Getty Image / Kirby Lee
Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor aka ‘The Big House‘ is famously the largest stadium in all of College Football with a seating capacity of 107,601 seats which also makes it the largest stadium of any kind in the United States and the third largest on planet earth behind Narendra Modi Stadium in India (132K seats) and a stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea with 114K seats.
Trevor Keegan played left guard for the Michigan Wolverines and won the 2023 National Championship before being drafted by the Eagles in the 5th round of the NFL Draft. Flash forward to last week and Trevor Keegan got his first taste of Eagles preseason practice in front of fans with around 50K fans in attendance and he says it was louder than The Big House with 107K+ Michiganders in the seats.
Speaking with PhiladelphiaEagles.com, Keegan said that Lincoln Financial Field he got goosebumps from the experience, saying:
“I never had a preseason game in college, but I’m making sure my body is up to steam, make sure I’m getting sleep and the food that I need to get me ready for each and every day. I think I told Fred (Johnson) in the locker room that we play a game in five days. That’s pretty cool. I’m excited. I even got a little emotional getting over to the stadium (on Thursday for the Public Practice). I don’t know how many people were there, but it was louder than Michigan’s stadium. Definitely. It was rockin’. I got goosebumps.”
I don’t have extensive experience at The Big House in Ann Arbor but I did go to Michigan-Penn State two season ago. It was my first and only time there and I’ll say that the speakers were out on my side of the stadium so the music being piped into the stadium from DJ Skee seemed lackluster because the sound was out.
But in terms of the fan noise, it was very loud, just not quite as loud as I would have expected for the largest stadium in the United States. I’m biased on this, but I feel like Doak Campbell during a sold-out Seminoles game was considerably louder than the Michigan-Penn State game I experienced. And that’s all tied to, of course, the Big House being a bowl and allowing a lot of that fan sound to leave the stadium. Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee suffers from that as well.
It also explains why 50K at Lincoln Financial Field would sound louder than 107K in Ann Arbor, because Philly’s stadium locks in the fan noise very well. So I don’t think it’s a knock on The Big House as much as it’s a recognition of how the stadium’s design could be tweaked with an added rim to make it insanely loud.