Category Archives: Huskies Football

As taken by the Wikipedia entry for each dog breed:

Shaq Thompson = Golden Retriever

The Golden Retrievers’ intelligence makes it a versatile breed and allows it to fill a variety of roles.  The Golden Retriever is a large, strongly-built breed.  A natural retrieving ability means it is also competitive in flyball and field trials.  They are used for many important jobs.  

Bishop Sankey = Labrador 

Labrador’s instinctively enjoy holding objects.  

Sean Parker = German Shepherd

German Shepherds are highly active dogs and described in breed standards as self-assured.  They are expected to patrol the boundaries.  

Dexter Charles = Boxer

Their suspicion of strangers, alertness, agility, and strength make them formidable guard dogs.

Travis Feeney = Rottweiler

Their behaviour self-assured, steady and fearless. They react to their surroundings with great alertness.

Erik Kohler = Doberman

They may suffer from a number of health concerns.  Their size, strength and aggression towards strangers makes them potentially dangerous

Danny Shelton = Great Dane

They are known for their enormous bodies and tall height.  

We are all Huskies.  5 days.

Andrew

In the next month, the Washington Huskies will begin practicing and eventually move into their newly renovated Husky Stadium.  Over this same time period, we will be writing a few posts about Husky Stadium.  Some will be on the technical side of the stadium and some with be based on opinion.  We hope you enjoy!

Seattle is known as a pretty passive city.  We drink our coffee and read our books.  We are usually pretty friendly on the freeway even when traffic is bad.  But, if you take some of our citizens to a football stadium you won’t know what happened.  Maybe it’s the all of the energy from the coffee?  Or perhaps it’s the pent-up anger from rush hour traffic.  Whatever it is, Seattle is known for loud football stadiums.  The Clink has been a house of horrors for opposing football teams and Husky Stadium has traditionally been among the loudest football stadiums in college football.

As much as Washingtonians would like to take all of the credit for the sheer volume, we can’t.  Husky Stadium (and the Clink, for that matter) are designed to bring out the noise.  In this post, I’ll be looking at how the stadium brings out the noise that the fan’s make.

The Design

Husky Stadium – North and West Side

I remember driving over the 520 bridge when I was young and my dad pointing out Husky Stadium to me.  He described it as a Z.  I didn’t know at the time, but this was a big reason as to why my ears would ring for hours after a game.

As you can see in the picture above, Husky Stadium is made up of two levels (not counting the east and west end zone).  The first level rises at a 30-40 degree angle (it might be even less of an angle than that, and it’s not nearly as steep as the second level).  Above that first level there is an overhang.  The overhang doesn’t cover much of that first level but it does create a bit of a roof.  When you want to make noise, roofs of any kind are good.  If you were to sit under that overhang and turn around, facing away from the field, and throw a tennis ball with enough velocity it should bounce off the back wall and come right back to you.  Sound waves exactly the same.  If you yell loud enough into the back wall the sound wave would bounce right back.

It’s the same if you were facing the field and yelled straight ahead (not tilting your head at all).  While some of the sound would be taken up with the evaporating air, a good share of it will go straight ahead, hit the overhang on the other side and then come back.  Most of the time (for various reasons) the sound will hit the other side and angle down toward the field.  While this alone brings a good amount of noise, the upper deck is where most of the noise comes from.

The upper deck, as I’ve mentioned and you can see, is at a much steeper angle.  The upper deck seats a few more people than it’s lower counterpart, as well.  With the steeper angle you have more people facing down and directing their sound waves directly at the playing field.  This already helps the cause.

The roofs on each side are a bit longer than the overhang on the lower level and they cover almost all of the upper deck.  The reason that domes are louder than outdoor stadiums is because none of the sound escapes.  These roofs act the same.  Even better, the roofs are lower than a dome would be.  Just like the sound reflection and bouncing on the overhang works, it works from the upper deck as well.  If you were to sit about halfway up the upper deck and yell straight down at the field, it would hit the field and then bounce up.  The bounce would send the sound wave up to the other roof and back down to the stadium again. This process would repeat until the wave eventually died.  No, one person can’t make all of these sound reflections happen but 100 could.  10,000 especially could.

While some sound will definitely escape into the dense Seattle air, the stadium is properly angled to keep much of the sound in.  That’s not the only benefit the stadium has.

