The makeover is complete.

Earlier this week, ground maintenance crew members rolled out a new paint machine, filled it with 250 gallons of white paint. Line by line, they transformed the 78,563 square feet of Kentucky Bluegrass in Spartan Stadium into a football field.

That field is now planted, primped, painted and ready to make its debut as MSU takes on Eastern Michigan in the season opener at 3:30 p.m. Saturday.

For players, the switch from artificial to natural grass means a softer landing and running surface. For football recruits, it may mean a more lucrative package. For MSU, it means years of raising money, planning and renovating are over.

And alumni and fans are hoping it means a return to the old days of Spartan football glory.

MSU last housed a natural grass field in 1968. While playing on artificial turf for the last 33 years, the team was an outright Big Ten champion once and co-champion twice. In the 45 years with grass, the Spartans won or shared six national championships and three outright conference titles.

Players, coaches and conference strength obviously had more to do with the wins and losses than playing surface, but the step back to natural leads some alumni to think it might mean a return to old tradition.

“The four years I was there, we lost two games,” said Dick White, who attended MSU from 1950-54. “Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with it, but then it was grass and from a historical standpoint, history was all done on grass.”

The switch to artificial turf in 1969 followed a trend as universities across the nation that searched for ways to trim operation costs. At the time, the technology needed to maintain natural grass was too expensive and going fake became the fad.

Things have changed.

The operating cost for the new field, which came with a $2 million price tag, is about $200,000 per year. The artificial field’s maintenance costs were lower, at only $15,000 annually. But the field needed to be replaced and reasons to switch to real made the price worth it, associate athletic director John Lewandowski said.

As more schools install real grass - only Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota still play on artificial turf in the Big Ten - the benefits of switching come from the positive publicity, the interest from recruits and the somewhat added safety, Lewandowski said.

“There are a lot of studies that show there is no clinical evidence that say playing on artificial turf is a greater risk,” Lewandowski said. “But the perception is that the injuries are different. The abrasions you get from the artificial turf, the scrapes and cuts and bruise, the daily wear and tear, you don’t have that on real grass.”

So grass is back in style.

MSU built its grass field using 4,800 removable modules - a system it helped implement for the 1994 World Cup. The modules are filled with a gravel and root zone made of 90 percent sand and 10 percent silt and clay. Once fertilized, nine strands of Kentucky Bluegrass were planted.

The modules are interlinking and can be removed to use the stadium for other purposes. Crews also prepared 1,200 extra modules to replace damaged ones.

The players have had a few intersquad scrimmages on the new field, and no one seems to have anything bad to say about it.

“That’s how the sport is suppose to be played,” freshman tailback David Richard said. “That’s the roots and we’re bringing it back.”

Although Richard is new to MSU, he said the grass roots aren’t the only roots that may be returning to the football program. He said he already has learned about MSU’s football tradition in the first few weeks of practice.

Senior cornerback Cedric Henry said head coach Bobby Williams brought Spartan greats such as Charles “Bubba” Smith, a member of the 1966 national championship team and MSU’s only No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick to summer camps to share stories of the championship season.

“You have to know where you come from to know where you’re going,” Henry said. “We heard all about how the Spartans became warriors and the football tradition this school has. It’s in our heads.”

And under their feet.

Richard said he can feel the difference when he runs - it’s in the knees. Grass just makes for a softer touch, he said.

And while some players and fans believe when the grass is trimmed down to the perfect length that it creates a faster running surface, Lewandowski said there is not much truth to that belief.

But statistics and studies aside, the grass has people excited.

East Lansing resident Jill Witzenberg can vaguely remember watching games played on the old grass field in Spartan Stadium as a child in the ’50s. She graduated from MSU in the mid-’60s and now is a season ticket holder and away-game traveler.

She’s sure there is a connection between natural grass and the Spartan football tradition.

“I think it’s a combination of things,” she said. “But there’s something about playing on regular grass that is true to football. To me, playing on artificial is like playing inside a dome, and you lose some of the atmosphere.

“And I think we’re just going back to the tradition. We’ve got a lot of great talent and great coaching, as we did back then. I just hope grass can be a compliment to the entire program.”

For theater senior Matt Alfano, the new grass inspired him to get tailgating T-shirts printed with the slogan “Love the grass” on the front.

“A couple of times I was passing by the football stadium and I could peak in the gate where the band enters the field,” he said. “To see the sprinklers going and the sun touching down on the grass, it was beautiful.

“Tradition is a huge thing at MSU, and if I can get the underclassmen to realize that, that’s beautiful, too.”

For Eric Adkins, the athletic turf manager who was hired in January 2002 to head the grass maintenance crew, the switch means nonstop work and a lot of praying for pleasant skies.

“No matter what, it won’t turn into a mud-pit, but I’m definitely praying for no rain on Saturday,” Adkins said.

Krista Latham can be reached lathamkr@msu.edu.