…or does it have a drainage pipe system under the sand base? It seems that most college and pro fields are pretty flat, relying on the pipes underneath, not the slope from the crown to the sidelines on top to drain the field. Just curious.
Good question, but I bet you’re right. The crown isn’t nearly as important as it was 40 years ago. A new field with drainage beneath the turf probably requires no crown at all. Seems like the crowns were about 12 inches higher than the sidelines.
For a couple of years in the 80s, Daddy and I had seats on the 50 in the red seats right behind the bench. The field was so crowned that we could not see players below the knee on the far sideline. With the Hog players standing in front of us, we could not see the field well. We moved the next year.
I just looked at the camera showing the field. They appear to be watering it. It’s darker on sides of the field. The dirt is lighter colored in the areas roughly between the hash marks. That suggests to me that water is draining toward the sides & that there is indeed a crown in the field. Could be wrong. Might be they’re just watering the sides more.
When I do the playback I see no new installation of drainage pipe and only one point where they dug a trench under each of the hash mark locations. That would not be enough to drain the field. So, I am guessing the field will drain to the perimeter from a crown of some kind.
After I zoomed in on today’s images I finally saw what those two trenches were they located near the two hash mark locations. Those were the interior sprinkler lines. They are sprinkling the sand in the image today. So THOSE are not part of the drainage system.
If you go back on today’s image, you will see the sprinklers working between 3 & 4 AM and the crew showing up @ 5:00 AM. They have already rolled out a bunch of sod by the 5:30 shot. Those boys are working hard!