The Steel

When working in a recording studio, you learn about what deadens sound.  If you’re listening back to some tracks that were just recorded, you want to hear exactly what the speakers are putting out and don’t want to hear any reflections the sound makes.  You carpet the floors, you put things over the walls (a carpet material), you widen the room towards the back and you tell people to shut up.  It’s the opposite in a football stadium.

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This was all a dream.  It was one of the more in-depth dreams I’ve ever had, but it was still a dream.  Football season can’t come soon enough and my brain has apparently grown tired of the Mariners’ failure.  So, while the rest of me has been asleep, my dreaming has turned to Husky football.

“If I was only a little bit faster” I thought, as I had just finished stretching with the rest of the Washington football team.  We always finished with a sprint at the end of stretching and I, being the lowly walk-on among the receivers, always ended up coming in last.

But, after this bit of wishful thinking, I immediately turned to being grateful.  There I was, practicing on the field that I’d watched my favorite players and teams roam in years prior.  “There’s where Reggie Williams made his leaping grab against Michigan.  That is where Mason Foster made his interception against Arizona.  That is where Corey Williams made his game-winning catch in the Apple Cup.”  The memories continued throughout practice.  Needless to say, I wasn’t very good.  I was still in awe of how close the stands were and the new technology all across the new Husky Stadium.  The west end-zone looked unbelievable.  The north and south stands still held their triumphant positions.  Heck, the east end-zone, where I grew up, upgraded to permanent seats.  When I closed my eyes, I could feel the crowd noise wash over me.

Practice was wrapping up while I was still in a dazed amazement.  We finished our practice and a few members of the team, along with the coaches, were going to go over to see some fans that were watching a volleyball tournament in Hec Ed.  I somehow found myself riding along with the head coach, Steve Sarkisian, in a gator as the team followed behind.  I’m not sure why he let a walk-on like me ride with him but there I was.  Along the way, we were stopped by a few equipment managers for other sports.  They were saying that they wished they had the facilities that the football team had.  Sark just smiled and nodded.  He added in his thanks when he was supposed to.  It’s the same thing he did with the fans that we stopped to see.

Before long, we were back at the stadium.  We were up on the west concourse, looking down on the field.  The rest of the team had thinned out.  A few players were still tagging along, but mainly it was just him and me.  We stood there, looking out over the lake and the field.  Football stadiums aren’t supposed to be this beautiful.

Around this time, an older booster came by.  He was wearing a black suit and tie, asking about August 31st.  Our first game was coming up.  The older gentleman said, “I remember the days when going to see the Huskies was an event.  They were the top ticket in town and you made a day out of it.  You would tell all of your buddies you were going, just to make them jealous.  The crowd’s would be so loud that you could hardly hear the fly-over after the National Anthem.  Now, look at where we are.  They aren’t events anymore.”  I could feel my face start to get red.  “A lot of the time, I don’t even care about going to the games.  They usually start so late now.  Excellence doesn’t ooze out of the team like it used to.  What you have on August 31st, that is as close as we’ll get to an event like the old days but even that won’t come close.”

I had heard enough, and thankfully the booster had stopped talking.  It was my turn to speak up, “Coach, for me Husky football will always be an event.  I’ve sat in those stands (pointing toward the east end-zone) for the last 15 years.  I grew up here.  Saturdays were a way to spend a day with my family.  We sat through an 0-12 season.  We sat through Casey Paus.  We sat through those awful, wet Oregon State games and I wouldn’t have changed any of it.  August 31st is an event.  Husky fans have been waiting for a game like this for 10 years.  I have no doubt that they’ll show up, in full voice that night.”

Sark thought for a moment before he began.  “For our football team, this isn’t an event.  It’s another game.  We have to stay focused on that, even though there are sure to be distractions.  For our fans, this will be a day to remember.  I wish I could be out there as everyone enters.  I’d like to see the looks on their faces when they see the new video board.  I’d like to see excitement in the zone.  I’d like to feel the energy as the band takes the field 22 minutes before the game starts.  This is a big day for our program and a day that I hope proves to be a landmark for when the program started to ooze excellence once again.”

Just like that, my day had ended.  77 more days, Dawg fans.

– Andrew