A Former Center Recalls the Worst Stadium Field Surfaces

By Joe Zagorski 

Wayne Mulligan played seven years in the NFL as a center from 1969 to 1975, the first five in St. Louis with the Cardinals, and the final two in New York with the Jets. During his time in the league, he had seen and experienced a portion of the game’s growth in national popularity across the nation. Mulligan also got a chance to play in many of the NFL’s stadiums during that era, and he quickly realized that some were better than others.  

A particular portion of Mulligan’s attention, and indeed of the attention of many of his counterparts in pro football during the 1970s, involved the playing surfaces of the fields being used across the league at that time. The advent of artificial surfaces made their initial appearances in football and baseball in the mid-to-late 1960s. 

By the time Mulligan played the final game of his pro career, the NFL had 16 stadiums that used one of three different versions of artificial turf. Those turfs went by the names of Astroturf, Poly-Turf, and/or Tartan Turf. 

The original idea behind using artificial turf field fields was twofold.  One, it gave the sport a cleaner and more colorful appeal for the growing television audiences. Two, because many of the stadiums that employed an artificial surface were also stadiums that were multi-sports facilities, meaning that both baseball and football were played there. Having an artificial surface made the transition from a baseball to a football configuration much easier for the stadium personnel and ground crews.

But undoubtedly the main opinion regarding artificial surfaces that Mulligan and his teammates and his opponents held about the “plastic grass” involved the specter of injuries. It became quickly observed that numerous injuries increased as soon as these new turf fields proliferated the game. 

Many of the players who took their stances during the 1970s will attest that they still must deal with the effects of a wide variety of continuous injuries to their various joints and muscles, to their knees, ankles, and feet, among other body parts. There are several reasons as to why, one of the most common and obvious of which was playing the game on artificial surfaces.

“Artificial turf…Astroturf…was terrible,” expressed Mulligan in a 2022 interview. “You were playing on asphalt, and it was destroying both joints and careers…like mine.”

The basic plan for how an artificial turf field was developed was similar, regardless of the stadium that used it. The plan began with a ½-inch to a 1-inch thick pad of rubber, which covered nothing but pure cement. On top of the padding was some brand of glue, spread evenly across the rubber padding. Then came the actual green “fake grass” field surface to top things off. The glue was supposed to keep the fake grass from shifting or moving around during the normal wear and tear of a typical season of games.  

But there were a few problems with this plan. One, the constant wearing down of the field surface and its padding from thousands of footsteps and falling bodies during a year would eventually thin both the turf and the padding, often to a point to where the players were playing on little more than green cement. Two, in a multi-purpose stadium, cutouts or divots for the baseball diamonds were left stitched in overlapping of the field surface, which meant that some sections of the field were dangerously uneven. The number of injuries caused when football players got their cleats caught in those uneven sections were numerous, to say the least. 

Then came one more factor which did a fair share of damage to the players and to the fields themselves…the weather. If a stadium was not a dome stadium, hot weather during the first couple of months of the season often caused the artificial surfaces to be slick and slippery, whether it rained or not. This was especially true of the Poly-Turf field at Miami’s Orange Bowl. That South Florida humidity had an adverse effect on the lifespan of that field, and by the time Super Bowl X was played on that field in January of 1976, the Orange Bowl turf was slated to be ripped up and replaced with a natural grass field. There were more than a dozen different needle and thread sewing repairs made to that field just prior to Super Bowl X.

Then there was another stadium in the nation’s Midwest.  Wayne Mulligan’s years in St. Louis forced him to deal with another artificial field surface at Busch Memorial Stadium. That field certainly took its toll on the young offensive center.

“I was a starter in my second year at St. Louis,” Mulligan said. “Besides the actual home games, we even practiced on that turf every day.  That’s five years of practices and games.  Many injuries thanks to that, even in practice.  I injured my right ankle during that time.  I missed games because of it, and I had to have my ankle surgically repaired.  Then in Cincinnati…another stadium that had artificial turf (Riverfront Stadium)…I had a shoulder separation there, and again, I required surgery to repair it.”

Another factor that hurt the players who played on the artificial turf fields were the skin abrasions that they got from them. It often did not matter how much padding a player wore on his arms. It was hard – and often impossible -- to escape those skin grazes and cuts. Countless were the hours spent in whirlpools and on training tables by the players of that era following the games and practices.  Countless also was the number of icepacks that were distributed among the players who fell victim to the artificial surfaces during the 1970s in the NFL.

“Artificial turf certainly impacted my longevity,” admitted Mulligan. “When I was healthy and when I was playing, no one beat me out of my starting position, in St. Louis or in New York.  Shea Stadium was a natural grass and dirt field, but it was just terrible too. Combining both football and baseball together on one field did not work…at least for football.  It was lousy.  It did not seem to have its own identity.”

The growth of stadiums that used artificial surfaces in pro football were undeniable during the 1970s.  Despite the corresponding growth of player injuries during that era, the league as a whole – for whatever reason and for better or worse – was going to keep the artificial turf fields.  Outside of perhaps placekickers, you would be hard-pressed to find at least one pro player from the 1970s who played on artificial surfaces who will have anything good to say about them.  

Sources:

Author interview with Wayne Mulligan on December 22, 2022.

Bortstein, Larry.  “Pro Stars Rate the Playing Fields.”  Football Digest, November, 1976, 30-36. 

Joe Zagorski is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and the Pro Football Researchers Association. He has written several books about pro football and its personalities. His upcoming book The 2,003-Yard Odyssey: The Juice, The Electric Company, and an Epic Run for a Record, will be published by Austin-Macauley Publishers (New York) later in 2023.  He is currently writing a biography on former Miami Dolphins Hall of Fame offensive guard Larry Little.