The grass at LSU's Tiger Stadium | Baton Rouge | theadvocate.com

Assistant Athletic Director of Operations Jon Pfeifer and Jan Risher get a close up view of the playing surface at Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Cutting the grass on a football field and I go way back.

My dad was a high school football coach in the small Mississippi town where we both grew up. A grounds crew to help take care of the field was sparse, and the work of maintaining it was my dad's responsibility.

This meant that I became the grounds crew, often operating an old red tractor or pushing an apparatus filled with lime across the field to make the yard lines. Like the rest of our lives, the football field was a family affair. We were all in.

Grass blades of the field at Tiger Stadium lay flat after being rolled and mowed on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

When my dad changed the grass on the football field, we talked about it for months. The field's care was an all-season discussion around our table. To this day, I rarely pass a football field without smiling — which is what led me to Jon Pfeifer, LSU's assistant athletic director of operations/buildings and grounds.

Pfeifer knows a thing or two about grass on a football field.

He and I met in the Lawton Room in Tiger Stadium, across from Mike the Tiger's enclosure.

Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, Pfeifer says he stumbled into his career.

Assistant Athletic Director of Operations Jon Pfeifer and Jan Risher walk out of a tunnel to the playing field at Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

He came to LSU because of football — not to play, but because the school had a mighty football program. For his first four years, he studied chemical engineering, then decided it wasn't the path for him.

An adviser asked what he liked and what he was good at.

He said, "I'm good at math and science — and all I know is sports."

The adviser told him about the university's turf management program, a career he previously had no idea existed.

Assistant Sports Turf Manager Jordan Billingsley mows the grass in the south end zone of Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Pfeifer, now 33, started working at LSU in 2013 as a student. He graduated with a degree in agronomy/plant and soil science in 2015. He left LSU for a year to work at the University of Houston, then returned as assistant sports turf manager. He's worked his way up from there.

Hearing his story, I said, "Your mama must be proud."

"She is," he said. "That's funny you say that. She actually works here on the victory team — and everybody just knows her as 'Jon's mom.'"

A sprinkler head pops up from below the surface to water the field at Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

She moved down from Virginia to be closer to her son. No doubt his and his wife's twin one-year-old sons play a role in her decision to stay.

Before we walked out to the football field, Pfeifer shared a few key points. First, the type of grass on the field is called Celebration Bermuda. During home game weeks, they paint the white lines on Thursdays.

As a point of trivia, he explained why LSU, unlike most fields, marks the 5-yard lines, along with the 10s. The tradition goes back to World War II. LSU was one of the few schools that continued to play football through the war. Radio announcers asked if the five-yard lines could be marked so they could be more precise in calling the game.

And it stuck.

Assistant Sports Turf Manager Jordan Billingsley mows the grass in Tiger Stadium as Assistant Athletic Director of Operations Jon Pfeifer shows Jan Risher a closer view of the surface on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

We also talked about the science of growing grass — about photosynthesis, aeration and hydration. He told me Tiger Stadium's grass is maintained at five-eighths of an inch tall.

"But we can also change it — like we do what we call 'the toupee,'" he said. "You can make it a little longer, like three-quarters or seven-eighths of an inch and give it the old comb-over. So it looks like you got a little more coverage than you really do."

He told me how grass has reportedly been used strategically in games.

"We always talk about the Notre Dame vs. USC game," he said, explaining about the conundrum of what to do with a player as fast as Reggie Bush.

Assistant Athletic Director of Operations Jon Pfeifer and Jan Risher get a close up view of the playing surface at Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

"Well, you can't really slow Reggie Bush down, right? But if you make the grass a little bit taller — in theory, the longer it is, the slower it plays, and the slower it plays, the slower the athletes. Notre Dame was notorious for like, you know, an inch, inch and a half."

At Tiger Stadium, the grounds crew cuts the grass daily. Pfeifer compared the reasoning behind cutting it so often to the care for one's beard.

"For boys, when we're going through puberty, you start shaving when you get just a couple pieces of hair — and then the more you shave, the faster it grows," he said. "Grass is kind of the same way."

Even on game day, they cut the grass. Once a home game ends, Pfeifer puts 12 minutes on the clock.

The blades of the lawnmower kicks up grass clippings as Assistant Sports Turf Manager Jordan Billingsley mows the grass in the south end zone of Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

"After 12 minutes, it's my field," he said. "What better way to get people off the field?"

They start with rollers and then bring on the mowers.

Once we were on the field, the vastness of the stadium seemed magnified because of the quiet — despite Jordan Billingsly, assistant sports turf manager, operating a mower from one side of the field to the other.

When Billingsly stopped the mower, its tires, covered in a confetti of tiny bits of green, purple and gold grass, reminded me of the aftermath of a Mardi Gras parade. He and I discovered that we are Mississippi State alumni and proceeded to play "the Mississippi Game" of digging up mutual friends.

Billingsly told me his favorite aspect of the job is "taking care of a living organism — because that's what it is."

"It's something you take pride in — something you nurse," Billingsly said. "I take a lot of pride in the results I get out of it. And on Saturdays, when we're on live TV and millions of people are watching — that's pretty cool."

I asked them if they have homes with yards. Billingsly said he was grateful his landlord takes care of his yard.

Pfeifer mows his own, though he does not give it the same attention as the "crown jewel" of LSU sports.

Assistant Sports Turf Manager Jordan Billingsley mows the grass in the south end zone of Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Pfeifer said people ask him for advice on their yards weekly.

His go-to advice: "Just keep it mowed. Keep it fed. Weed and Feed is a great thing that's going to cover a lot of your bases. It's a broad spectrum herbicide that will catch most of your grass and home lawn weeds."

Mowing frequency is also important. He referenced the "one-third" rule regarding cutting grass — no more than one-third of a blade of grass' leaf tissue should be cut at once.

"If you go past that, you're going to scalp it. And that's going to give it like a yellowish dingy look," he said.

Pfeifer and I got up close and personal with different blades of grass on the field. The grass blades at Tiger Stadium are super-skinny. Pheifer would point to individual blades of grass to show me which ones were cut well and which ones were cut poorly.

I had never thought of grass by the blade before.

Assistant Athletic Director of Operations Jon Pfeifer holds a blade of grass to show its length on the field at Tiger Stadium on Monday, September 30, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

I did my best to count the blades in an individual square. While my efforts don't equal an exact science, I estimate that each square inch on Tiger Stadium's field has about 30 blades of grass — which means on the field, there are roughly 207,360,000 individual blades of grass.

Being there made me smile, and though it was my first time on the football field at Tiger Stadium, it felt familiar. To be sure, the setting was much grander than any football field I experienced as a child. Even so, walking through the tunnel at Tiger Stadium to the field was like walking to my happy place.

Even the smell was familiar.

As the tractor roared by, for just a moment, I caught myself listening for my father's booming voice.

Email Jan Risher at [email protected].