Crowd noise from Kinnick north end zone increasingly leaves mark on Iowa football games

IOWA CITY — Fewer than three minutes into Iowa’s 2022 football season, a sellout crowd at Kinnick Stadium made its presence felt.

With 13 seconds left on the play clock and the ball on the South Dakota State 12-yard line, center Gus Miller flinched. False start. First-and-15 for the Jackrabbits.

Then on the next play, another Jackrabbit jumped early. Another false start. Half the distance to the goal. First-and-19.

“These are professional fans out there,” said Mark Helfrich, the FS1 color commentator and former Oregon head coach, on the broadcast after the second one.

When taking a look at recent history, Helfrich’s hyperbole doesn’t seem so hyperbolic.

The Kinnick Stadium renovation of the north end zone in 2019 essentially enclosed that side of the stadium. Then in 2021, fans hungry for live sports after the disruption of COVID-19 had games to attend in person again.

The effect was particularly noticeable in Iowa’s 2021 win over then-No. 4 Penn State. The Nittany Lions had eight false starts, including on three consecutive plays.

Then again in Saturday’s season opener, South Dakota State had eight false starts, and Iowa had one.

For every one false start Iowa had at Kinnick in 2021 or 2022, its opponents had eight, according to a Gazette analysis of play-by-play summaries.

The advantage was not as pronounced in 2019 — the first year with the renovated north end zone. Iowa had six false start penalties, and its opponents had 10.

Iowa has not experienced an overtime game at home since the renovation was complete, but the noise level has influenced how head coach Kirk Ferentz would approach the situation.

“One of these days if we ever get into an overtime game, I'll promise you we're going to pick that end for sure to put our opponents,” Ferentz said.

That’s especially notable considering it means Ferentz’s preference would be to play opposite of the student section, going against conventional thinking in college football.

Defensive end Joe Evans and Jack Campbell described the environment as “insanely loud.”

“It has a huge impact on teams, and I hope our fans know that,” Evans said. “First-and-15 is a lot easier than first-and-10.”

Following each false start, “you’re all pumped up with your brothers,” Evans said.

Campbell has the challenge of being the one to receive the play calls, but he’s not going to complain about it any time soon.

“It’s great for false starts and messing up the offense,” Campbell said. “It’s not so great when I’m trying to make the calls, but I’m not going to tell them to quiet down.”

Safety Keavon Merriweather “can’t hear anything that’s going on around me.”

“It’s beautiful, man,” Merriweather said.

If Merriweather can’t hear, he also knows “the offense can’t hear.”

“Like nine times out of 10, it’s probably going to be a false start, especially if a player isn’t used to that type of environment,” Merriweather said.

Iowa deputy athletics director Matt Henderson said the program is “lucky that we have a very passionate group” in the north end zone sections.

“We’ve always had a passionate group that sat in the north end zone, but that’s only increased now because they’ve had some fun getting loud,” Henderson told The Gazette.

The $89.9 million renovation, complete in 2019, was the “last piece of the stadium that hadn’t been renovated,” Henderson said.

With the university’s West Campus Transportation Center in the shadows of the north end zone, the renovation had to “go more vertical than horizontal” and “close to the field.”

“So we knew it would create an increase in sound,” Henderson said.

A couple years later, Iowa has seen quite the increase in sound — beyond even Henderson’s expectations.

“I did not anticipate the volume being as loud as it is,” Henderson said. “It has quite the effect.”

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