Last year a friend of mine asked me if I could help him with a project involving Legion Field turf. I said yes. He said that for over two years he had been trying to get pieces of it from the City of Birmingham.
It was being used in the batting cages inside an original old steel building at Birmingham Alabama’s historic Rickwood Field. The city had pulled it up from the stadium and used some of it at local parks and some of it was put down here. He got permission to get it as they were going to tear down the building and just throw it out.
The pieces that we were lucky to get were used from the years 1975 to 1994. There is a lot of great teams and players that have played on this turf. Bear Bryant won his 315th game on this field. Van Tiffin kicked a last second field goal to beat Auburn 25-23 in 1985. In 1982 the Auburn tigers ended Alabama’s 9 game win streak against them by winning 23-22. Bo Jackson ran on this turf. The first SEC Championship game was played here in 1992 (Alabama 28 Florida 21).
The Birmingham Vulcans of the World Football League played their only season here in 1975. The Birmingham Stallions of the USFL played 3 seasons on this turf.
I have included two different articles from the Birmingham News that chronicle the auctions and the history of some of this turf. The pieces that we got were not part of the auction but were the part of the field that was used elsewhere .
The City of Birmingham gave rolls of it to Gardendale to auction off. They only gave them 2,400 square feet of it. A regular sized football field ,which Legion Field was, consists of over 56,000 square feet . Theses pieces are from the “leftover” that was used.
This is the first blog post about my turf . I will be doing another post of other players and games that were played on it.
LIST OF DIFFERENT LEGION FIELD PLAYING SURFACES
After we pulled up all the green Astroturf there was some red underneath it. I later determined that it was from the endzone when the Birmingham Stallions played here from 1983-1985. You can clearly see the red pieces from a poster I have of the Stallions cheerleaders.
(CLICK ON EACH PHOTO FOR A LARGER IMAGE)
