The hosting of the World Cup entails various direct and indirect costs for the 11 NFL stadiums staging matches. One practical reality is that the temporary installation of grass in buildings that use artificial turf for football undercuts the argument that grass isn\u2019t an option in those facilities.<\/p>\n
“[T]here\u2019s always been multiple excuses made,\u201d NFL Players Association executive director JC Tretter told Albert Breer of SI.com. \u201cOne of which was feasibility of, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s not possible, it\u2019s an indoor stadium. We can\u2019t grow grass here. It\u2019s impossible.\u2019 [The World Cup] has taken that out. It\u2019s feasible. Now it\u2019s really a choice<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n And the owners who choose artificial turf have chosen the path of least expenditure.<\/p>\n \u201c[T]hat choice clearly comes down to cost,\u201d Tretter told Breer. \u201cAnd there\u2019s two types of costs. One is the cost of upkeep and installation. But clearly they\u2019re OK doing that for this event, they just seem not OK doing it for the actual employees they pay. And then the other cost, which kind of frustrates guys, is it\u2019s the trade-off cost of potentially not being able to do other outside-of-football events the teams make money off of. And the players see none of that [money].\u201d<\/p>\n The points are valid. Regardless, it\u2019s now a collective-bargaining issue. How far will the players go to get the surface they overwhelmingly prefer?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not where I stand, it\u2019s where our guys stand \u2014 92 percent of our guys prefer grass,\u201d Tretter told Breer. \u201cIt makes it easy for where I stand. . . It\u2019s hard to find 92 percent of people that agree on anything, and we\u2019ve got 92 percent to agree on what surface they prefer.\u201d<\/p>\n The question is whether at least 51 percent will agree on the strategy for pursuing the issue on which 92 percent of them agree. Will the players make concessions elsewhere to get grass in all stadiums? Will they strike over the issue?<\/p>\n It\u2019s one thing to have a preference. It\u2019s another for that preference to become a sufficient priority to effect change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hosting of the World Cup entails various direct and indirect costs for the 11 NFL stadiums staging…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-719700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}