Times at Baylor University have been plenty tough, what with a player’s murder and a coach’s cover-up. Now, to a lesser extent, you can add to those woes the BU athletic department’s water bill.

In the dry, scorching summer heat of the plains, football stadiums with grass fields require thousands of gallons of water to prevent them from turning to … well, just look at your parched front yard.

Half of the football stadiums in the Big 12 Conference have natural grass fields and four of them, including Baylor, are in the more torrid South Division. The others are Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. But those three rich public schools have the resources to be able to afford massive hydrology.

In the North Division, only Colorado and Iowa State have natural grass surfaces, and you have to wonder why those two harsh-weather schools are willing to pay through the nose for seeding, fertilization, maintenance and, of course, watering, when contemporary artificial surfaces are so technologically advanced.

In this day and age, artificial turf is so much like real grass that the average fan hardly can tell the difference.

A survey published in the NCAA News last week shows the trend toward natural grass that swept the nation’s colleges in the ’90s, mainly because artificial turf was believed to cause more injuries than grass, has reversed. Nearly 40 percent of Division I-A members — the highest percentage since 1997 — now play on grass a cow won’t eat.

Did you know Kansas University was on the cutting edge of the shift to artificial turf?

Back in the late 1960s, KU athletic director Wade Stinson was a member of the NCAA Council — in those days ADs ran the NCAA, not school presidents — and Stinson had seen too many KU football games played in slop and mire at Memorial Stadium.

In those days, too, you have to remember NCAA athletic directors were paranoid about the growing popularity of the National Football League. The pros offered a better product and, in many cases, better playing conditions, and the ADs felt the pros were eroding their ticket bases.

NFL teams, with their fat TV contracts, could afford artificial turf. The colleges, with limited TV income, could not. How could the colleges come up with the money? The answer: Add an 11th football game.

It’s no coincidence Kansas played its first 11-game schedule and its first home game on artificial turf in 1970. Kansas plunked down nearly $200,000 — a lot of money 33 years ago — to the 3M Company to install a Tartan Turf football field in the summer of ’70.

Eight years later, the Tartan Turf fibers had wore down and the rubber mat had hardened, making the field dangerous for players. In 1978 Kansas purchased an AstroTurf field which lasted until 1990, when it was replaced by another AstroTurf carpet.

Finally, in 2000, Kansas installed AstroPlay, a product that is as close to real grass as technology allows. This season will be the Jayhawks’ fourth on that AstroPlay field.

“For the most part, it’s been maintenance-free,” said Brad Nachtigal, the athletic department’s director of facilities. “On two or three occasions, they’ve had to come in and repair small areas because of expansion and contraction of the pad. In fact, they just finished some work a couple of weeks ago.”

Kansas’ football field has been grass-less since 1969. Meanwhile, Missouri is one of the schools that has shifted from turf to grass back to turf again. MU’s Faurot Field will have FieldTurf, the same brand Kansas State and Nebraska have, for the first time this fall.

FieldTurf and AstroPlay, in case you’re wondering, are very similar.

“I think if you tested them, you’d find FieldTurf is a little harder and a little quicker,” Nachtigal said, “and that the FieldTurf grass breaks up easier than AstroPlay.”

No doubt someone is conducting a survey right now to determine if FieldTurf or AstroPlay cause more injuries than natural grass. If I had to guess, I’d say it would be a wash.

I base that in part on the fact two of KU’s worst knee injuries in 2002 happened on grass playing fields — linebacker Banks Floodman at Iowa State and quarterback Bill Whittemore at Missouri.

Sports trends come and go, and it’s always possible Kansas will go back to grass again someday, but it would seem that for the last three decades KU has been wise to stick with grass that won’t turn brown.