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College football games tend to produce a pretty noisy environment, but the director of Cal’s band is taking the school to task over the placement of a subwoofer that’s allegedly taking a toll on its members.
Home-field advantage can be a big factor in college football games thanks in no small part to the noise visiting teams can be subjected to when the stadium gets rocking.
In 2023, Tennessee fans at Neyland Stadium set a new record for the loudest college football game in history when they reached 137 decibels to surpass the mark of 133.6 dB that was set at Husky Stadium when Washington hosted Nebraska in 1992, which is the same level you’d be subjected to if you were in the vicinity of an airplane taking off.
You won’t find the Cal Golden Bears on the list of teams with the most intimidating home environments, but it appears the school did what it could to increase the noise at California Memorial Stadium this season—and their band director is not happy about the impact its had on the students tasked with performing at games.
On Saturday, Cal coasted to a 44-7 win over Oregon State in front of a friendly crowd, and Director of Bands Matt Sadowski hopped online to call attention to the “massive subwoofer” that’s been placed in front of the area of the stands where his musicians set up shop since the start of the season.
According to Sadowski, the combination of the subwoofer and speakers in the vicinity has subjected the band to “sound levels [that] consistently peak over 100 decibels before we’ve played a single note,” and he says it’s led to “repeated complaints of headaches and tinnitus after every game.”
The school has not formally responded to the complaint as of this writing, but it definitely seems like an issue it needs to address sooner rather than later.