Making an Empty House Feel Like Home

During the fall 2020 semester, I was lucky enough to be a part of the team that made Beaver Stadium feel like home for Penn State’s football team. Our goal was to replicate the game day environment for the team, which would be playing without the usual 100,000+ fans in attendance.

As COVID cases rose over the summer, the Big 10 announced that fans, including students, would not be allowed into stadiums during the 2020 season. Big 10 officials also announced that cheer leaders and marching bands would not be allowed in stadiums either. After the decision was handed down, Penn State Athletics reached out to the Sound Design department at Penn State’s School of Theatre for help replicating the sounds of game day in Happy Valley.

Phase 1: Content Creation

The first phase of the project was developing audio content that would be played during the game. The Big 10 provided each school with a basic track of crowd noise that had to be played at 70 dB throughout the course of the game. Our job was putting together content that would be played between plays.

We started by recording the Blue Band’s signature songs and cheers. Next, we went to work on crowd reactions. As an avid football fan myself, my favorite part of any game is how loud stadiums get on 3rd and 4th down. For this reason, I spearheaded crowd noise for various 3rd and 4th down situations. I included the typical yelling and bleacher stomping that can be found in stadiums across the country, and I added touches of Penn State spirit to the tune of student section pom-poms shaking vigorously.

Phase 2: Content Distribution

The second piece of the puzzle was figuring out how to deliver our content throughout Beaver Stadium, which is the second largest stadium in the western hemisphere. Penn State went with the best in the business for reliable and large-scale reinforcement and ordered a system from Clair Global.

A few members of the Sound Design program and I got to work with the crew from Clair two days before the first home game of the season to build and tune the system. This was the largest system I’ve worked with, and I learned a lot from the Clair team about how to stay organized and communicate effectively. The first chunk of the day consisted of moving all of the speakers and amps into place around the stadium. After that, we spent hours cabling and labeling all of the various runs between positions.

After everything was cabled together, we fired the system up and got to measure dB levels at various locations around the stadium and field to check for Big 10 compliance. The last part of the process was getting the system time aligned and patched into the stadium’s playback system.