Everything It Takes To Paint An NFL Field

Everything It Takes To Paint An NFL Field

Yeah, this is a neat process. I mean, and I’ve been here since we first opened, so haven’t really seen any other schemes like this, so it’s actually nice to see something different. My name is Chris. I’m the turf and grounds manager here at SoFi Stadium. Uh, today I’m going to be showing you how we transform from Charger Power to Superchargers. this week. You know, a lot of work has gone into creating and bringing this theme and branding to life. Uh it’s been a years long process in the works. The guiding direction through all this has been looking to the past, getting super inspired by the Air Corel era. shots of fans in the crowd all repping the Charger Power T-shirts. And same thing when we’ve got Superchargers. Really want to lean into that ‘ 90s, early 2000s era. And this Charger Power late ‘7s, early 80s. When it comes to the general field layout, um it’s pretty routine. Grooming the field to get the rubber consistent, picking up debris, and putting a wet drag on that way kind of pushes that rubber down. So once that’s all set, the guys will come out and lay out the stencil uh to the correct measurement, making sure that once your stencil’s laid out, um you measure with string top to bottom. That way you have a straight line. Everyone kind of just follows that to make sure that we’re nice and crisp. The field stuff actually was some of the pieces we locked down literally a year ago. you know, start with what is the uniform, what’s on the field, and build out from there, defining these Charger power and superchargers themed to go along with these two new alternate uniforms, the best elements, the things that we like, and then eventually lock in. We’ve got the brand guide. This is everything that goes into Charger Power, the fonts, the colors, and this is everything that we have for Superchargers. We have so many great people on our team internally over those last few months of working on this stuff. Obviously the announcement in July. It’s it’s an awesome experience seeing just everything and the volume that we’ve been able to reach. Painting normally here is done simultaneously. So once we dot out one end zone, have a midfield crew lay out the midfield logo, they’ll dot that out. Same with the north end zone. The paint we order here is ready premixed. So, all we got to do is just stir it up, put it in the painter, prime the painter, and bring it out. Since the letters were smaller, I noticed that I asked for six more buckets to kind of get this paint down. So, I want to say we used maybe around like 22 buckets, and it’s five gallon buckets. So, have a crew running the letters. They’ll they’ll fill in the white, and then a crew right behind them kind of cutting, doing some of the blue. So, normally we’ll have about two days of paint. So, we’ll have Friday, Saturday, and then games on Sunday. So, normally, um, we’ll paint the white and midfield on Friday, and on Saturdays we we’ll do a background color. This week, a little bit busier, so we ended up doing the whole paint job. So, that’s kind of the breakdown within the two days. On game day, we’ll we’ll come in, make sure that everything’s kind of visually ready. Um, and if we need to touch up from the night before, you know, we’ll do a little bit of touch-up, but we typically don’t want to be doing anything on game day. So, on Saturday, that’s when we’ll come in. We missed a couple areas that we were kind of light on, and that’s where we’ll kind of touch up. So, typically after a game, there’s going to be some type of postgame event that happens. Um, we got a little bit of downtime once the game ends. As soon as the field is cleared, um, that’s when we’ll come out and start scrubbing on the paint. So, typically, um, after a game when we don’t have a quick turnaround, we’ll wash out the next day. For this week, uh, for the Superchargers, we’re going to have to scrub out Sunday night, have to touch up Monday morning just cuz we have a lot of things going on throughout the day. Um, it gives a little bit of time to kind of touch up the areas that we didn’t get 100%. And then we’ll paint um the letters and mid midfield logo on Tuesday. I know that’s on Wednesday, we’ll finish the colors. you go through shoes like you know like you’re changing outfits you know but most of the time I mean you know they just you just need something to be comfortable in you know we are painting for you know several hours at a time so you know being comfortable and I guess fashionable is ultimately you know there’s there’s a balance of where if you put too much paint down you’re worried about cleat going in and out so you know there’s there there’s a balance to all that. So, got to be kind of conscious about how much paint is down. Yeah, it looks nice, but at the end of the day, we’re here for player safety. At the end of it, you know, when this all comes to fruition, you know, this, you know, like it makes us feel good, right? You know, guys put in a lot of work throughout the week um trying to get the field right. And then when it comes to paint, you know, I been pretty fortunate to have the guys since the stadium opened up. So, the guys know what they’re doing. Um it’s kind of like you know kind of like when you go to work right you know you know the certain things to look out for you know certain paints to mix and you know and so forth. So yeah it’s nice to see everything kind of like a weld oil machine and yeah it’s great to see it on television. We are here at Sofi Stadium Charger Power Field I don’t think has ever looked better. We got the 1960s era Charger logo in the end zones. I don’t know if you can say there’s buzz about uniforms, but walking into the stadium today, there’s a little excitement. We got the second consecutive game of a pretty darn impressive looking field. This the Superchargers, the Navies. Pretty cool to be uh in the stadium again to look down on the field and see something a little different. You know, at the end of the day, we’re we’re doing this for everyone else, right? You know, this is this is this is the centerpiece of the stadium. So to get this right and, you know, make it pop, you know, is is kind of what we’re in for.

Ever wonder how an NFL field gets painted? Hear from Chris Chang, Manager of Turf and Grounds at SoFi Stadium, as he breaks down the entire process to paint and prep the field for Head Coach Jim Harbaugh, quarterback Justin Herbert, and the Bolts throughout the season. From how many gallons of paint are used to the turnaround time between games, learn about everything it took to create the iconic looks for the LA Chargers’ sunshine gold Charger Power and navy Super Chargers theme games. Plus, get a behind-the-scenes look from Tyler Brazas, Art Director for the Chargers, on how the field designs and jerseys were chosen for the games.

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