bigskygriz Wrote:The Sam Houston State Coach that was an Assistant in the Big 12 said that Washington/Griz was every bit as hard to hear the signals as a game at Texas or Texas A&M.
I did a (decidedly not very scientific) study of why Wash-Griz is so loud a while back, and what I found to be crucial are these facts:
1. There is no track around the field, and the stands are very tight to the sidelines.
2. The intensity of sound diminishes with the square of the distance to the listener.
I put together a spreadsheet comparing the sound characteristics of Washington's Husky Stadium and Montana's Washington-Grizzly Stadium, and found that, assuming the same level of sound from each fan, the stadia are comparable in terms of sound intensity at the center of the field.
...and this was before Wash-Griz was expanded another 4,000 seats!
No, I'm not an acoustic engineer, so take my conclusion with a lick of salt.
I have the spreadsheet if anyone wants to look at it. Admittedly, I assumed a lot and made a lot of educated (?) guesses, but it was interesting, even shocking, to me when I got to the conclusion.
I haven't been to a lot of other stadia for comparison, but Wash-Griz
is very loud. Great fun on fall afternoons, for sure.
...oh, yeah--I-A? Not yet. It's moot at this point, anyway, with Montana's athletic department in the midst of a study by a commission looking for someone to blame for a near $1 mill shortfall--hardly the atmosphere for expanding the program to the I-A level, with its attendant increases in costs (initial, at the very least).