When most people think about a home football game, the first thing that comes to mind is tailgating and having a good time. But for those who are part of the Gameday Cleanup Crew, it also means hard work and months of planning to ensure healthy grass on the Quad.

Gameday preparation is a yearlong process that starts the Monday after the last home game of the season and continues on throughout the rest of the year. UA Grounds Director Bryant Anderson said it isn’t an easy process.

“[The Quad] gets torn up every year,” Anderson said. “It’s almost to the point that we need to replace the whole system.”

Anderson, who overseas all of the grounds on the University of Alabama campus, said though tailgating is a lot of fun, it does take a toll on the grass. Each year the University pays anywhere from $40,000 to $50,000 to rehabilitate the Quad.

“Before football season starts, the Quad is nice and pretty grass on both sides,” Anderson said. “There’s grass on the east and west sides, but if you go on the west side now [to see the damage] it’s because tailgating just chews it up. We know that [it happens] every year. We over-seed and hydro-seed it in November, so that way it will be nice and pretty again in the spring.”

From the trekking of fans to the tent spikes, by the end of the season the Quad isn’t in tip-top shape. Kim Byram, associate manager of the grounds, said the compaction of the soil is far worse than all other issues the crew faces each year.

“You would think it would be the trash, but it’s the number of people who come that compact the soil,” Byram said. “There are some decent holes to fill up and some areas around the sidewalk that need to be fixed. We also have to break up the soil. It’ll [take us] probably through graduation before we get it completed.”

The crew will start reseeding after the Chattanooga game on Monday, Nov. 25.

As the seasons change and tailgaters prepare for bonfires, another battle the grounds crew must face is the falling of the leaves.

“It’s a battle to get the leaves up and out of [the seeder’s] way so that they can [reseed],” Anderson said. “It’s probably a three week process to get through all the leaves.”

While the crew cleans up the leaves, they also accumulate a large number of beer tops from the ground. Though they are harmless to the soil, they can affect the lawn mowers or pedestrians on the Quad. Groundskeeper Jason Poole oversees a group of about 20 that handle this issue.

“From corner to corner there’s beer tops,” Poole said. “In the years past we’ve had to go in there and comb the Quad from east to west because there were so many that it had gotten really noticeable. It doesn’t affect the grass once [the grass] grows over it, it just looks terrible.”

Anderson said it is also a safety issue.

“It impacts our lawn equipment and the students. We don’t want to have anyone have an issue with the turf,” Anderson said.

As of now, the crew has not had any issues with the beer tops or other tailgating related incidents.

However, for the upcoming home game against LSU, the crew is pulling out all the stops to ensure a safer, cleaner Quad. They will place 1,800 garbage cans and 13-15 burn barrels starting on Friday.

Anderson said it will be a long week of planning and getting everything set up to ensure no damage occurs to the Quad. He also said the fans have been very respectful in the past, making the job worth the effort.

“For the most part, our fans and visitor fans have been really good,” Anderson said. “I just want to toot our horn a little bit more. [The groundskeepers] take great pride in trash collection.”

In October, the groundskeepers worked for 24 days straight during the three back-to-back home game weekends.

Of all the items left on the Quad after home games, the most notable are not money or food. Anderson said tents, living room furniture and televisions are left behind and never claimed. The University holds on to the unclaimed items for a week before donating them to the University Salvation.

The University has been working with the groundskeepers to come up with solutions to the various cleanup issues.

“You can’t put that many people in one area and expect it to be spotless,” Poole said. “We’re realists. They do well for the most part until the beers get to flowing. There is another side of [tailgating]. And when you work on this side of it you get to experience the Gameday experience.”