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Todd Jeansonne knows more than anyone else about the green, green grass of LSU’s home field.

He can tell you, for example, that the grass is a superior type of Bermuda called Mississippi Choice, used by a number of top programs and developed at—of all places—Mississippi State University.

How thirsty does the turf get in summer? Enough that the grounds crew waters it four times a week, and it drinks up about 100,000 gallons each time.

Jeansonne will tell you the field is no more immune to crabgrass than your lawn. He and his crew usually pull the weeds by hand. “We only use one or two herbicides, and very carefully,” he says.

And by June he knows what kind of condition it’ll be in for the fall season, and “how much harder I need to push it to get ready for August, or how much I can back off.”

With 92,000-plus folks scrutinizing it weekly, not to mention countless viewers all over America with high-def TVs, he’d better stay sharp.

“My job is every competition or practice field in the athletic department, along with maintaining the facility itself,” Jeansonne said. “Not just the grass.”

But it’s the Tiger Stadium turf that keeps him up nights, especially for really big games, and especially when it rains. Like it did last season before LSU played Fresno State. “I was scared to death,” Jeansonne says. “I really was.”

As always, though, the field held, even though they played a mere 25 minutes after it flooded.

And that’s why no one is allowed on the field in between games.

Other LSU athletes don’t get to train on it. The marching band must practice elsewhere. The football team only enjoys rare practices in Tiger Stadium. Seven home games, a handful of practices, a spring game. That’s it.

“You do what you can to make it as perfect as it can be,” Jeansonne says. “Other athletes, we won’t even let them run 110s down the sideline. We only let football in there.”

Think of him like a ref—if he’s doing his job well, no one even notices him. “I like being behind the scenes, making it happen,” he says. “I’ve got a great staff, and they make it possible.”

Jeansonne started college studying pharmacy, but he switched to turf management on a classmate’s suggestion. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1999 in plant and soil science with a concentration in turf management. He joined the grounds crew in the fall of 2000 and assumed full responsibility and control over Tiger Stadium’s turf three years ago.

Since then the field has endured two hurricanes, including a real dousing from Rita. And it took a battering in 2005 when the Saints played a few of their home games there.

Since then, the grass was replaced for the first time in 14 years, and the underground drainage capacity was doubled.

So how does the field look for this season?

“It’s ready,” Jeansonne says with a knowing smile.