The Houston Chronicle called it a divot-pocked mess. The A&M grounds crew kept busy trying to keep the surface playable. Rice coach David Bailiff respectfully expressed concern.

The grass surface at renovated Kyle Field was an embarrassment after heavy Friday rain prior to the Rice-A&M game Saturday. After playing defense initially, the Aggies will fork out $300,000 to replace the entire surface, The Eagle reported Thursday evening.

Texas A&M doesn’t host another home game until Oct. 11 against Ole Miss, as the Aggies travel to SMU, face Arkansas in Arlington, Texas, and travel to Mississippi State.

Carolina Green, a sod company in North Carolina, has shipped 24 refrigerated trucks toward College Station, The Eagle reported. A crew will install the field in a four-day period the week of Sept. 29. Its thicker base in theory will allow the grass to take hold much faster than the current surface, which ripped apart beneath players’ cleats after rain saturated it.

“After the game, the chancellor asked the staff and the Kyle Field redevelopment committee to look at options,” Steve Moore, A&M System vice chancellor of marketing and communications said, according to the report. “He wanted to know how to provide the best competitive playing surface we could going to forward and that’s what led to this process and the decisions that have been made.”

More from the report:

Aside from the thicker sod base, another reason Carolina Green was chosen is that the company has expertise in replacing fields in-season. Over the last five years, Carolina Green has done in-season replacements for the Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, University of Tennessee, University of Kentucky and University of South Carolina. Just last week the Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans played on surface that had been installed the week before by Carolina Green.

Moore said that University officials, as well as their Kyle Field redevelopment partners Populous and Manhattan-Vaughn construction did not originally anticipate any issues with the field heading into the season.