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Aftermath Of U2 Concert

The U2 360 tour's stop in East Lansing has come and gone and the massive set that took 6 days to build will take 2 days to tear down. The Michigan State University facilities director prepares to get Spartan Stadium ready for football. MSU's Deputy Director of Athletics Greg Ianni says the crews that transformed the field put on their own show this week.

Greg Ianni, MSU Deputy Director of Athletics: "They're real professionals, it was like clockwork, it was an orchestra if you will, playing their symphony of structure."

And once crews remove the metal flooring and 400 ton stage known as "the claw," Ianni says priority number one will be removing the damaged sod.

Greg Ianni: "The way I equate it, it's like when you set your garbage can on your lawn for two or three days and forget its there, and then pull it back and you got a brown spot. We're gonna have about 140 yards of brown spot."

Crews hope to complete the tear down and cleanup by Tuesday afternoon, then Michigan State's facilities teams will have ten weeks to get the field ready for the football home opener against Youngstown State on Friday, September 2nd.

Greg Ianni: "We took out one of the best fields in the country, and now we're gonna put a new surface in. It will take a couple of years, but we'll have the best field in the country."

And Ianni says, barring a drought or flood-like rains in August, he's confident the field that played host to the most successful tour ever will be ready for the defending Big Ten champs. Ianna says the U2 concert will go down as one of the most prominent events at Spartan Stadium, along with the Rolling Stones and President Clinton visits in the mid-'90s.