Warming up Sunday's gameday starts midweek. NFL groundskeepers working in many cold-weather climates, including Denver, Green Bay, Baltimore, and elsewhere, have the power of hydronic heating systems (Zurn and Uponor are the largest manufacturers) buried 6 inches to a foot under their turf. These systems allow them to get soil temperatures above freezing even in the harshest of cold snaps.
Through trial and error, Allen Johnson, groundskeeper at Green Bay's legendary Lambeau Field, has learned that he likes his system humming along at 38 degrees?just above freezing, but still cold enough to let the grass begin to "harden off and get tougher." "You could remove the soil and see nothing but white tubing," Johnson says. "The main goal is to keep it thawed out. There is not a difference [in] softer soil between 40 and 50 degrees."
If it gets too chilly in the days leading up to a Packers game, Johnson adds a tarp, props it up, and blows warm air under it, creating a blanket of warm air to keep the surface dry. "When it gets really bitter up here, you can't get the surface totally warm because you can't control the ambient air. There was a time in 2007 when I brought the heat system up and maxed it out to battle the bitter cold. It was working overtime that day."
Despite its legendary "frozen tundra," Green Bay was actually the first NFL team to heat its field, and it upgraded its entire system in 2007. Now a boiler room near the field heats a mix of water and glycol (to keep the water from freezing) and sends the mixture through PEX piping 6 inches apart, and spreading out under the entire playing surface and service track.
The strategy for warming the turf isn't different in Denver or Baltimore, say groundskeepers Ross Kurcab and Don Follett, respectively, but each has a slightly different strategy. Follett uses nine zones and hopes to keep the Ravens' artificial turf soft, up to nearly 50 degrees. If snow or ice is forecast, he bumps the system even higher, hoping to help speed melting. In Denver, the Broncos have 20 miles of 1-inch PEX tubing at a 10-inch depth spaced 9 inches apart, and split into five zones. It can get soil temperatures into the 50s on chilly days. "The system is just for the grass, but the grass is just for the players' safety," Kurcab says. "It makes it more playable and attractive."
Tony Leonard, the Philadelphia Eagles' director of grounds, says that his hydronic and forced-air combination is turned on to an average of 55 to 60 degrees to keep the grass feeling natural, just the way his players like it. By playing with the system, he is able to soften and firm turf as needed.
With the underside of the turf taken care of, the backsides of the players have a way to warm up too. The most popular heated bench in the NFL, built by Frank Floyd Jr.'s Reliable Construction Heaters of Cleveland, sits in about 16 stadiums. Floyd, who invented the heated bench, uses hollowed fiberglass benches and propane- or natural gas-powered blowers at 170,000 Btus to keep the player seats toasty warm. The proprietary bench includes trays that slide out, allowing the players to stand on them and have warm air blow up at them, creating the "Marilyn Monroe effect" when wearing a parka. There's even a "hot hats" feature that allows players to place their helmets on posts on the back of the bench and keep the air-filled bladders inside the helmet soft.
Some stadiums go a little less high-tech, such as in Denver, where Kurcab says he simply has decade-old leftover benches from Mile High Stadium that the Broncos staff warms up manually through space heaters. In Green Bay and Baltimore, smaller torpedo heaters blow air into benches to keep them warmed up. "If it gets bitter, we can put a few more out there," Johnson says.
If players get enough of the heated benches, they can stand between kerosene-powered blowers pumping heat out at up to 600,000 Byus, one on either end of the sidelines pointing inward and keeping the sideline over 50 degrees between the two 30 yard lines, even when the temperature outside falls far below freezing.
With all these heaters blowing, however, you've got to be careful. Ed Carroll, the Ravens equipment manager, says he has to make sure the players keep a bit of distance from the heaters. Standing too close to the heat sources can melt equipment, including helmets, which players have molded to their heads since training camp.
But no matter the style of benches, all sideline heating systems?per NFL rules?are the same for both the home and visiting squads. According to an NFL spokesperson, rules also dictate that the "football should never be placed on or inside heated benches or in front of heaters," a tactic that teams formerly used to make the ball softer and easier to handle or kick.
Of course, you can't play the game from the sidelines. And the players competing out on the gridiron turn to a rather ordinary solution to stay warm: layered thermal clothing and chemically activated heat packs. "Oxygen in the air activates the heat and coaches and staff put them in their coat pockets," Carroll says. "Players have hand warmer muffs and zip in the heat packs." They're most popular with receivers, running backs, and quarterbacks. When you see a player poke his hands into his muff, at least nine times out of 10 there is also a heat pack in there, Carroll says.
One last, deceptively simple trick Carroll uses is to spray feet with deodorant. "If you don't perspire, you don't get as cold," he says. "A lot of guys say 'what the hell are you talking about?' But when the feet perspire, the socks get wet and it makes it feel colder. We spray with Right Guard."
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