It took nine months, but Arrowhead Pride commenter UCrawford might have been proven correct. Let me back up nine months and explain.
If you'll recall, Arrowhead Stadium's natural grass was a mud pit in December. The middle of the field was almost completely black and players had trouble standing up straight let alone play a football game. Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel and Oklahoma's Bob Stoops, who both played a December game in Arrowhead, complained about the conditions of the field to Kevin Kietzmann on 810 WHB following the game. Between a couple of college games (MU/KU and the Big 12 Championship game) and the Chiefs home games, it wasn't much of a field.
On December 10th, this prompted UCrawford to speculate that the reason behind the Chiefs resistance to moving to artificial turf, which would be a no-brainer if you've ever experiened a Kansas City winter, was due to soccer.
Yes, soccer. Here's UCrawford's argument:
Arrowhead Stadium is also the occasional home field of Major League Soccer's Kansas City Wizards. Clark Hunt is heavily involved in the management of the MLS. And the MLS is trying to gain respectability with the international community for the quality of their play. In order for the MLS to demonstrate that they're able to perform at a comparable level with good clubs from other countries they need to perform in similar conditions and all of those other countries' best clubs play on grass, not artificial turf. So, if the Kansas City Wizards want to show they're big time and not just a soccer backwater, they've got to be able to use Arrowhead Stadium every once in awhile for big matches...and that requires that Arrowhead Stadium have a grass surface (otherwise it won't be considered "real" soccer by aficionados). And since Clark Hunt's interests are tied to the success of the MLS, I suspect that this is part of the reason that high-grade artificial turf was not a consideration in the renovation of Arrowhead.
UC then goes on to mention that if the Chiefs were ever wanting to host a World Cup match, grass would be a necessity. Now comes this news from the Chiefs:
The USA Bid Committee Inc announced Thursday that Kansas City and Arrowhead Stadium are one of 27 cities on the short list to be included in the United States’ bid to host the FIFA World Cup™ in either 2018 or 2022.
Interesting.
I'm not sure this matters to the football operations a whole lot, but there's something to be said for building your team for the environment in which you operate. For example, there might be snow on the ground for half of the season in Buffalo, so it wouldn't serve their best interest to structure a team that's built to pass the ball. The same can be said for passing the ball and the high winds in New York.
The Chiefs are in a similar boat. If they want to become a team that's built to pass (like the rest of the NFL is beginning to lean), then why wouldn't they put out a field that would serve that interest?