52 minutes ago, Colonels_Wear_Blue said:

Okay, I can get on board with the proper maintenance caveat. Definitely should be done.

Turf Field:
Replacing a turf field costs about $600K. Modern turf lasts 15 years if maintained correctly (not 10 year...10 years old data from outdated products), with annual maintenance costs around $5K. About $4K of that $5K maintenance is the cost of watering the field.

So $600K + (15 x $5K) = $675K every 15 years.

Grass Field:
Professionally installed fescue sod goes for about $1.90 square foot, and it's about $2.75 square foot for professionally installed Bermuda grass. Average grass area for a high school football stadium, which includes the entire infield of a track, is usually about 81,000 square feet. So resodding a grass field with normal fescue sod costs about $154K, and costs $222K for Bermuda grass.  Properly maintained fields should be fertilized monthly during months with above-freezing temperatures...call that 8 months a year. Professional fertilization costs range $500-$1000 monthly, so let's go mid-range there, $750...so $6,000 annually. Properly maintained fields should be aerated twice yearly. That's about another $600 a pop, for $1200 annual costs. The field should also be seeded with a slit-seeder at least twice yearly for each season the field is in use...so if a field is being used both in spring and fall, then that's two seedings at about $3500 a pop, so that's $7K annually. Gotta water that grass...add in another $1,500 annually. Gotta mow it too...we'll say weekly mowings from mid-April through mid-November, so that's 30 weeks, call it $200 a cut, so that's $6000. Striping a field...that typically costs about $800 for the initial layout of a football field with yard numbers, center and sideline hashes. Add in another $300 if you need layout for soccer and lacrosse. So that's $1.1K. Re-paint costs about $200 for football lines only, and more like $500 for a full re-paint with of the yardlines, yard numbers, and hashes. And re-paint of the soccer/lacrosse lines is another $150. I can't think of many times where you need to re-paint only the football markings and not the others. So let's call a re-paint $650. Assume at least one of those a month, August through November...so that's $1.1K for the initial paint plus $2.6K for four re-paints...so that's $3.7 annually for striping a field (assuming you don't need additional striping in the spring.

So $154K + [15 x ($6K + $1.2K + $7K + $1.5K + $6K + $3.7K)] = $535K every 15 years.

Aaaaaand talk to someone who has graduated from the turf management program in UK's College of Agriculture and ask what the max number of athletic programs should have use of any one single grass-surface field in order to be able to maintain it correctly. The answer: two athletic programs. So if you want proper maintenance, you better not plan on having boys soccer, girls soccer, and football all using the field. And you definitely better not let any middle school leagues use the field. Or a lacrosse team. Because then you aren't going to be able to maintain a proper level of natural grass turf to insure protection when athletes fall to the ground and to insure that the ground will get too slippery with mud.  And if you have more than a couple of sports programs competing on a field in the fall, then we all know that there's going to end up being a nearly annual regiment of having to lay sod because the entire center of the field has turned to mud.

Don’t forget that every football field probably has a high school band program practicing many, many hours every week from July-December and might even host a multi-band event with perhaps a thousand band members, staging, and golf carts hauling heavy eqpt.  Hard to count on doing that on grass fields.

1 minute ago, Oldercoach said:

Don’t forget that every football field probably has a high school band program practicing many, many hours every week from July-December and might even host a multi-band event with perhaps a thousand band members, staging, and golf carts hauling heavy eqpt.  Hard to count on doing that on grass fields.

That's the biggest plus for a turf field, in my eyes. The field is much more durable and weather has little to no bearing on its durability - although weather does have an impact on whether or not the field can be played on in high temperatures.

Grass fields are also much more hassle to maintain because all of the tasks to maintain them. The seeding, fertilizing, aerating, watering, mowing, and striping processes all have to be contracted by someone in the athletic department as well as scheduling them so as not to interrupt any practice or game schedules. Working that in at a school with jv & varsity football, jv & varsity boys soccer, jv & varsity girls soccer, jv & varsity lacrosse, plus a band....sheesh, THAT'S a task, right there. And I don't know how it'd even be possible if you add in any freshman teams or a middle school team.

2 hours ago, theguru said:

Looks great, but I want to split one hair:

If one endzone is the school name and the other the mascot, the school name should be left of the midfield logo and mascot name should be to the right, just as you read from left to right. Probably the only person that bothers, but just my two cents!

4 hours ago, gchs_uk9 said:

Looks great, but I want to split one hair:

If one endzone is the school name and the other the mascot, the school name should be left of the midfield logo and mascot name should be to the right, just as you read from left to right. Probably the only person that bothers, but just my two cents!

Well I will say, they way the stadium is visible to the passers-by on I-471, they're going to be able to read the east endzone where it currently says "Bellevue" (to the right, looking out at the field from the stands.) My personal preference would be for the folks driving by to see the school name and not the mascot name.

That looks awesome.   Let's also remember that while the Tigers will use this on Friday nights and JV on an occasional Saturday, this also opens the field up to youth league games all day long without a fear of having the field unplayable for the next Friday.

2 hours ago, Colonels_Wear_Blue said:

Well I will say, they way the stadium is visible to the passers-by on I-471, they're going to be able to read the east endzone where it currently says "Bellevue" (to the right, looking out at the field from the stands.) My personal preference would be for the folks driving by to see the school name and not the mascot name.

Okay, so I might make the slight exception for your point here. ? 

Very nice looking field!