absorbs the majority of that impact. Well, when you're standing on a synthetic field, even when they have that turf pad on there, all that is coming back in your body."

Even if they escape significant injury, players complain of heightened soreness for days after running on turf. TCU practices on two grass fields, but sometimes, last season, they'd retreat to the indoor turf fieldhouse to escape the stifling heat. That is until players approached head coach Sonny Dykes and said they'd rather stay in the sun and play on grass than practice on the turf. 

"I know this - I can go stand out there for three hours in practice and walk off the field and feel good when I stood on grass," Dykes said in a Sep. 26 press conference. "If I go in the indoor, I stand there for 40 minutes and my back hurts."

The TCU players aren't alone in this sentiment. SMU is set to replace its turf field before the start of the 2024 season, but is deciding between another cycle of artificial turf or a switch to natural grass. Head coach Rhett Lashlee is on record as a grass proponent. So if SMU coaches and players, the TCU program and NFL players all favor grass, why doesn't every Texas college make the switch? It's more complex.

"I think if you played, you want to play on grass," Lashlee said at his Oct. 4 coach's show. "I love grass. I love what it looks like. I love how it acts. I love everything about it. But there's also a lot of other things, not just economics, but just maintenance and all the things that go with it."

DCTF contacted three industry leaders to unpack the added hurdles of a grass field. Siegel, Texas A&M Assistant AD for Sports Fields Nick McKenna, and FC Dallas's Director of Stadium Grounds Allen Reed all worked together at Texas A&M in the early 2000s before establishing gold standards for grass fields in the state. Siegel and Reed were Aggie student interns while McKenna was a full-time assistant for the legendary athletic field managers Leo Goertz and Craig Potts.

Why is a soccer field included in this football article? In addition to fielding Major League Soccer games, FC Dallas's Toyota Stadium will host 18 Frisco ISD high school football games this fall. The FIFA World Cup requires a grass field. Nearly every European field is grass, so European players who come to the MLS later in their careers oftentimes refuse to play on turf fields. Reed and his team, therefore, have to figure it out. Oh, and they host concerts, too.

The notion that a grass field, in and of itself, is more costly than a turf field is a myth. By the way, that's no slight to Lashlee's assertion. I believed the tale, too. 

Texas A&M's Kyle Field and FC Dallas's Toyota Stadium use a cold-tolerant, hybrid Bermuda grass labeled Latitude 36 from sodfarmers in Austin. The grass is meant for the transition zone, a.k.a. middle part, of the United States that experiences hot summers and chilly winters. It's aggressively growing, extraordinarily dense and displays great color longer into the deep fall months when regular grass dies out. When the grass eventually starts to fade, McKenna at A&M and Reed at FC Dallas will overseed the fields with rye grass to keep the color.

Texas A&M has yet to lay down an entirely new field since 2014, instead adding and subtracting ryegrass as necessary. On the other hand, FC Dallas rips up the entire field every year at the end of May to transition to 100% Bermuda grass for the summer and early fall. Even with the constant redos, Reed says it's cheaper than the alternative of paying an exorbitant price to install a turf carpet and then another hefty sum to remove it.

"In my opinion, turf is way more expensive," Reed said. "Because you've got the initial upfront cost and then eight to ten years later, you're going to replace it."

Where grass gets costly is the human capital required to maintain the fields. Turf is often pitched as a set-it-and-forget-it commodity, although both Siegel and McKenna say collegiate grounds crews should do maintenance weekly on it. But a high school coach that's serving as their school's athletic director, grounds crew, chief marketing officer and even laundromat before they prepare gameplans can get away with letting the turf sit for years. 

Turf is a monetary investment. Grass is an investment in humans.

"That's why you see such a prevalence of artificial fields going in, especially at the high school levels, because it's a lot easier to sell somebody on a capital investment versus an operational expense," McKenna said. "You can create a bond to put an artificial field in or make it a big part of a bigger capital project. Nobody's doing a bond or capital projects for the ten-year maintenance of the natural grass field.”

At Texas A&M, McKenna leads a six-person staff with a full-time assistant at the football, baseball, softball and soccer facilities. FC Dallas has 18 fields at its complex in Frisco, but Reed is responsible for Toyota Stadium and the MLS team's two practice fields and has five to ten guys working with him at a time. At TCU, Siegel has a direct assistant who helps with football, soccer and intramural fields. Then, he has six full-time workers and has even created a baseball field technician position and an internship program.

