Thought this was illegal?
When
asked this week if the Chargers pipe in crowd noise, head coach Mike McCoy said “We’ve done that before here, yes.” As for Raiders games in particular, he said “We have done it in the past.”
The questions continued as to whether the Chargers would pipe crowd noise in this Sunday, and McCoy said “We’ll see. There’s always that possibility.”
For those wondering if piping in fake crowd noise is legal, that gets a bit hazy. Stadium sound systems aren’t supposed to do it during game play, though many teams still do. The Atlanta Falcons didn’t have a 5th round pick in the 2016 draft and were fined $350K
for violating the league’s rule against piping in fake crowd noise back in 2015.
In the Chargers’ defense, piping in crowd noise is nothing new in the NFL. The Chiefs did it when they reached their supposed NFL open air stadium crowd noise record a couple years back. It was against the Raiders
late in a blowout win and beat writers on site said at the time the noise record was set, the stadium was half empty. But if a falsified unofficial noise record is where you hang your hat, more power to ya.