FAYETTEVILLE — No speaker system can fully replicate the noise thousands of clanging cowbells make when playing a football game at Mississippi State.
Nonetheless, Arkansas football has done its best to simulate the environment for Saturday’s game at Davis Wade Stadium.
Speaking on the SEC weekly coaches teleconference, Arkansas coach Sam Pittman detailed the challenges that come with playing in Starkville, Miss.
“We played the bells all day yesterday and going to do it again today,” Pittman said. “To me, that’s the biggest advantage that you have….The advantage is the crowd, the home crowd. You have to do your best to take that away.”
The fifth-year Arkansas coach said trial-and-error lessons have been learned by his staff with simulating crowd noise.
“You have to make sure that you practice it,” Pittman said. “You have to have the noise coming from the right areas. I remember my first year here, we had crowd noise coming from the side and it doesn’t come from the side in the game. It comes from about a 45-degree angle as stadiums are.
“We changed where our noise was coming from. I thought it helped us tremendously. So, that’s the biggest thing there, is to try to be able to handle the noise and so far on the road we’ve done a fairly good job of that.”
During his weekly radio show Wednesday night, Pittman said he and offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino pivoted their noise simulation plans that afternoon during practice.
“Bobby and I were talking about it, too,” Pittman said. “We had the cowbells all day yesterday, and I said, ‘I can’t take it no more.’ And so today we had crowd noise without the cowbell.
“I think our kids understand now, after Tuesday all day, that there’s going to be cowbells, and so we just practiced noise.”
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Avoiding pre-snap penalties is something Pittman noted will be of importance in Starkville.
“The advantage is the crowd, and so you have to eliminate that advantage,” he said. “And we’ve been pretty good about that. Whether you tap the center, whether you go on the clap, whether you go a verbal cadence, you have to make those decision. You have to be ready to adjust. And we work three different areas there to make sure that we’re getting off the ball on the correct snap.”
The use of cowbells inside Davis Wade Stadium has been a topic of discussion this season. College football is in its first year implementing coach-to-player helmet communications, something artificial noisemakers such as cowbells could hinder to create an unfair advantage.
“Well, it’s illegal and I’m sure we won’t hear any when our quarterback [lines up],” Pittman said jokingly. “It’s supposed to be all quiet. We don’t necessarily believe that, so we’ve been practicing on the cowbells.”
Earlier this week, Pittman said he has not heard any reports from coaches saying the cowbells have disrupted helmet communication.
Another consideration when playing in Starkville, Pittman said, relates to travel. The team is planning to stay in Tupelo, a roughly 70-minute drive to the stadium.
Arkansas and Mississippi State are scheduled to kick off at 11:45 a.m. With a morning kickoff and longer-than-usual travel from their hotel to the stadium, the Razorbacks will start their day early Saturday.
Despite abnormal game day travel plans and dealing with cowbells, Pittman said he is confident his team will “be fine.”
“It’s a big challenge for us, but the way we practice, I think we’ll be able to go and play well,” Pittman said.
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