College Football Players Kinda Prove They Won't Melt During Summer On New All-Black Turf, Mock The Haters

A Division-III college in New York unveiled its first new stadium playing surface since 2006 last week and it immediately set the internet on fire— not unlike the field itself. SUNY Morrisville rolled out its brand-new, all-black turf.

Every inch of the field is jet black, except for hashmarks and boundary lines for multiple sports. Boise State, Eastern Washington, Eastern Kentucky, Coastal Carolina, and Central Arkansas all play on non-green turf fields. Not one of them is black.

SUNY Morrisville has the first all-black field in the country.

As soon as the field was announced, the Mustangs caught a lot of slack. Turf in general is already scorching hot in the summer, and the color black absorbs the most sunlight— which will only make things hotter.

Will playing on black turf not combine the two elements to make an uncomfortably hot field?

SUNY Morrisville says no. It pushed back on all of the outside hate with two arguments:

Mustang athletes also got in on the black turf fun.

Ed-Son Jean-Baptiste, a senior on the football team, pretended to pop popcorn on the turf.

He and Jordan Eveillard, a senior running back, also pretended that just touching the turf was so hot that it requires them to be hosed off to keep from melting.

Jean-Baptiste also backed up his school's claims about the temperature. He took a thermometer out to the field and compared the black turf to the rest of the colors on the field.

While the point is taken, a two-degree difference is not that insignificant. Especially at such extreme temperatures. I'm sure that anyone, if given a choice, would choose to play on 112.7° turf instead of 114.9° turf.

If SUNY Morrisville wanted to be different without melting its athletes in the summer, why didn't it go with an all-white turf? That would have had the opposite effect from the all-black turf. It would be almost 10 degrees cooler!