To understand the scope of manpower required for a grass field in major college football, look no further than Siegel's schedule on a game week. 

Monday is logo layout day. The crew grabs giant sheets of plastic with dots in them to model where the field's logos will be.

Tuesday is aeration day. Siegel uses an Air2-G2 machine, which injects air into the soil profile without any surface disruption. The newfound pore space allows roots to breathe and water to seep in. The process takes about four to five hours. 

Wednesday is for measuring the cross lines and painting the team and media areas.

Thursday is heavy paint day, which calls for a 6:00 a.m. start, ten gallons of paint and a wheel-to-wheel painter. They put white color all over the sidelines, inlines, crosslines, numbers, hashes and the endzone. The white paint is done by noon, and then the purple paint comes in for the logo and end zones.

Friday is edging, weed whacking and finishing paint by 10:30 a.m. so the TV crew can set up.

They mow the entire field every day of the week, including on Saturday morning when they roll over it without cutting to smooth any divots.

And that's all necessary with a week's notice. In that case, it's no wonder Met Life Stadium, where New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles four plays into his much-anticipated debut, is artificial turf. They played that Monday Night Football game one day after the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys played Sunday Night Football. Some college and NFL teams want their fields to be turf so they aren't relegated to only hosting only a single-digit number of home games yearly. They want to be able to rent it out and make more money.

So, instead, everyone is buying artificial turf that's marketed as playing similar to grass. That way, they can host more events and reduce injuries.

"The sales pitch of – 'We're redesigning and innovating artificial fields so they perform more like grass,' always makes me chuckle because I'll be like, 'Well, you know what performs like grass?'" McKenna said.

Besides, Reed and his FC Dallas crew are proving grass can withstand multiple events a week. Six times this year, they've had high school games on Thursday and Friday and then hosted an MLS game on Saturday. 

"I don’t know that there’s anyone in the country doing what we’re doing here," Reed said.

But more people could be doing what they do. Turf technology has vastly improved over the last few decades. But Reed, Siegel and McKenna argue grass has made more strides since the three of them worked together at Texas A&M in the early 2000s.

The new Latitude 36 variety used at Toyota Stadium can better withstand foot traffic. Reed also uses artificial growth lights on the stadium's south end, which typically receives more shade. They also use a GPS moisture meter to probe around the field and upload to an app that gives a heat map showing which areas are wetter and drier. The middle of the field between the hash marks is typically soggy from foot traffic after a football game. So, a tool like the Air2-G2 can aerate that area without disrupting the surface for the following night's match.

Reed's crew also started using field testing equipment roughly eight years ago that measures the grass's force reduction (how much energy the grass is absorbing), vertical deformation (how much the grass gives under your foot) and energy rebound (the force going back into a player's joints). 

And while Siegel and McKenna, in college programs, are still lobbying unsuccessfully for growth lights, they too have impressive technology at their disposal. Texas A&M and TCU use green blankets they can throw over the grass to create a miniature greenhouse effect. The sun shines through the veil but is trapped underneath to trick the grass into thinking it's hotter later in the year.

It's difficult to imagine all colleges switching to a grass football field. Some programs at the non-FBS level have only a couple practice fields that multiple sports have to use daily. Even some FBS colleges would struggle. It's hard to grow grass in the dust bowl that is Lubbock, Texas. McLane Stadium in Waco has too much shade to be conducive for grass growth. 

But for major college football programs who can make it work, it's hard to fathom why they wouldn't. Programs generate huge revenues from New Year's Six bowl appearances and College Football Playoff berths. Does TCU's storybook run last season happen if, God forbid, Max Duggan, Quentin Johnston or Steve Avila go down for the year with a lower-body injury? Again, injuries occur on any surface but happen less frequently on grass.

These programs can invest in people to maintain their facilities, or they can invest in injury rehabilitation.

"If there's that will, you can find a way to do it," Siegel said. "I just don't necessarily think people want to invest in people to do it. I think they'd rather just take what they think is the easy way out."

Correction: The article originally stated the machine as Air2-D2. It is actually referred to as Air2-G2. DCTF regrets this error.