Bears Necessity - Latest Comments in Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

Re: Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

Avinash — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:40:53 -0000

I disagree that playing USC on grass for away game skews the data. We also play Stanford and Arizona for away games, and their teams are near the bottom rung. Tennessee, UCLA, ASU are all around the middle.

And besides, we've also played Tennessee and USC at home as well during this stretch. These stats should be skewed two-way, cancelling out the disparities.

Perhaps a better measure would be separating road turf, road grass, and home stats. I will consider it in a future post.

Re: Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

HydroTech — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:23:35 -0000

The numbers do suggest Cal has trouble on grass, but honestly I think it's just more coincidence that (1) Cal has dropped a few winnable games that were played on grass, and (2) we play USC on grass for away games. And as post #3 points out, Cal plays on turf twice as much as grass because of our home games. And then you have to consider that of course a team is more likely to win at home due to the home field advantage. So in reality, it really only seems fair to look at how Cal does on grass, instead of comparing how Cal does on grass versus turf. So just looking at Cal's record on grass, it's very inconclusive. Now, Avinash, you do provide great Longshore stats for grass versus turf, but I think those stats are again skewed and mere coincidence that (1) we sucked hard on grass for a few games we should have won, and (2) we play USC on grass. So while this is interesting, I personally am not ready to yet buy the argument that grass is somehow significantly affecting the Cal Football team.

Re: Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

Avinash — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:38:32 -0000

It's not a huge concern, but it's something to note. Every year, we have to play at least two to three games on grass, and we've noticeably underperformed the past two years.

Re: Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

ass — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:34:29 -0000

You have to realize that part of those numbers is that Memorial Stadium has turf. So it isn't as big of a deal as you think.

Re: Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

Avinash — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:19:18 -0000

You just have to be flexible with your personnel and have multiple options on where to go offensively.

Re: Turf Wars: How Much Does the Surface Affect Cal?

Slims — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:44:22 -0000

Very interesting. I hadn't seen this before and it explains a lot, but the question becomes - how can one coach around this? Tedford has to be able to adjust his game for this kind of problem.

A better question - what does it take to get a practice facility with real grass? Something for the players to get used to?

It boggles my mind that these players can play on grass for the entirety of their high school careers and then get worked over in college.