** Gators Territory followed the Florida turf staff for an entire week leading up to the Gators' matchup against Vanderbilt. Take a look at the video above for the full behind the scenes feature. Transcription and a few extra quotes are also available below.**

GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- The Swamp can be an intimidating place to play.

While Dan Mullen and company prepare the Gators for game day, Jason Smith makes sure the Swamp looks the part - turning a simple grass field to the Gators battle ground.

"We start getting the field ready for game day as soon as the previous game is over with," Smith, Florida's Director of Sports Turf, told Gators Territory. "Filling divots, mowing, getting the field ready, because we want to get the grass ready for the week after."

Generally, Smith and his crew are not working with a blank canvas every week - they are simply painting over existing lines and logos. However, in the week leading up to the Vanderbilt game, the Gators had not played a game in the Swamp in over a month.

They needed to start from scratch.

"The first thing on Monday, we have to remark and remeasure everything," explained Smith. "Tuesday is then, going off of those marks, we are laying out the logos. Wednesday we start painting some of the white in the logo, and Thursday it's basically our first big paint day."

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According to Smith, they typically use 275 gallons each time they prepare for a home game.

"All of our lines, our hashes, the rest of our logo, even the blue, we are doing the blue on Thursdays, and the Friday is basically doing the last of the coats, our last of our orange. Just putting the finishing touches on it."

Florida not only paints the end zones completely, most weeks in orange, but they also paint a blue border around it.

"We will go east, west on the first day and then we go north, south with it," he explained. "It will basically checkerboard the pattern and take the majority of the green out of it - so you won't see any green. It makes it look better on TV. It is just very consistent. It will look like a carpet out here basically."

With so many coats of paint on the field, it is no wonder that Florida could not change the Gator head to the 'F' for the Homecoming game against Auburn - despite the pleas on social media.

"Everybody wants the F on homecoming. It is not something you change over immediately," explained Smith. "This past year we had four home games in five weeks, painting the Gator head four times, double coating the orange and white every time, so thats eight coats of paint within five weeks."

Even when the crew had not painted the field for a month, the field still showed the remnants of the Gator head - five weeks later.

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"It's not just the color of it, it's also the texture of the leaf, texture of the grass," stated Smith. "That many games in the grass is already thinning . It is starting to be mat of paint and not straight leaf blades - so putting green over it isn't going to work."

Smith and his team's schedule is planned meticulously, since his crew is not only responsible for Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, they are responsible for every athletic field and every practice field on campus.

Things don't always go to plan, however. Smith and his team have to match up against an unpredictable opponent, mother nature.

"Rain is always the most challenging thing," said Smith.

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It's a good thing that turf staff can handle the blitz.

In the week leading up to Vandy game, Smith and his team were against the clock as rain was expected to move in Friday morning - which means they had to move up the timeline by a day.

With a noon kickoff, they did not have the opportunity to paint on Saturday morning, so they needed to hustle to get things done, and they could not wait long in between coats.

"Makes it hard when you're dealing with three different colors," said Smith.

Challenge accepted.

Those long hours were worth it on game day. In the end their relentless effort paid off.

"One of the reasons we do this job is when you can sit back and look at the final product," said Smith. "We get as excited as the fans do. We feed off the fans. When you put into work, it's definitely worth it to look back at it."

ADDITIONAL VIDEO:

**Why can't Florida switch from the Gator head to the F at midfield? Although it didn't fit into our behind the scenes feature, we wanted to answer the question most fans have for the turf staff.**