Munster football coach Leroy Marsh told The Times in 2004 two sentences that made the veteran coach look like a prophet. When asked about Portage getting an artificial surface for the Indians' football field, the 29-year Mustangs coach said the following:

"It's coming; there's no doubt it's definitely coming. I can see this being a part of every new building project, all the way down to single-A."

The summer of 2008 is evidence of the changing landscape of high school football in the Region, and the state of Indiana. Five area schools -- Crown Point, Hobart, Merrillville, Morton and Valparaiso -- are installing turf right now. There are at least 13 schools in Indiana that will take a step toward the future.

Center Grove was the first school in the state to go artificial in 2003. From 2003-07, 16 schools installed the surface at costs ranging from $500,000 to $800,000. But when the basic numbers are crunched, what looks like too much money for football is really cost effective.

Valparaiso coach Mark Hoffman said to maintain a grass field costs between $40,000 and $80,000 dollars when you consider field maintenance, painting and other costs. Then, every five years you have to add another $100,000 in basic upkeep.

"That's a million dollars in 10 years, and we're building ours for $600,000," Hoffman said. "And it will have many more people using it and if it rains, you can still use it. It is the future of high school football."

Also, Hoffman said the cost of maintenance at Viking Field will be less than $1,000 a year, a drastic reduction.

All three Duneland Athletic Conference schools -- C.P., Merrillville and Valparaiso -- are getting FieldTurf, the leading synthetic turf company in the United States with more than 2,000 high schools with its surface. Ten NFL stadiums use FieldTurf and many more college stadiums do as well.

There are an estimated 3,500 turf fields in the United States, but like Northwest Indiana, that number is increasing.

Chesterton, Michigan City and Lake Central will likely have plastic grass on their fields for the 2009 season, leaving LaPorte as the only DAC school with God's green grass.

Matt Ruess, Crown Point's chief financial officer, said the extreme growth at his school was the cause to go to FieldTurf. With new construction near the football stadium, the Bulldogs were losing a practice field. C.P.'s cost of $775,000 for the turf was money well spent, Ruess said.

And it didn't deal with just the football team.

"We needed a more efficient use of our space," Ruess said. "Last year the football team used the field 10 times. The number of hours it was used and the cost was outrageous. Now we can use it 100 days a year for our PE classes. Instead of painting our parking lot, our band can practice on it. We can now host band contests.

"This wasn't about football, it was about space and we now have more educational areas for everyone."

Janis Qualizza and Zac Wells, Merrillville's athletic director and football coach, respectively, had been looking at synthetic turf for the past several years. With Demaree Stadium more than 15 years old, a large chunk of cash was going to be spent to upgrade the natural grass and other areas in the complex.

"We could've spent all that money and one rainy Friday would've ruined it all," Wells said.

But another reason to go to the state-of-the-art ground covering was simple: safety. Unlike the old AstroTurf artificial surface developed in the 1960s, which was as hard as concrete, the newer surfaces have combined the two ideas. To varying degrees, most of the new synthetic fields have a similar makeup.

It is a blend of polyethylene and polypropylene, silica sand and rubber granules that looks like grass and is safer for the players. After the foundation of rock and granite is put down, the carpet is placed. The blades of grass and rubber infill system keeps players' legs, knees and ankles much safer than regular grass.

Head injuries have also been reduced because of the softer landing surface.

Two years after Center Grove installed FieldTurf, football coach Eric Moore told The Times that the injuries on his team went down 60 percent.

John Doherty, athletic trainer at Munster and The Times' sports medicine columnist, said he believes the studies that were done at Nebraska concerning the reduction of injuries when football is played on a synthetic surface. And that is magnified when people think about what local fields are like in October and November, when heavy rain and cold temperatures often destroy the playing surfaces.

"Injuries do go down," Doherty said. "Players are landing on a softer surface. Their feet don't get caught in unexpected ruts or bumps. The play is much more consistent when the weather turns bad."

Last year in Week 2, when heavy rains flooded the Region, Portage played Highland on Friday night, while everyone else either cancelled or moved their game to Saturday.

"The proof is fairly conclusive," Doherty said. "Injuries are lower."