We already know that natural-grass is more expensive to maintain. So even if artificial-turf has required extensive maintenance, that requirement would continue, in a more costly way, with a natural-turf field.

This gives us something negative about artificial-turf fields compared to natural-grass fields. This helps explain why the budget committee might have recommended switching to natural-grass.

This doesn’t differentiate between artificial-turf and natural-grass, and it doesn’t tell me something worse about artificial-turf compared to natural-grass.

We already know that natural-grass fields are more expensive to maintain. This just gives us additional details on the extra maintenance required for natural-grass.

It’s not clear that athlete preference is something that would motivate a recommendation of the budget committee. But even if it is, we have no reason to think athletes at the university have spent most of their time on natural-grass fields.