Unplayable Field, Unplayable Game

If Jimmy Hoffa isn’t buried at the Meadowlands, there’s room for him under the carpet at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The hidden potholes under the artificial turf were so bad Monday, the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Ravens had to scrub their exhibition opener and send home 55,000 disappointed spectators.

Specifically, the problems were the cut-outs put in place to cover the infield dirt the Philadelphia Phillies played on the night before.

“As we’ve been saying for a long time,” Eagle President Joe Banner said, “the conditions in which this professional football team have been forced to play are absolutely unacceptable and an embarrassment to the city of Philadelphia.”

Kickoff was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. EST, then pushed back 35 minutes as crews scrambled to smooth the dirt under the cut-outs. The teams took the field and stretched before thousands of fans, then retreated to the locker room. Around the time of the rescheduled kickoff, Raven officials began packing up their sideline equipment and fans began to boo.

The game was called off at 8:09 and the boos were deafening.

“I’m shocked,” Eagle fan John Houghton said. “This is terrible. This is not right. If this were the regular season, there would be riots.”

That the Eagles announced they will provide refunds did little to pacify the crowd. The NFL has the right to reschedule the game, although that is unlikely because neither team has time.

Police created a path for Raven players to board their bus, holding back hundreds of angry fans chanting obscenities and “Super Bowl chumps!”

Actually, players from both teams arrived at the decision the field was not playable, and the final decision was made by the NFL. This is the first season the Eagles are playing on NexTurf, a surface that has a more grassy look and feel than traditional artificial turf.

“The surface underneath the turf was not smoothed properly,” Banner said. “So that when you lay the turf on it you’ve got, not a ripple, but ruts to the point where it was unsafe.”

The Eagles, who are slated to be in their new stadium for the 2003 season, have had plenty of turf problems over the years.

“The whole league knows about the Vet turf,” Eagle quarterback Donovan McNabb said last season. “There’s two things you can get hit by: our defenders or our stadium. They’re both hard hits.”