The football field lines are permanently dyed into the fibers, but the end zones are removable panels. For the permanence of their field graphics, they chose a compromise solution. It’s the only instance I’ve ever seen where the shared objectives of soccer and American football visually converge: get the ball over the goal line!)Īfter ten years of use ( and one egregious tear from an Ohio State linebacker), Lucas Oil Stadium replaced its artificial turf in 2018. (Despite this aesthetic nightmare, they did have one unique innovation: they placed the soccer goal on the football goal line, with the word “INDIANAPOLIS” in the end zone behind it. It was a visual disaster, much like the “multi-purpose” fields you see at local high schools. Eventually they gave up, leaving the embedded white football lines visible, and painting yellow soccer lines on top of them. For their first few games, they attempted to hide the football lines with green paint, which was not very effective. This came to a head in 2018, when the Indy Eleven soccer team began to play at Lucas Oil.
In order to paint the respective team graphics, crews have to first paint green over the embedded Colts graphics, and then paint the end zones dark colors to hide the ghosted “INDIANAPOLIS” fibers.
However, this becomes an issue when Lucas Oil hosts non-Colts football games, like the Big Ten National Championship. During events like the NFL Combine or Drum Corps International Finals, the Colts graphics just stay on the field. This turf permanence works most of the time. While most people probably didn’t notice at the time, Uni-Watchers like me certainly saw the difference, as the white paint didn’t entirely cover the original embedded red plastic fibers. Indy were forced to paint over the “old” AFC logo and hand-paint the “new” logo. That became a problem two years later, when the NFC and AFC logos were both streamlined to contain four interior stars. Integrated alongside the “COLTS” wordmark was the NFL logo ( then newly redesigned), and the not-yet-redesigned original AFC logo with six cascading stars. When Lucas Oil Stadium opened in 2008, their FieldTurf end zones consisted of permanently dyed blue and white plastic fibers. Other stadiums, especially those that host soccer games, paint the graphics anew every week.īefore we cover who does what and why, let’s focus again on the Colts. Some fields use permanently dyed plastic fibers for boundary lines, yard markers, and end zones. More than half the league now play on artificial turf, and every stadium handles this situation differently. Unlike a grass field (where grass grows and is mowed, and new paint has to be applied every week), the Colts don’t have to spend extra time and money applying paint every week – their field graphics are permanently fixed. Here’s a time lapse video of how this happens. The fibers that make up Indy’s artificial turf field are permanently-colored blue plastic, sewn together and arranged at the factory. See / sportsbook for details.Dyed in the Wool: Turf Permanence in the NFLīy Jared Pike ( the Indianapolis Colts’ first home game of 2022, Uni Watch commented in surprise that the Lucas Oil Stadium end zones still display the Colts’ old wordmark (despite the team updating its wordmark in 2020.) The most likely reason for this is simple: Indy’s graphics are literally sewn into the turf. Make sure you follow Canal Street Chronicles on Twitter at, “Like” us on Facebook at Canal Street Chronicles, and make sure you’re subscribed to our new YouTube channel. Let’s hope everyone, including Mason, is right this week about the Saints, though. We’ll keep up with the cumulative reader score each week and see how they compare to the Canal Street Chronicles staff. Here are his picks: Broncos, Packers, Bills, Chargers, Jaguars, Vikings, Lions, Saints, Jets, Buccaneers, Commanders, 49ers, Eagles, Rams, Ravens, Chiefs This week, it’s stian from Twitter who wants to see how he compares to our staff. With the return of our staff picks comes the return of having a reader here from CSC join us.
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