Inside The Huskies

Turn Up the Volume: Where Husky Stadium Ranks Among College Football's Loudest

When things are going good, it's hard to top the sound echoing through two gigantic decks.

Dan Raley

As far as being No. 1 these days in college football, Georgia is the defending champion. Texas A&M won the recruiting battle. Oregon, college football's Disneyland, offers the all-expenses-paid, must-see recruiting visit.

Despite being muffled in recent seasons by the pandemic and then by a 4-8 on-field implosion, the University of Washington hangs on tightly to a distinction that on and off for a decade has separated itself from the rest of the game.

Loudest stadium.

When that football palace by the lake is rocking, Husky Stadium practically can be heard all the way from Seattle to Miami. 

Other stadiums might boast a greater seating capacity and other fan bases can insist they're the most enthusiastic until they're blue in the face but there's really only one way to measure this accomplishment.

Decibels. 

A South Carolina online outfit that calls itself Conference Commandos has verified this fact once more with its take on all things volume across the Power 5 landscape, concluding that no place hurts your ears more on a fall Saturday than a full-throated UW fan response.

That would be 133.6 on the loudness barometer, nearly a full decibel greater than Death Valley, home of the South Carolina-based Clemson Tigers, who've registered 132.8. 

The rest of the list goes like this: LSU's Tiger Stadium (130), Oregon's Autzen Stadium (127), Virginia Tech's Lane Stadium (126), Penn State's Beaver Stadium (122), Texas A&M's Kyle Field (117), Florida's The Swamp (115), Tennessee's Neyland Stadium (114) and The Big House in Michigan (110).

What makes all of this possible is the Husky Stadium echo chamber — with noise bouncing off of two gigantic decks that face each other on the shores of Lake Washington.

Back in 2018, well before the COVID-19 outbreak forced the UW to hold games in empty stadiums, 247Sports pegged Husky Stadium as the most deafening place in which to play a college football game.

Oklahoma-based Big Game Boomer currently ranks the UW facility as the fourth loudest, behind LSU, Penn State and Texas A&M, but it's catching on. In 2021, it had the Huskies ranked 17th. 

Not a full house, but the Huskies had a good-sized crowd for its 2021 UCLA game. 

The UW seemingly become the loudest house after its 2013 stadium remodel, that upgraded acoustics, combined with the success of the Chris Petersen-coached Huskies.

Consider that in 2010, Bleacher Report ranked Husky Stadium as the nation's 27th loudest stadium. That was just two seasons removed from Tyrone Willingham doing his best to drive the UW football program into the ground with an 0-12 season in 2008. 

It still might have been loud place back then for Willingham, yet with more people booing than cheering.

For now, anything goes. The success of Kalen DeBoer's new coaching era will go a long ways in determining whether the UW can stay loud and proud.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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