Notre Dame plans upgrades to football stadium

NOTRE DAME, Ind. -- The University of Notre Dame announced plans to make some upgrades to Notre Dame Stadium. The school's athletic director said the first priority is to get the field fixed.



"Beginning of next season we will either be playing on a new grass field or a new synthetic field so we'll pull this trigger in January or February," said Jack Swarbrick, Athletic Director at Notre Dame.



The announcement came Friday morning, even though the final decision on the field renovation is still up in the air.



"If we are to stay with natural grass we are going to go way down and rebuild the field. We're not going to take the top six inches off, we're going to go all the way down to the base and the drainage and do a complete rebuild of the field," said Swarbrick.



Swarbrick says they just can't live with the muddy conditions any more and he's ready to get the problem taken care of for good.



"One reason it has been so bad is we just take off one layer of sod and put down another layer of sod. We haven't addressed the real issues we have to address," said Swarbrick.



They already decided they won't use a hybrid system that uses natural grass and a field heating system, which is expensive. The school is trying to keep the cost down.



"I don't think that would work for Notre Dame. It's what the Packers have," said Swarbrick. "With grass it's probably going to be a comparable investment to what we talked about if we went to a synthetic surface."



Swarbrick says it will take several years to finish the entire project and the biggest obstacle will be finding the time between football games to do the work.