Dear Ohio State: Autzen's noise is real and it's spectacular
Take it from Chip Kelly: "Autzen Stadium at that time of day is truly special."
Dear Ohio State fans,
If Oregon wins on Saturday, don’t do as Michigan State did.
It was a decade ago when the Ducks hosted their last biggest game in Autzen Stadium history. In came the No. 7 Michigan State Spartans, a team flying across the country from the mighty Big Ten where stadiums such as the Big House at Michigan (107,000), Beavers Stadium in Pennsylvania (106,000) and the Ohio State Horseshoe (104,000) dwarf the size of Oregon’s little wedge in the ground across the river from campus.
Autzen Stadium has a capacity of 54,000 people, and there’s just no way that size of a crowd can produce the type of noise that caused the Spartans to be a jumbled pre-snap mess in No. 3 Oregon’s 46-27 win in 2014.
Or at least thought MLive.com beat writer Mike Griffith.
“The combination of the Ducks using a myriad of formations and running the hurry up offense paired with one of the loudest artificial noise-making speakers in college football is hell on defenses," Griffith wrote. "Oregon fans got loud on a half-dozen occasions, too, but it was the giant speaker in the east end zone piping in bass music that prevented pre-snap communication by the Spartans' defense.”