Glenn “Bo” Schembechler wasn’t the only major change to hit Ann Arbor in 1969. New athletic director Don Canham decided to introduce artificial turf inside the Big House. Here’s a great photo of Dan Dierdorf and Bo inspecting a sample of the righteous carpet up on eBay now:
Apparently Dierdorf was skeptical of the safety of natural grass, having suffered a knee injury in 1968 (from the notes on the wire photo):
I’m not sure what they hoped to accomplish with their little empty shoe test, but oh well.
It’s pretty clear that Canham was not only dead set on the innovation, but he was also pretty proud of it. The new coach would seemingly be the obvious choice to don the cover of the game program, but Bo was present. In fact, no person is present at the front of the program for Bo’s first game at the helm—here’s a look at the Vanderbilt game program (also on eBay now), showing off Canham’s carpet:
The bid on the Bo/Dierdorf photo is currently at $27.28. The Vandy program is going for $59.99.
4 Comments
jmblue
I think you have the Dierdorf bit backwards. I read that as saying that Dierdorf hurt his knee on grass and wouldn’t have hurt it on “synthetic grass” (i.e. TartanTurf).
Greg - MVictors
@jmblue
thanks – re-read that. Funny, obviously the conventional understanding of the safety of that style of turf has clearly flipped since then
Bando
During that first season of the artificial turf, the MMB did a show featuring a small cannon at the 50 that fired off at the appropriate points of (I think?) the 1812 Overture. Unfortunately, there was a cannon malfunction and the damn thing burned a fairly large hole in the carpet. I’m told that somewhere there’s a picture of Revelli and Canham at halftime standing over the hole figuring out what to do next.
Whoops.
Greg - MVictors
@Bando
that might be the best thing ever. Got to get a copy of that photo!