The Board of Regents should not have put themselves in a questionable position with bidding for new turf on NIU’s and Illinois State University’s football fields.

The lowest of four companies submitting bids lodged a formal complaint against the board this week. Safe Play charges the board’s selection process unfairly eliminated them from consideration and the bids were designed for a product only offered through the contract recipient, Super Turf.

Safe Play’s bid reportedly was $400,000 less than the $1 million necessary to do both fields.

There will be harsh feelings any time a company looses a bid involving this much money. However, whether or not their complaint is legitimate, the board should have seen they might run into problems and should have acted to prevent exactly this type of event.

The board should have told Safe Play why they did not meet the specifications and why those specifications were set.

This needed to be done because the board’s actions appear questionable when looking at Safe Play’s prior jobs. The general public does not know much about turf, but when they see that Safe Play installed turf for the Super Bowl Champion San Francisco 49ers and the Ohio State Buckeyes, people will assume if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for NIU.

The complaint especially hurts in a time when cries for more education dollars are running rampant. Hopefully, the board can come out of the complaint with its credibility.