nd-stadium-renovation.jpg

Artist's conception of finished Notre Dame Stadium renovation and expansion to cost $400 million.

(Notre Dame illustration)

Jack Swarbrick called it "not an easy decision" to finally decide after 84 years of football at Notre Dame Stadium to switch to artificial turf this year. The athletics director said in April it was a matter of "disproving the hypothesis" that UND could stick with natural grass in a stadium that has never done much other than hold commencement, a few intramural games, fantasy camp and seven football games a year in the place.

But it's really never been about being able to stick with what's been; that could happen quite easily. In the world of major college athletics these days, it's always about creating new revenue streams, keeping your brand updated and recruiting, recruiting, recruiting.

So, Notre Dame has decided to sink $400 million – pretty much the cost of a new stadium – into additions and refurbishments to the old place.

They plan to get it back by making the stadium itself into the hub of student life at the university, building three monstrous additions on every side but the north so you'll still be able to see Touchdown Jesus. They include 760,000 square feet of classrooms, exercise facilities, dining hall, 500-seat ballroom and student hangout areas. It will concentrate most every student need and keep revenue funneling back into the university rather than into off-campus businesses.

And speaking of revenue, ND fans were recently offered the opportunity to own 2-by-5-foot sections of the stadium's final natural grass – if not the actual blades tread upon by Paul Hornung and Coley O'Brien, then at least maybe Everett Golson – for the low, low price of $149.95. This was "in response to fans who expressed feelings about the sentimental value of the natural turf."

If the stadium additions were about keeping students' expendable income within the school, the new FieldTurf surface will be about attracting players who can win games for Brian Kelly. The Notre Dame coach wants to recruit speed. The code here translates to African-American athletes. And, by and large, fast athletes want to play where they're fastest. There is no question you can make cuts and change direction more efficiently on plastic and rubber.

Forget that artificial turf, even the much-improved stuff of today, still sees more football injuries suffered on it than grass. If it can help recruit speed, that's the objective.

The field has been stripped to dirt and prep work is going on now to lay the FieldTurf down in time for August camp. The Irish will be able to practice on Friday in the stadium this season should they wish, another plus.

The recent switch to trendy Under Armour gear is another nod in the same direction. Having already broken the traditional mold during their adidas tenure with some garish Shamrock Series uniforms, there's no telling what UND and its new partner Under Armour chief Kevin Plank will dream up this year. Plank is the

One of Maryland's gaudy Under Armour unis, modeled by quarterback Caleb Rowe against Clemson last year.

Maryland grad whose company's Terrapin uniforms have pushed limits of traditional football design while not gaining as many graphic design admirers as Nike's ever-changing Oregon shells.

Will nouveau unis eventually replace the traditional navy-and-gold Irish skins for all games at some point during the Under Armour tenure? It would not be a total surprise.

Which points up a question for Penn State and James Franklin: With even Notre Dame lapsing into fashion madness, do you stick by the status quo if you're PSU and hang with the staid, bland duds? Do you eschew superficial trendiness specifically because everyone else is doing it? Or is this finally when even the last traditionalists cave?

Do flashy uniforms recruit? Take a look at the speed Oregon has attracted since Phil Knight started the Nike uniform revolution there a decade ago and then you tell me.

Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees (11) hands off to running back George Atkinson III against Arizona State last October.

Add the artificial turf and the Under Armour contract and the point is this: If Notre Dame still holds the faint patina of a rich white boys' school and a slow white guys' football program, Swarbrick and Kelly shrewdly want to erase that altogether.

For the record, I'm not certain what side I fall on here. I'm more a classicist by nature. I think you should know who you are, adhere to a trademark look and be proud of it. The last thing you want to do is come off like a 1969 version of Peter Lawford trying to get away with a neckerchief and "Dry Look" hair.

On the other hand, Penn State's uniforms have never struck me as particularly attractive even in a spare, stripped-down way. It seems to me there could be a happy medium reached -- a sleek, subdued, basic uniform that doesn't look like a quart of unbrand milk.

Regardless, it's an important question that I think the new PSU athletics director and Franklin will eventually have to address. Tradition is nice. But in college football these days, it can get you trampled.

Here's the video description of last year's Shamrock Series uniform used against Arizona State in Dallas:

DAVID JONES: djones@pennlive.com.