How one player’s idea became Brooks Stadium’s new identity

As Zach Silverberg tells the story, he was fielding punts on the Coastal Carolina practice field one day when Chanticleer football coach Joe Moglia sidled up to him for some quick small talk.

This was a familiar routine and so Silverberg had made a point of usually having a question or talking point ready for Moglia, but during this particular practice late in the 2013 season he decided he would pitch an idea to the coach instead.

“I started to hear rumors we were going to get turf and I said, ‘If we’re going to get turf, we might as well do it with a little pizzazz,’” Silverberg recalls. “... I said, ‘Coach Moglia, if we’re going to get turf, we should get teal turf.’ He said, ‘Zach, you know, that’s worth a discussion.’”

Silverberg, who finished his collegiate career last season and now lives in Baltimore, recounts the story in a spot-on Moglia impression.

Of course, he didn’t really think then that his idea would actually come to fruition, but Moglia would keep bringing it up – continually updating him, letting him know the university’s board of trustees was discussing it, letting him know a company was coming in with some colors to try to match the shade of teal the Chants would want – and eventually it became more and more clear that this quick conversation on the practice field was going to lead to the latest outside-the-box implementation for the Coastal Carolina football program.

And when the Chants host Western Illinois Sept. 19 inside Brooks Stadium, they will play their first official game on their new teal turf – or “Surf Turf,” as some have taken to calling it.

“I didn’t actually believe it,” Silverberg said. “One day [after] I had already graduated, after the football season, they had the banquet and somebody called me about it and said, ‘Coach Moglia was in the team meeting talking about you and how it was your idea.’ I texted him and said, ‘Are we really doing this?’ He said, ‘Yeah, good job.’ It’s very to-the-point with Coach Moglia.

“Ever since then it’s been my little claim to fame with Coastal. I’m excited to come down and be able to see a game. I’m upset I’m never going to get to play on it, but it’s pretty cool.”

As the most famous similar example, Boise State’s signature blue turf became an identity for the Broncos’ fast-rising program over the last couple decades and Coastal Carolina will see what its new teal field does for its own rising stature on the national scene.

Moglia, though, sees it as much more than a gimmick.

“We’re enthusiastic about it,” he said. “This is not just our school colors; this represents the entire community. So the teal is a combination of both the ocean and the sky, we’ve got green [initiatives] in there too just in terms of grass and field and trees, the bronze on the field represents the sand. So it’s not just our colors; it’s the entire community of greater Coastal Carolina, the Grand Strand, this part of South Carolina, etc. ...

“I think everybody’s very excited about it. It’s unique, it’s different in a classy way, I think.”

That’s kind of what Silverberg was going for as well when he made his initial pitch. He thought specifically of the Boise State example and what Coastal Carolina could do in its own way to stand out from the pack.

“I thought the teal turf with all the weapons we have on offense would match us personality-wise and give us a little niche along with having the beach, the growing fan base and Coach Moglia and just being Chants,” Silverberg said. “It would just bring another dimension into the football program.”

The university leadership agreed.

The unique artificial surface was designed by Populous, supplied by Shaw Sports Turf and installed by Medallion Athletics with engineering and management by Castles Engineering at a total cost of $1,067,875.

“We all thought it was a tremendous idea to kind of follow [Silverberg’s] lead, and of course then you start looking at the feasibility of it,” Chants athletic director Matt Hogue said. “There’s no turf companies who have done this before in terms of our color. There are not a lot of colors out there – there’s a few – so then it became, ‘OK, is this something that can even be accomplished? Will we be able to do it in a reasonable cost manner versus is it going to be another $200,000 to do this color or a million or whatever it is?’

“So I think we had to do our due diligence once the idea was floated, and it wasn’t something that seemed out of reach. It was very much within the cost estimates. It really didn’t cause us any additional workload necessarily. It really just came down to, as we worked with the vendor, that the color match was what it was. And we spent a lot of time on that. We made sure we had swatches in our hands ahead of time of actual turf to look at. We even sent some back and adjusted them some. We went through a very rigorous process.”

After tearing up the old grass field inside Brooks Stadium and formally beginning the project on Jan. 12, the turf arrived in big rolls – 27 rolls for the playing field and 24 more for the sidelines – and the installation of 104,730 square feet of ‘Surf Turf’ reached substantial completion on April 24.

As Hogue assessed the final product earlier in the summer and reflected back on the completed process, his thoughts drew back again to the origin of the idea.

As much as the unique look will become a talking point during broadcasts and mentions of Coastal Carolina’s football program, Hogue likes the backstory of how the idea originated and what that in itself will mean years in the future.

“I think one of the great things as we talk about the origin of that through the years, we can always get back to originally an actual student-athlete who mentioned the idea,” he said. “I think that’s pretty cool. That’s the kind of thing that five, 10 years, even longer down the road becomes part of traditions that other schools have had on their books for a while, where something kind of starts small and then it becomes part of the lore of the department.”

The football and women’s lacrosse teams have already made significant use of the new field for practices, appreciating having an alternative to the soggy grass practice fields caused by all the rain in the last month.

And while most fans will get their first up-close look at the surface Sept. 19 during the Chants’ home opener, the players have already levied their opinions.

“To be perfectly honest, at first all I could think about was how hot it was going to be,” senior defensive end Calvin Hollenhorst said. “And then the color looked a little off to me, but as it settled it darkened out and I’ve truly come to love it. I think it’s a great thing for the university. It gives us more of an image for the public and more of a trademark.”

Said junior defensive tackle Jabarai Bothwell: “I thought it was live, like on the next level. It will bring attention to us. I feel we’ve been flying under the radar for too long.”

As for Silverberg, who served as a reserve running back for most of his time with the program before taking over as the team’s full-time punt returner for his final season in 2014, he is proud to be recognized as the visionary of the “Surf Turf” concept.

For a while when he told people about his conversation with Moglia, nobody believed him until the coach acknowledged the origin of the idea.

“I pride myself on being a pretty creative person,” Silverberg said. “I think everyone down there would say I’ve had some pretty outlandish ideas, and every once in a while some of them stick.”

Really, he’d like to be remembered as a football player first and foremost, but he’s happy to be connected to the project and – like many Chanticleer fans – is eager to get his own first-hand glance at the teal field some time this season.

“I’d definitely like my legacy to be for being a courageous punt returner; not the guy [associated] with the teal turf. Either way, [though], it’s pretty cool,” he said. “It makes our program more unique than it already was, just another dimension for our program.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 2:00 AM with the headline "How one player’s idea became Brooks Stadium’s new identity."