Field at Tiger Stadium must be replaced every year

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Every fall in LSU's Tiger Stadium, it's not just the enemies of the purple and gold who take a beating — the green does too. A constant in Death Valley is the field's lush, green grass, but since Les Miles took over in Baton Rouge, the salt from the tiger fan tears in November effectively make the field a moonscape, killing the grass permanently.

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Harry Landreau, the head groundskeeper for LSU's Death Valley, spoke about the issue. "Every year around the end of the season, the ground is so salty, it crunches when you walk on it. Jose and Eduardo (groundskeepers) do their best, but we have to apply thousands of gallons of de-salinization chemicals to the grass each season, and the ground will only take so much."

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Mr. Landreau stated that the school has plans to revamp the drainage for the field, in an attempt to direct the biblical flow of salt water pouring forth the stands away from the field.

The LSU agronomy department is also working on a solution to the issue: salt tolerant grasses. "We have been working on this particular problem since about January 2012," Said John Bordeaux of the LSU agriculture department. "In 2013, we had to remove the whole field and about 5 feet of topsoil below that, before we could get anything to grow. That's costing the school a lot of money. We have been developing a bermuda strain that will grow in soil that has concentrations of salt not seen since Scipio destroyed Carthage in 149 B.C. and poured sea salt directly on the fields. However, so far we've not been able to reach anything quite that tolerant."

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We could not reach Joe Alleva for comment at press time, as his secretary advised us he was meeting with local astroturf vendors to find out if they had salt resistent artificial grasses available for rapid replacement.

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