Is Kyle Field college football’s loudest stadium? Notre Dame has steep challenge at Texas A&M (2024)

Tommy Rees had played football in an acoustical blast furnace before, including two night games at Michigan Stadium when the former Notre Dame quarterback could barely hear himself audible. He’d coached in places where the noise penetrated the booth and tormented the offense he was trying to help down on the field. So when Rees set up shop at Kyle Field last October as Alabama’s offensive coordinator facing Texas A&M, he had an idea of what was coming.

“It’s as loud of a place as I’ve ever been,” Rees said. “To the point the press box is shaking, it’s so loud. And we played in the daytime.”

Alabama committed eight false starts in the game, spread among tackles, guards, tight ends and — on the Tide’s first snap of the game — a receiver. The center was flagged for an illegal snap, which felt harsh in a sound cauldron where simply getting a play off felt like an achievement.

Alabama, ranked 11th at the time, won the game, probably lost some of its hearing and escaped Kyle Field, a place where Texas A&M has won its last three meetings against AP top-10 teams. Now comes No. 7 Notre Dame in prime time (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC), with its transfer quarterback and an offensive line with six career starts spread among the five projected starters. The Irish will go with a freshman left tackle, redshirt freshman left guard and junior right tackle. They’ve combined for 67 career snaps.

A young line and new quarterback would create a vexing riddle for any team to solve under normal circ*mstances. And Kyle Field won’t be normal, even by Kyle Field standards. “College GameDay” will be in town. New coach Mike Elko will make his debut. It all means Notre Dame will be asked to play through the physics of sound, to block out the capacity crowd of 102,733, with every seat, every overhang, every angle designed to amplify the noise. Its reputation landed it No. 1 on the list of “toughest places to play” in EA Sports College Football 25 when the game launched in July.

“However loud it was for Alabama last year, my guess would be it’s going to be even louder,” said Rees, now an assistant coach with the Cleveland Browns. “I just don’t see how it’s not the loudest game these guys have ever played in.”

The SEC is known for its football cathedrals.

From Bryant-Denny Stadium at Alabama and Jordan-Hare Stadium at Auburn to The Swamp at Florida and Tiger Stadium at LSU, there’s no shortage of legendary atmospheres in the conference.

Kyle Field, like Texas A&M, is unique. And it’s steeped in tradition.

“Of all the projects I’ve done in 35 years, I think they have more traditions than anyplace else,” said Craig Kaufman, senior principal/architect at Populous.

Kaufman was the project manager on the renovation of Kyle Field, which was completed in 2015. The renovation increased seating by 20,000 and closed off the previously open south end zone. Increasing the sound level and intimidation factor was baked into the stadium’s design.

The field was dropped roughly eight feet, which allowed for more seats between the old field wall and the playing surface, bringing fans closer to the action.

The previous version of Kyle Field was three-sided after a north end zone expansion was added in 1999 to complement the east and west stands. Erecting three decks in the south end zone — where sound previously escaped — closed off the stadium in 2015.

“It’s an intimidating stadium by the size when you’re on the field,” said former Florida and Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen. “It’s all sides. There’s no open area. You’re kind of boxed in.”

Buffalo coach Pete Lembo, whose 2015 Ball State team was the first visitor to the renovated Kyle Field, noted the more vertical design also added to the formidable feel.

Above the east and west side upper decks, canopies were added. Those had two purposes, Kaufman said: to provide shade to fans seated in those areas and to amplify the noise.

“As you’re yelling, (it’s) like throwing a ping pong ball,” Kaufman said. “It bounces off of the shade canopy and comes back down onto the field.”

For all the new amenities and look that accompanied the renovation, there are still holdover elements from the old Kyle Field, namely, the second and third decks of the east side stands, where more than 30,000 students stand and yell for four quarters.

Kaufman said the seating in those upper two decks went untouched. In other parts of the stadium, the tread depth between rows was increased to make it more comfortable for fans to move around, especially when fans are sitting and others wish to pass in front of them.

“But as you know, the (A&M) students don’t sit down,” Kaufman said. “They stand on the benches.”

So a narrower tread depth between rows was preferred in some areas, which also let A&M maintain the same crowd capacity in those sections, where as many as 40,000 students are crammed in.

Keeping that design preserved the “naturally steeper” feel, allowing students to stay closer to the field and for their yells to rain down on the players below. The east side stands happen to be behind the visitor’s sideline.

Peter Kerrian sees sound as much as he hears it.

A 2013 Notre Dame graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering, Kerrian also played saxophone in the marching band, which gave him a front-row seat to the BCS National Championship Game against Alabama and Notre Dame’s first night game at Michigan, the one that still sticks with Rees. Kerrian also earned a master’s degree in acoustics and a PhD from Penn State, giving him access to another sound cauldron. Now he’s a consultant for ATA Engineering, advising defense contractors and NASA on the impact of vibration and frequencies on flight.

“It’s important for us to understand vibrations so we can design around those frequencies to make sure aircraft are safe to fly and payloads will make it to orbit,” Kerrian said. “It’s kind of a pretty interesting field.”

Kerrian, who lives in San Diego, is a season ticket holder at Notre Dame with seats on the eighth floor of Corbett Hall. He can’t remember Notre Dame Stadium getting louder than last year’s Ohio State game. He also wears earplugs for protection because exposure above 100 decibels can lead to hearing loss.

