With stadiums empty because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NFL has decided to pump in fake crowd noise. But it won’t match the real thing.
The Saints have practiced with crowd noise set to the 70-75 decibel range, which is what the NFL has approved during games, and Saints players say it’s nowhere near as loud as the Saints’ fans really get.
“The crowd noise that the league approved is nothing compared to what the Dome sounds like,” Saints running back Alvin Kamara told NOLA.com. “I feel like they kind of played us on that.”
Other Saints agreed, including cornerback Marshon Lattimore, who said, “The Dome, it can’t be re-created. The Dome, it gets loud. You can barely hear.”
The players are right: Crowd noise at the Superdome has been measured at over 120 decibels. A 70-decibel sound is about the equivalent of a household vacuum cleaner, while a 120-decibel sound is about the equivalent of a chainsaw. The decibel scale is logarithmic, rather than linear, so 120 decibels is actually 32 times as loud as 70 decibels.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has claimed that there’s no competitive advantage to a presence or absence of fans, but it’s hard to believe that the Saints don’t benefit at all from getting their crowd whipped up in a 120-decibel frenzy when it’s third down and the defense is on the field. A constant hum of 70-decibel fake fans just isn’t the same.
