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Coachella Valley-based company West Coast Turf completes 11th Super Bowl

KESQ

COACHELLA VALLEY, Calif. (KESQ) -- Millions of people watched Super Bowl 60 between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, with many having a rooting interest in one of the teams.

Here locally, there's a company that wasn't cheering for either team, but rather the grass. 

"This is the company's 11th Super Bowl," said Greg Dunn.

"It is an absolute honor to be selected by the NFL to be growing their turf for these games that we've we've done 11 of," said Dunn.

West Coast Turf is headquartered right here in the Coachella Valley, with sod farms all over California, Arizona and Nevada. They've done Rose Bowls, Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium and many others, but the Super Bowl is the biggest of them all.

"It's kind of amazing to think that it is the biggest sporting event, and at the same time, with all these other venues that I've been involved in and the company has been involved in, this is the granddaddy, this is the big one, and this is where the expectations are so high. It's a field going to be viewed by more people than any other sporting event. It's exciting. It can be stressful because the demands that that field is under to be exceptional and perfect," said Dunn.

This year's Super Bowl field came from a farm in Livingston, about 110 miles east of Levi's Stadium.

There's a lot that goes into producing premium grass. In fact, it's a scientific process.

"It's not always as simple as the grass is at the age, everything looks good in the field, you load it up, you ship it, and you install it. There's a lot of nuances to all those steps. This year's install we did the first week of January after the Niners lost the Seahawks," said Dunn.

So what kind of grass is it? And does it change based on location of the game?

"It's always a hybrid Bermuda grass over seeded with perennial ryegrass. So that's been the formula that the Super Bowl is used and all the events that West Coast serves provided it. If I'm not mistaken, all the Super Bowls that have played on natural turf when they've been replacing the field have been played on, at least in the last current decades, 20 or 30 years," said Dunn.

Are you the sod father?

"I don't know who the sod father is. I think there's a few sod fathers out there. I'm the grass guy," said Dunn.

Congratulations to West Coast Turf on yet another successful Super Bowl. Pretty cool that this local company is on the big stage.

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Blake Arthur

Sports Director Blake Arthur joined the KESQ/CBS Local 2 team in August of 2015. Learn more about Blake here.

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