Kyle Field will be loud. It will blow past the 100-decibel barrier.

As for what that means on the field, one of Kerrian’s advisers at Penn State authored a research paper to answer that question. His team measured sound intensity at Beaver Stadium and Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium to understand the impact of stadium design and attendance on noise, then analyzed how the noise levels would affect communication on the field.

The study found that when the home team had the ball, the crowd noise levels hit 75-85 decibels, which allows verbal communication of about 8 feet from the speaker. Put into terms of an offensive line, the tackles could hear the quarterback’s voice. But when noise levels were measured when the visiting team had the ball, decibel levels rose to 95-100, which meant the quarterback’s voice carried only 1 foot before being drowned out by the surrounding cacophony.

In football terms, the quarterback might as well be mute at the line of scrimmage.

“You obviously have a large contribution from the stadium and sound systems have gotten louder over the years,” Kerrian said. “But there’s phenomenons when all the crowd gets going, people screaming at similar tones and pitches can actually amplify together. Two people yelling at the same volume can amplify together. Think about, like noise-canceling headphones but in reverse.”

Basically, if a crowd all yells in unison at similar pitches, it can take the decibels already being created and amplify them. The technical term is constructive interference. Texas A&M might just call it Yell Practice.

That study also noted the similar decibel levels between Beaver Stadium and Lane Stadium. The former had 44,000 more fans in attendance when the study was conducted. But the total decibel levels were similar between venues. The explanation for that was that Lane Stadium had a more vertical design and the fans (and their voices) were closer to the field.

Kyle Field has both of those elements working in tandem.

“Think about a concert hall where the orchestra is at the front of the stage, the sounds generated and it reflects off the walls or enclosure that surround the shell and then reflects it towards the audience,” Kerrian said. “The more vertical stadiums, that have high sidewalls, could potentially trap the sound. In a bowl, it can kind of escape.”

Riley Leonard will clap. Notre Dame will wait a beat. Then Ashton Craig will snap the ball.

In an ideal world, that’s how every Irish play will start on Saturday. The frequency of the clap cuts through the crowd noise and eliminates the need for the guard or center to turn around at the line of scrimmage, looking for a non-verbal cue from the quarterback to start the snap.

The last time Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock called plays at Kyle Field, LSU used the clap with Jayden Daniels. LSU was called for just one false start, against a freshman tight end.

“It’s very hostile. Very hostile,” Denbrock said. “So that’s just on top of them being very talented athletically. The noise is another piece of it we’re going to have to have an answer for if we need it.”

Denbrock knows he’ll have to sacrifice something at Kyle Field. He loves motions to move around a defense. The threat of a jet sweep can build another fake into every snap, creating run lanes on the interior. But the noise at Kyle Field makes those motions difficult, even for an experienced offense. If the timing of the clap is slightly off, the center can snap the ball into the motion man. There are workarounds, but they involve plays having two cadences in one, an extra degree of complexity that’s rarely worth it.

Short yardage can also be a problem. There’s no advantage for a quarterback being under center because the offensive line can’t hear him. And because the clap takes a split second to register with offensive tackles and tight ends on the periphery, they’ll likely be a beat slow at the snap. That’s a punitive delay when it’s third-and-1 and the defensive line is timing up the snap count.

“I remember Clemson and it would be a two-tight end set and I’d be on the far end of the line of scrimmage. I just couldn’t hear the ball being snapped,” sophom*ore tight end Cooper Flanagan said. “I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see the ball. That was kind of crazy.”

Then there’s gamesmanship on top of the operational issues. It’s common for defenders around the line of scrimmage to clap or bark before the snap. With the offensive linemen on edge and the snap triggered by sound, it creates false starts and illegal snaps. Rees said Texas A&M did plenty of that last year. And then there are the stems by defensive linemen pre-snap, basically late movement at the line of scrimmage designed to get offensive linemen to flinch.

This would all be a challenge for a veteran offensive line. Notre Dame will try to function with three first-time starters and a true freshman at left tackle.

“Now think about when a quarterback wants to go up to the line of scrimmage and check the protection or redirect the protection. That’s when your cascade of problems start up,” said Steve Addazio, who coached the offensive line at Texas A&M the past two seasons. “My sense will be in an opening game like this, you watch, there’ll be more than a couple of procedure penalties.”

Marcus Freeman opened his first season at Ohio State in front of 106,594 fans. Notre Dame got through the game with just one false start, called against a receiver. The Irish also averaged 2.5 yards per carry and converted 3-of-13 on third down.

Notre Dame spent this week blasting Texas A&M’s fight song and chants through its indoor facility during practice, trying everything to get ready for Kyle Field. There won’t just be a 12th man, there will be more than 100,000 of them.

“We’ve trained really being able to execute your assignment in crazy conditions, with crowd noise and trying to do surprise situations in practice,” Freeman said. “But at the end of the day, they gotta do it when it matters, right? You can do it in practice. That builds confidence within yourself and with your coaching staff. But you gotta do it when it matters versus an opponent.

“And we won’t know that answer until we get to Saturday.”

(Top photo: Tim Warner / Getty Images)