Pinstripe Bowl turns into a Winter Wonderland

It's definitely football weather in the Bronx. West Virginia, Syracuse kick off the New Era @pinstripebowl at 3:15 ET: twitter.com/Yankees/status…
— New York Yankees (@Yankees) December 29, 2012

Almost 40,000 fans showed up yesterday at Yankee Stadium to watch Syracuse defeat West Virginia, 38-14, in the third annual New Era Pinstripe Bowl and — while Orange and Mountaineers fans were bursting with school pride before the game — stadium groundskeepers were busting a sweat to prepare the field.

When you think of the House That Jeter Built, you usually envision sultry summer nights with old No. 2 at shortstop — not a snowman filling in the gap between second and third.  Although there have been some flurries on more than a few of the early April Opening days.

The New York Yankees must have been pretty impressed with the job the crew did.  The team's  official Twitter feed provided this photo of the field one hour before the game Saturday afternoon and showed the amazing job the grounds crew did before the opening kickoff.

The Pinstripe Bowl is the only college bowl game played in a presumably cold weather site but snow is usually a rarity around the holidays in New York City.

If Saturday's game looked like a throwback to the Army and New York Giants home games, which ripped up the old Yankee Stadium turf, it wasn't a problem yesterday.

One guy who would agree that the groundskeepers did a good job was Syracuse running back Prince-Tyson Gulley who had 264 total yards in his team's victory.

The grounds crew at MetLife Stadium might want to take notes from Saturday's game in preperation for when Super Bowl XLVIII comes to New Jersey on Feb. 2, 2014.

There's a good chance the Meadowlands could see some of the white stuff that day.