Thanks to tremendous advancements in strength training and nutrition, today's college athletes are bigger, stronger and faster than their predecessors. In fact, it is difficult to imagine many things stronger than a 300-pound lineman. 

At least where the Rose Bowl is concerned, you can start with the playing surface underneath his feet.

Golf course superintendents and athletic field managers have a similar goal - to present the best possible playing conditions for their clientele. For superintendents, that usually translates into fast-firm putting conditions. On the football field, great conditions usually mean a surface that holds its ground when athletes cut and change direction while wearing cleated shoes that would be the envy of every golf shoe manufacturer.

For nearly 20 years, Rose Bowl Stadium field superintendent Will Schnell has produced what has become known under his watch as the 'Most Famous Field in Sports." It is no coincidence that the playing surface at the stadium in Pasadena that has been home to college football's oldest postseason game since 1923 is nearly as infamous as the game itself.

Schnell, who is entering his 19th year in Pasadena, resods the surface before each year's game, replacing the Tifway II that UCLA plays on with Bandera Bermudagrass sod that is grown just for the Rose Bowl. Sod is sod is sod, though right? Wrong.

The 82,000 square feet of Bandera that Schnell recently rolled out is grown specifically for the Rose Bowl by West Coast Turf. It is grown on plastic in the California desert. It is a practice that prevents deep rooting and promotes lateral growth that creates an incredibly strong matrix of organic material that resists tearing. The result is a surface that looks great and provides a safer medium for the game's players.

"When you grow sod on plastic, you have trapped rhizomes and stolons which creates a heavy web, and that web creates a very high sheer strength and tensile strength," said John Marman, vice president of West Coast Turf. "If you look at a game at halftime, you usually see a lot of grass tufted on top where it has been ripped up. You see a lot less of that with turf grown on plastic, and you have better footing with this product. It's more resilient because we do encourage that layering, getting that with topdressing and letting it grow through that layer again and again and again. It creates that web."

This year, the new sod went down on Dec. 2, one day after West Coast Turf installed a new field 15 miles away at the L.A. Coliseum. Schnell and his team rushed to get everything down, stretched and fitted in a single day so they could beat a weather system that dumped 1-3 inches of rain in the L.A. area the following day.

UCLA has played its home games at the Rose Bowl since 1982, but plays on Bermudagrass. West Coast Turf also provides sod for Stanford University, San Diego State, Southern California and Arizona State, but the only other clients, besides the Rose Bowl, to play on a premium surface like Bandera grown on sod, are Levis Stadium in Santa Clara, which is home to the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Coliseum (Raiders and A's) and Oracle Park, which is home to the San Francisco Giants.

This is the seventh year Schnell has gone with Bandera as a playing surface for the Rose Bowl, and the second year the sod has been grown on plastic.

The practice of growing sod on plastic began about 25 years ago on bentgrass, Marman said, but the plant produced too much organic matter.

"If you were growing it and hoping for a sale, and you sat on it for a long time, you would have some serious organic matter issues," Marman said. "Our product is solidified and committed before we grow it. Even with this, if you sit on it for a year-and-a-half and have the ability to maintain it on top you could have a pretty good product. Longer than that and you would probably have to grow it over again, so it's a little touchy. It's just a different way to do it. It takes more labor, but you have a better product."

There are other challenges associated with growing Bandera on plastic, too.

"The biggest is water. You can easily develop black layer," Marman said. "If it gets too hot, you can develop hot spots. It's a nightmare while growing it. You have to babysit it on weekends. It's not for the faint of heart."

The plastic profile also makes it easier to harvest the sod and dramatically shortens the time between rolling it out and playing on it.

We can turn it around in six months, and it is playable off the truck the next day," Marman said. 'Since it is grown on plastic and rolling it off, you're not cutting the roots, so it doesn’t shock it at all. Just cut the edges and roll it. The next day it doesn't even look like it was sodded. It's tighter and denser and just has a better look."

And it holds up better to the punishment the best athletes in college football dish out.