re: I'll say it...Kyle Field is overrated.

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Things go quiet when things go wrong.

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My point exactly.

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It was loud for about 5 minutes. That place was nothing close to a loud or intimidating stadium. Nothing at all like it had been described by others.

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Because I'm sure OM fans said the same thing about Kyle Field after last Saturday.

It's been stated numerous times on here already, but there's pretty much a law for this: home field advantage only works for teams that are already good to begin with, particularly good on defense.

A rowdy, raucous, loud crowd is both developed by and helps boost the performance of a good defense. I really do think that a loud crowd helps, but I think it can only exist when it has a good defense to cheer for. They feed off of each other, but the good defense is the necessary precursor without which the crowd isn't loud enough to, in turn, boost the defense even higher.

I also think you could pipe in the loudest crowd noise on earth, or pay the crowd to scream as loud as possible, and as long as the defense sucks and knows it, it wouldn't matter.

The analogy I think of is the high bypass turbofan. The core of the engine must generate sufficient core power to at least drive the fan at its design flow and pressure ratio. Once that is achieved, a great deal of the thrust is actually derived by the bypass air and not by the high density compressor, which achieves great improvements in efficiency. *But without sufficient core power to begin with, there is no opportunity for bypass thrust*.

It's the same with home field advantage. Shitty defense to begin with, no chance of any home field advantage.