4 min readApr 26, 2026 08:38 PM IST More Americans get screaming notices for unsatisfactorily mowed front lawns than parking tickets. They may not be batshit crazy about football or soccer, but Americans can get ridiculously pedantic and particular about their front yard grass or turf lawns. So when FIFA faced a knotty issue – eight of the sixteen stadiums hosting the World Cup were designed for artificial turf—and FIFA only used natural turf, USA’s ace grass experts were summoned. The University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville’s world-renowned turfgrass experts led a first-of-its-kind research collaboration with Michigan State University and FIFA, the global governing body for soccer, to set up the pitches. While the uneven bounce at Pan-Am drew criticism, the UT were confronted with the eventual question. “How can a soccer ball bounce the same on a pitch in Vancouver, Canada, and in Mexico City?” the UT website writes. So through a five-year research project, UT’s expert turfgrass team developed turfgrass systems along with irrigation, maintenance, and testing methods to produce identical pitches that were …