The Super Bowl turf fiasco has been the talk of the town since the game itself. With several players slipping during the most important game of the season, it was clear that the turf was not up to championship standards. Now, George Toma, the NFL’s longtime chief groundskeeper, has weighed in on the issue and laid out pointed accusations of who’s to blame.
Toma, also known as the ‘Sodfather’, spoke with ESPN’s Josh Weinfuss on Monday and blamed the NFL and its field director, Ed Mangan, for mismanaging the turf. Toma alleges that Mangan watered the field in the days leading up to the game, rolled it directly back into the stadium without extended sun exposure, and then laid a tarp on it to protect it from halftime and pregame show rehearsals, which he claims caused the field to have a rotten smell.
Toma further claims that Mangan made other mistakes, such as sanding the field two weeks too late and not listening to advice from other groundskeepers. He claims that these errors led to the slippery conditions at the Super Bowl.
It is unclear from Toma’s interview with ESPN whether his opinion of the field and its caretaking changed in the days between his pre-Super Bowl interview and the game, or if this is simply a postgame assessment. What is clear is that the field was an issue during football’s biggest game and the NFL must take action to ensure that the conditions of the field are up to championship standards in the future.
