So what’s up with the teal field at Coastal Carolina? The story of the ‘Surf Turf’
Viewers watching Coastal Carolina play Kansas — the first-ever member of a Power Five conference to visit Brooks Stadium — Friday night on ESPN2 may feel the urge to adjust the color on their television.
It’s an odd sight if you’re not used to it, but there’s likely nothing amiss with the contrast, sharpness, brightness, backlight, picture mode or hue.
The field is just that color.
After playing on natural grass at Brooks Stadium for the first 12 years of the program’s existence, Coastal Carolina installed an artificial teal-colored turf with bronze accents prior to the 2015 season, reflecting the school’s colors that represent the sea and sand.
The school decided it needed artificial turf because its practice and game fields would get beat up, particularly when they were wet from rain.
As for the color, it was a suggestion of former running back and punt returner Zach Silverberg, who brought it up to then-coach Joe Moglia during practice in 2013 when there were rumors the college was considering artificial turf.
Moglia sidled up to Silverberg to make small talk, as the coach often did, and he pitched the idea.
“I said, ‘If we’re going to get turf, we might as well do it with a little pizzazz,’ ” Silverberg told The Sun News in 2015. “... I said, ‘Coach Moglia, if we’re going to get turf, we should get teal turf.’ ”
Moglia initially balked at the idea, with thoughts of Boise State’s blue ‘Smurf Turf’ and Eastern Washington’s red “Inferno” field. But Silverberg’s argument became more persuasive.
“He said to me, ‘Coach, think about this for a moment,’ ” Moglia recalled. “ ‘We’re in Horry County and we’re by the ocean. Think about our environment. We have a blue sky. We have blue/teal water. We have white clouds. We have sand. And it’s our colors, so it’s not just the school colors it’s about our entire environment, and it kind of comes together as one like that.’
“. . . I thought about it and decided that really did make sense.”
Moglia broached the subject with then-president David DeCenzo, and after some discussion, the field was approved.
Matt Hogue, vice president of intercollegiate athletics and university recreation who has been employed by CCU since 1997, believes the term ‘Surf Turf’ was coined by a social media employee and it has since become the colloquial name for the field.
CCU fielded bids from turf companies and hired Shaw Sports Turf, which sent small and then larger samples of fiber colors to try to match CCU’s teal, which is PMS 322 on the Pantone Matching System spectrum, Hogue said.
“The first question was do they have teal-colored turf?” Hogue said. “As we looked around and talked to some of the manufacturers, it didn’t exist, so it was something that had to be essentially manufactured from scratch. ... As far as we know it’s the first teal-colored field in the world.”
The field cost approximately $1.2 million — Hogue said there was a slight upcharge for the new color — and was financed as part of a larger gift from TD Bank.
CCU was embracing teal more and more around the time the field was being considered. DeCenzo had commissioned an internal customer service training platform called “Feel The Teal” that still exists, the school spirit initiative “Teal Tuesday” was created in 2012 and #TealNation became an often-used moniker on social media.
“It really became, I think, more of an appendage of those,” Hogue said. “It seemed like maybe the next natural progression.”
Coastal’s track was resurfaced recently in teal as well, and the football field will need to be replaced within a few years. There has been no discussion of a color change.
“I think we’ve seen a lot of benefit from it,” Hogue said. “It’s a discussion point. It’s a conversation piece. That’s really something that’s unique and emblematic of our university and it’s really deeper than just a field that’s colored or what have you. It really is what embodies who we are and it’s a significant and core part of our brand. We’re Teal Nation and this is emblematic of that.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 6:58 AM.
