Growing out grass and taking shoes?
Is it legal to grow out the field turf at ND stadium to slow down D Rob? I have heard that they did that to slow down Reggie Bush but did not know if it was true. Also, the concern of taking D Robs shoe has been posted, but is that legal?
I don't see how any of these can be legal because how far can it go? Soon there will be weeds and corn growing to slow people down, and if you can take off a competiors shoes why stop there? Take off any outside knee/leg guarding grab whatever you can!!!
September 8th, 2010 at 1:07 PM ^
Many teams have done that for many years. You could chalk that up to home field advantage. As for taking off shoes, I mean, if he tied his shoes this problem probably wouldn't exist, but if my aunt had a penis she'd be my uncle.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:10 PM ^
Not necessarily true about your aunt being your uncle. You may just have a fucked up family (not saying you do).
September 8th, 2010 at 1:10 PM ^
Tall wet grass slows everyone down a notch, which makes DRob still the fastest guy on the field. I HOPE (please, please) that ND is relaying on this bogus tactic even a little.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:32 PM ^
I hope they grow it out too. Shorter wet grass (if it happens to rain this weekend) would be much slicker than it would if it were tall. Denard can plant his foot better in the tall grass and reverse the effect of them taking his shoes off, by juking ND out of their shoes. My high school field had tall grass and I don't ever remember rain having an effect of making the field more slippery.
September 8th, 2010 at 5:14 PM ^
Well we know the Pahokee kids will be fast out there (V. Smith) after all the running through the tall grass chasing rabbits without shoes, although DRob should still be the fastest player on the field.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:12 PM ^
Teams often resort to tricks like this. According to Jon Falk in his book "If These Walls Could Talk" Michigan lost to Minnesota in 1977 largely because the sprinklers on Minnesota's field (back when they played at Memorial Stadium) were "accidentally" left on all night, turning the field into a mud pit which slowed down the powerful Michigan running offense and helped Minnesota win 16-0.
September 8th, 2010 at 2:51 PM ^
Not to give away my age, but I remember this game, and story very well. If I recall correctly we packed shoes for a specific field condition, and Minnesota was able to play the game with a longer spike on their shoes. Quick - someone get ahold of Jon Faulk and make sure he packs more than one type of shoe! (all kidding aside - I would bet that Jon has packed more than one type of shoe since that day...)
September 8th, 2010 at 1:14 PM ^
the grass is the same for everyone. and nd's D is going to have to react to what D Rob does. this is not a big deal at all.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:37 PM ^
That is a true statement. However, the idea behind using tall grass to slow teams down is that it doesn't uniformly slow people down but rather at a variable or percentage. For example, If DRob runs through long grass at a 10mph rate and the resistance of the grass causes, say, a 10% reduction in speed, his relative speed is only 9mph and he is slowed by 1mph. If Charlie Weis runs* through the same long grass at a rate of 1mph the grass will cause the same 10% reduction and he will have a relative speed of 0.9mph only losing 0.1mph. So in the end the delta on DRob (1mph) is much greater than the delta on Weis (0.1mph).
Not saying this an effective strategy in anyway (its not), just what the reasoning behind it is.
* shifting of earth not accounted for in this scenario
September 8th, 2010 at 1:18 PM ^
and Michigan/DRob played pretty well on it.
I remember reading about a widespread theory about natural grass slowing down Michigan football teams in the Schembechler era at the Rose Bowl, at Minny's old Memorial Stadium and at Purdue's Ross-Ade Stadium back in the 70s. But there's a lot of evidence that squashes that theory as well.
There's been plenty of great rushing quarterbacks who play equally well on grass. If anything, long grass might help cushion some of the landings for DRob.
Also, in Denard'ss case he played well last year on grass, and is used to playing in moist/wet weather as well (it sprinkles/rains every 30 minutes in Ft. Lauderdale in the fall).
September 8th, 2010 at 1:24 PM ^
They had FieldTurf, not grass.
September 8th, 2010 at 3:00 PM ^
Yeah, but they hadn't mowed the field turf in over a week.
September 8th, 2010 at 6:53 PM ^
Also, in Denard's case he played well last year on grass
He did? Last year we played 11 games on FieldTurf and one game on grass - MSU. In that game, Denard rushed three times for -9 yards.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:22 PM ^
at least as far back as I can remember. I don't really see it as a problem anyway since ND players - who are slower than Denard to begin with (duh) - must also play on the the same grass.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:28 PM ^
I believe we did the same thing for the 1991 Florida State game to slow down Amp Lee. It didn't work so well.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:29 PM ^
Don't they always keep the grass long at ND? The advantage would not be everyone is slower, it would be their players are use to playing on it and others are not.
September 8th, 2010 at 6:55 PM ^
No, I think it's kept short most of the time. They only let it grow before really big games (like 2005 USC).
September 8th, 2010 at 1:30 PM ^
tell the equipment managers to bring extra shoes for the DR. (Insert RX here.)
September 8th, 2010 at 1:32 PM ^
for D-Rob, short along the sides for Floyd.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:34 PM ^
I've seen fast guys run fast on grass and on turf. Reggie Bush looked just as fast on that field in 2005 as he ever did. Manningham looked fast in 2006. I think that when field conditions are poor, such as at Soldiers Field in Chicago guys might be slowed down, but I don't see it as a factor here.
September 8th, 2010 at 1:36 PM ^
September 8th, 2010 at 1:44 PM ^
Since Kelly runs a spread I was wondering if he had them cut it shorter since they seem to do whatever he wants over there (including changing TV commercial times). I'm guessing whatever is good for ND in terms of field condition is good for us now that we're both running the same type of offense.
That being said I fully expect them to do anything and everything to try to make things better for them/worse for us since they know they couldn't beat us on FieldTurf (which, seriously, can everyone just go to that please? I'm tired of field conditions deciding a game. Weather is one thing but having a shitty muddy field determine the game is pretty crappy IMO).
September 8th, 2010 at 2:02 PM ^
With the dry weather that the Midwest has been having, it won't make much of a difference what ND does with their field. It probably hasn't grown much in a few weeks unless they water it.
September 8th, 2010 at 6:56 PM ^
I can't imagine that any college/professional team's grass field wouldn't be watered. You can't leave it up to Mother Nature.
September 8th, 2010 at 2:17 PM ^
September 8th, 2010 at 2:17 PM ^
September 8th, 2010 at 2:46 PM ^
To hell with Notre Dame.
September 8th, 2010 at 3:15 PM ^
ND is classless. I wouldn't expect anything less from them. They can try to slow down DRob all they want. Regardless of the height of the grass he's still going to be the fastest player on the field. As far as them taking off his shoes, Denard did say that he will tighten up his velcro a bit to prevent that from happening. Teams don't do that to slow down Denard, they do it to slow the tempo of the offense so they can get a breather. It's funny that teams are worried so much about him that they have to resort to things other then a gameplan to try and slow us down.
September 8th, 2010 at 4:55 PM ^
This type of gamesmanship has been going on forever. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. What I am interested in is what type of message Kelly is sending to his team. Go back to 1997, when we played at MSU (Woodson pick game). On the opening drive of the game, Nick Saban runs a trick play (believe it was a fake field goal) that fools our D and results in a touchdown. I looked at my friend immediately after and said that Michigan will win this game. He asked why and I said that Saban had just sent a message to his players that they couldn't beat us going head to head so he had to resort to trickery; which can only take you so far. Is Kelly sending a sub-conscious message to his players that without some sort of field manipulation (long grass, wet field, etc.) that his team just isn't good enough to get the job done? We will see.