What the map shows
The home stadium of each of the – NCAA Division I FBS programs for the – season, placed at the center of the playing field and classified by playing surface: Grass, Hybrid (natural grass reinforced with synthetic fibers) or Artificial turf. Counts: .
Data
- Stadium roster, conference, city/state, capacity: Wikipedia, List of NCAA Division I FBS football stadiums, revision 1376098295, cross-checked against each stadium article. Text is CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Surfaces: the Wikipedia list and stadium articles as a baseline, then school athletics sites, facility pages and 2025 media guides, university news, local news, trade press and manufacturer/installer releases. Each stadium card lists the links used. Manufacturer releases are used only for product and year facts, never for claims about performance.
- Field locations: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (pitch and stadium geometries via the Overpass API). Seed coordinates from Wikidata (CC0).
- Hardiness zones: USDA Agricultural Research Service & Oregon State University PRISM Group, 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map gridded data. Values are sampled from the grid at each field point: derived data, not the official USDA map (official map). The zone is climate context, not a claim that grass is or isn’t feasible at a stadium.
- Basemaps: Esri (keyless ArcGIS Online tile services), credited on the map with each service’s own copyright text. Map rendering: MapLibre GL JS.
- Research: the – studies and reports in the Evidence and Injury research panels, each linked to its DOI or publisher page.
Caveats (read before relying on a row)
- – of – surface rows rely on Wikipedia only (list and stadium article agreeing), and – more on pre-2025 sources. The class (grass vs turf) is very stable; the product and install year are less reliable because carpets are replaced every ~8–12 years and articles lag.
- The Wikipedia list was stale for several programs (Arkansas, North Carolina, SMU, Nebraska, North Dakota State, Colorado State, Troy, Missouri product, Colorado infobox); these are corrected here with sources.
- Uncertain rows (–), outlined on the map; each card shows the detail:
- A blank install year means unknown, not “original”. Capacities are the Wikipedia list figures; schools revise them often. The dataset describes home stadiums; a few programs play select games elsewhere.
- This map holds no injury records and no temperature measurements for any stadium. The research panels summarize league-wide and laboratory/field studies only.
Download
stadiums.csv · stadiums.geojson · summary.json. Please credit Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) when reusing.
Compiled by Apogee Geospatial, Sept 2026 · data checked – · build fbs-stadium-surfaces-20260926b · Questions or a correction?
