Hlas: Boise State gives Luther football the blues

Before Boise State University football was known for winning, it was known for a color.

In 1986, the university installed new artificial turf in its football stadium. Then-athletic director Gene Bleymaier suggested the turf be colored blue so that people would notice it was new. People noticed, all right.

The blue turf delighted some, annoyed others. But you knew who you were talking about when you said 'blue turf.'

A 2016 New York Times story noted that airliner pilots would point out the stadium and its blue turf to passengers as planes descended into the city. The turf gave the football team, the university, and Boise itself an identity.

Decorah's Luther College apparently is hoping for a similar effect. The school is the last Iowa Conference member to switch to a synthetic turf for football, and plans to have new turf in Carlson Stadium by late August. Its color?

Blue. Luther blue.

'We wanted to do something unique,' Luther Athletic Director Renae Hartl said. 'A green football field would be like everybody else. We wanted something that potentially would draw something exciting and different to football players.'

It's a $1.7 million project, funded by donors.

'A couple of them brought (going to a blue turf) up before we did,' Luther head football coach Aaron Hafner said.

It will happen with the blessing of Boise State, which has a registered trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office not only for blue turf in athletic venues, but all non-green turf. The school has issued over 30 free licenses for non-green playing surfaces.

For instance, Boise State gave Eastern Washington a license to have a red field, and Coastal Carolina got the green light for a teal-colored field.

But no college program gets the blue unless they're smaller schools with little television exposure that don't compete for the same caliber of athletes as Boise State.

There's the University of New Haven in NCAA Division II. The University of New England in Maine will have a D-III football program in 2018 that will play on blue turf. And there's Luther, which approached Boise State for permission last November and eventually got the go-ahead, with restrictions on how it can market its field.

'It's pretty exciting,' Hafner said.

'I think our student-athletes are really fired up about it,' said Hartl.

There is at least one dissenter, however. In a letter to his school's student newspaper in April, Luther English professor David Faldet found the color-choice objectionable.

'I proudly show off the campus to visitors and have yet to hear one say they are sorry about the view to our west and north,' Faldet wrote. 'The college has purchased hundreds of acres to preserve that view, and the city of Decorah has in its wisdom and deference planned its expansion to the south and east to preserve the pastoral view from the college.

'Placing an electric blue field as the massive foreground of that view is like the Louvre Museum putting down a yellow shag carpet in the gallery housing da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa.' '

More agreeable to all is the fact the Norse will be getting a playing surface that is better for the athletes' safety.

'We chose turf for the safety features and the practicality of it,' Hartl said. 'I think we'll be the only college in the state that will have a pad underneath the turf.'

Said Hafner: 'It will be a softer field, a better playing field. The New England Patriots put a pad under their turf (at Gillette Stadium). Things are trending that way. Our number one goal is a safer playing surface.'

The Norse's first home game is Sept. 9 against St. Olaf. Don't adjust your sets, Oles. It's blue!