By: Brayden Yin

The Coliseum has long been an iconic part of the LA cityscape. Since its opening in 1923, the staff and the groundskeepers have learned a few tricks to keep the venue smoothly switching between its variety of configurations, which include rock concerts, auto races, community festivals, motocross championships, not to mention sports like baseball, soccer, and football.

Scott Lupold is the grounds manager at the Coliseum. Every time an event other than soccer or football is scheduled to take place at the venue, he starts to feel uneasy. When NASCAR’s season-opening Clash exhibition race took place in the Coliseum in 2022, the turf was crushed under the weight of the 14,000 cubic yards of asphalt. It was a good thing that the race took place after the football season, or else the turf would be a logistics nightmare.

As management keeps booking the arena more aggressively, Lupold is put on the spot, as he sometimes only has days to switch out the grounds. That’s why Coliseum officials have started to just rip out the old grass every time they have a doubleheader and replace it with a new layer of sod that could be ready for use in a few days. Swapping out the sod for new sod is heavy on the arena’s wallet. Every time the grass is replaced, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for the promoters. Lupold visits sod farms in Palm Springs and Coachella Valley on a regular basis, every couple of months, to make sure that the sod will be ready when it is needed.

When he has to replace the grass, he does a good job of it. One recent LA Trojans game segued right from a Rammstein concert, but no player slipped, and none of the turf was yanked up.