Kyle Field to get grass upgrade after divots wrecked field during Rice game

COLLEGE STATION - Coach Kevin Sumlin has done an admirable job the past two years of recruiting four- and five-star talent to Texas A&M. Last Saturday night, however, all of that talent found itself playing on a one-star field.

A&M, after having loads of problems with its new grass field in the course of the sixth-ranked Aggies' 38-10 victory over Rice on Saturday at Kyle Field, is ordering a new field from North Carolina to be in place by the next home game, on Oct. 11 against Mississippi, according to A&M system spokesman Steve Moore.

"They examined the field after the Rice game and determined that given the damage to the roots system from the heavy rains, that we were probably going to have to replace it," Moore said on Thursday night.

Kyle's new field was first reported by the Bryan-College Station Eagle. The new Carolina Green product should be ready for installation starting Sept. 29, Moore said.

The current field had been in place a little more than a month when heavy rains inundated Aggieland last Friday night and on into Saturday morning. Both Rice and A&M suffered multiple injuries (not unusual for a football game, of course), including standout freshman A&M receiver Speedy Noil (knee injury). But Aggies athletic director Eric Hyman said team doctors told him after the game the grass that gave away in chunks had nothing to do with the A&M players' injuries.

Owls coach David Bailiff expressed concern to Hyman at halftime of the game, and over the final two quarters in particular A&M's grounds crew tried filling massive divots with sand during breaks.

The question thus arises: If the Carolina Green product is so much better than the current field, why wasn't it used in the first place in the course of the $450 million overall renovation of Kyle Field?

"Manhattan-Vaughn and Populous, having done a lot of stadiums, they know a lot about turf systems," Moore said of the general contractor and architect of the redevelopment. "They were in consultation with our staff and the turf experts here, and they all believed that what we had chosen was absolutely the best for Kyle Field."