Levi's Stadium has hosted two sporting events in its young life—one of them a football game—and drastic changes are already needed. After a practice in which multiple players went down and Jim Harbaugh pulled his team off the field, the 49ers decided to remove and replace a massive strip of sod.
It's not the entire field that's being replaced—just a roughly 100 yard by 25 yard strip running down the center of the field. Here's some KNTV choppercam footage of today's resurfacing. Fast-foward to about 45 seconds to see how crappy it looked after yesterday's Niners practice.
Wednesday's practice lasted less than an hour, being ended early by Harbaugh after both Stevie Johnson and Bruce Ellington lost their footing and came up limping.
Last night, the 49ers issued a statement:
"The 49ers organization would like to apologize to any fans who were inconvenienced by today's practice ending early. We have determined the appropriate measures necessary to have the field ready for Sunday and look forward to hosting the San Diego Chargers."
The appropriate measure being, apparently, to put down some grass that won't maim the football men. I support this plan.