NFL stadiums across the country are quite literally rolling out the red carpet (or in this case, natural green grass) to FIFA for the upcoming World Cup. San Francisco 49ers pass rusher Nick Bosa doesn't appreciate it being a temporary thing though.
Ahead of the World Cup, Bosa was asked about the stadiums that are going to be transitioning from turf to grass for World Cup soccer games, only to revert to turf as soon as the tournament is over. The All-Pro pass rusher remarked that he found it "a little bizarre" before tossing a bit of shade at the league by asking "what can you expect?"
“Yeah, it’s a little bizarre,” Bosa said. “But what can you expect?”
NFL Players vs. Turf
If there's one man with a legitimate gripe against playing on turf it's Nick Bosa. Back in 2020 he infamously suffered a torn ACL through a non-contact injury playing on the MetLife Stadium turf, which prompted a wider conversation about the risks of playing on a surface with less give than grass has.
As recently as this month, NFL players union executive director JC Tretter stated that a majority of players want to play exclusively on high-quality grass fields.
“What we want is good grass fields,” Tretter said earlier this month on Not Just Football. “Good, solid fields. You don’t just want to pull out the [municipal] golf course grass. On every field, you want high-quality surfaces. I think one thing is understanding what our players care about. And there is something there that the data hasn’t been able to spit back out at us. Which if you ask every player that we polled, 1,700 players, 92 percent say they want grass over turf.”
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But high-quality grass takes a lot of time and money to maintain. Grass fields make it slightly harder and costlier for stadiums to have tons of other events throughout the week such as concerts.
Turf is far easier to manage. It's cheaper too. And that latter reason might be the biggest reason that the biggest stadiums in the NFL still use it.
