North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: Concert Makes for Busy Time At Stadium
9/24/2009 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
Editor's note: About 55,000 tickets have been sold for U2's show at Carter-Finley Stadium. For more information about the concert and information on buying tickets, click here.
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. – NC State assistant athletics directors Ray Brincefield and Shannon Yates have a plan. They've been working on it with a full committee representing athletics, public safety and other parts of the university community to make sure everything goes right.
Because, Brincefield admits, the schedule is tight.
U2 will bring its 360° Tour to Carter-Finley Stadium on Oct. 3, the most elaborate stage and production in the entertainment business. Less than a week later, the NC State football team will play Duke on the same field.
It won't be, however, the same grass. Part of the setup and breakdown of the 10-story set includes replacing the layer of grass that was recently installed at the stadium with a new layer of thicker-cut sod, providing a carpet-smooth playing surface for the final four Wolfpack football games this season. The rest of the new field infrastructure – about 90 percent what was done in removing the crown, leveling the field and installing a new irrigation system – will remain unaffected.
And, while the schedule is hectic, the process is not unusual. Because of U2's fall touring schedule, which includes 44 dates in 11 countries from June through October, it's happening at stadiums all over the world, including college football stadiums at Virginia, Oklahoma, UNLV and the Rose Bowl. In fact, Brincefield, Yates and Diane Moose recently went to Boston to see the show, along with public safety and event staff personnel, just to make sure all the bases were covered.
"It's not something that is common at college stadiums, having a show like this in the middle of the football season, but it happens all the time in pro sports," said Brincefield, the assistant athletics director for outdoor facilities. "Colleges don't typically have the revenues to ... have a show, replace the field and play on it the next week."
But re-sodding the field is also something that is always done just prior to the Super Bowl and the BCS Championship, and for other high-profile events.
The two-week process will begin a day after Saturday's 3:30 p.m. home game against Pittsburgh, just after the Wolfpack football team finishes its Sunday afternoon practice. LiveNation Global Events, the tour's promoter, will take over the stadium at 6 p.m. and begin installing the spider-like stage, which at its highest point will rise above the light standards at Carter-Finley.
It's one of three stages the band uses on the world tour, and it will take more than 1,000 people, six cranes and 25 forklifts to unload the 128 tractor trailers that transport the stage and equipment during the four-day setup.
By Friday morning, everything will be ready for a sound check by the band's production crew, with no one allowed in the stadium area. However, since that is also the opening night for the Carolina Hurricanes, the parking lots around the stadium will be packed by Friday evening, providing a little hint of what will happen the next evening.
After the show on Saturday night, those 1,000 workers will return to break down and remove everything from the stadium within 48 hours.
By 6 a.m. Monday morning, Brincefield and his staff will employ some 150 temporary workers to strip off the top layer of grass off the newly installed surface at Carter-Finley. Over the next 24 hours, they will roll out some 28 truckloads of sod that will arrive in waves from an Alabama sod farm.
He worked with an old friend -- Precision Turf owner Eric Holland of Atlanta, an NC State graduate and former member of the grounds crew - to secure the proper strain and thickness of sod to replace what is currently on the field.
"It's a thicker cut, with a clay base," Brincefield said. "But it will drain on our sand-based field."
By Wednesday morning, the grounds crew will begin painting the field – just as they do on every Wednesday before a home football game. Thursday, the red and black colors will be added to the field and Friday both Duke and NC State can have their official pre-game walk-throughs.
This will be the first concert at Carter-Finley since the summer of 1998, when George Strait and Jimmy Buffet both played here. Before then, the stadium hosted shows like Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead.
But that was before the school poured some $100 million into improving the stadium, enclosing the north and south end zones and building both the Murphy Center and Vaughn Towers.
So this is a debut, of sorts, for the renovated stadium.
Brincefield said the opportunity was too good to pass up, since hundreds of workers – from contractors, steel workers, security personnel and the LiveNation staff – will be employed to produce the show.
"We are doing this because we renovated our stadium and we haven't had any special events like this in a while," Brincefield said. "We think that is something we should do.
"When you think about the people that will be employed, it's a great opportunity to bring something that will benefit the school, the community and businesses around town. We have been planning this since March, and have worked on every detail of what is going to happen throughout the process."
Head football coach Tom O'Brien and athletics director Lee Fowler approved the process, after being assured that there would be no negative impact to the players and the fans who will attend the Oct. 10 game. After that, the Wolfpack goes nearly a month without a home game.
"Coach O'Brien was involved in the whole process," Fowler said. "He said as long as we can guarantee the field will be protected and we will have a good surface to play on, we'd be glad to help because this is a great thing for the community."
The only part of the process that is out of Brincefield's control, at this point, is the weather. But the planning committee has come up with multiple redundant contingencies for weather-related issues.
"If we do our jobs, if we follow our plan, the only thing people will notice is that there are no divots in the field," Brincefield said. "It people didn't know we were doing all this stuff, all they would say is 'They just had a concert here and the field looks better than it did before the Pitt game.'
"That's why we started planning this in February and March."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
