July 10, 2012
With kickoff to the 2012 football season quickly approaching, construction inside Vanderbilt Stadium is nearing the final stages. Work continues on the new hillside seating, installation of new lights and a new video board, and on Tuesday, workers began placing panels of the new artificial playing surface inside Vanderbilt Stadium.
The new synthetic turf, Legion 46, is being installed by Shaw Sportexe of Kennesaw, Ga., which has also installed stadium playing surfaces for Arkansas, Southern Miss and the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, among many others.
The Legion 46 playing surface features a combination of high-performance monofilament fiber and durable slit film fiber. The field will have 2.25-inch fibers and a 1.65-inch infill that is a 50-50 mix of sand and rubber. Vanderbilt last played on an artificial surface in 1998.
As work continues on the field, Vanderbilt fans will be able to watch through the stadium webcam that has been active since May.
Throughout the process, fans will notice a significant number of changes to how the playing surface will look from year’s past.
Here are a few notable parts to the design.
- Alternating panels of green turf
- Anchor logos in the kickoff locations at the 35-yard line
- Black end zones
- “Vanderbilt” will be emblazoned in one end zone and “Commodores” in the other
- The words will be bookended by Star V logos on either side
- Star V logo will remain at midfield
- “Anchor Down” will be vibrantly displayed in the red zone on the north and south sides of the field
- A black and gold border will begin at the 25-yard line and wrap around the back of the end zone on the north and south sides of the field
VUCommodores.com will have continuous updates of the turf installation and other ongoing construction projects throughout the coming weeks.
Watch live streaming video from vucommodores at livestream.com
