Does anyone recall it being common during big time college football games in the 70s and 80s for crowd noise to disrupt QBs at the line of scrimmage to the point that officials would call time out and even occasionally penalize the home team in order to quiet the crowd?

What changed? The stadiums are much bigger today, and most teams don't huddle, but crowd noise seems not to factor into play much at all.

The first time that I remember crowd noise causing an interruption was with the New Orleans Saints, I think against the Cowboys. I believe the domed stadiums (Superdome, Metrodome, etc.) are what caused the noise to be so loud that the QBs couldn't shout the cadence loud enough. Maybe once the "head game" of causing a disruption to the opponents became apparent, rabid fans in an enlarged outdoor stadium got the idea and joined in the disrupting.

Teams have linemen touch the center when it's time to snap the ball in order to get around crowd noise plus teams practice with speakers simulating crowd noise too.

(09-08-2013 12:26 PM)MemOwl Wrote:  Does anyone recall it being common during big time college football games in the 70s and 80s for crowd noise to disrupt QBs at the line of scrimmage to the point that officials would call time out and even occasionally penalize the home team in order to quiet the crowd?

What changed? The stadiums are much bigger today, and most teams don't huddle, but crowd noise seems not to factor into play much at all.

The rule was changed. The penalty was taken off the books. So teams went to quiet counts and the like to avoid the problem.

That was about the lamest rule in the histpry of sports!

I remember Mile High Stadium used to regularly disrupt play calls back in the 70s. It could get loud there without all of the PA tricks of the modern (read domed) stadiums. Of course, it would shake pretty well too, and in retrospect I'm not how sure it was well constructed...