Kyle Field is a colossus: brick on the outside, concrete and metal and six figures of Texas A&M fans on the inside.
But so is the speaker wheeled onto the practice field once a day at Missouri’s training sessions. It’s no Bluetooth speaker for your shower, nor boombox to balance on your shoulder. This square speaker is more than one lineman tall and at least a few wide, covered in a Mizzou logo and requires a cart to move it around.
Which leviathan is louder? Saturday will be the test.
The No. 9 Tigers (4-0, 1-0 Southeastern Conference) face the No. 25 Aggies (4-1, 2-0 SEC) inside the walls of Kyle Field at 11 a.m. Saturday on ABC (KDNL, Channel 30 locally).
The game is MU’s first road test of the year, and there’s already been some back and forth between the teams over the noise factor.
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It starts with that jumbo speaker that has made at least a cameo in every Mizzou practice since the start of preseason camp for what the Tigers’ coaches call a “noise segment.” The speaker might play crowd noise or pep band music, intended to simulate a loud gameday environment at another school’s stadium.
“They put these big speakers pretty much two feet right behind me,” Missouri quarterback Brady Cook said. “I mean, I can’t hear anything — it’s loud.”
He’s played in his share of big, loud stadiums through two years of starting experience. Cook was the villain on Tennessee’s Rocky Top and against the barking hordes of Georgia.
“It’s always a challenge on road SEC games,” Cook said. “At some point, it can only get so loud. After playing at certain stadiums, (if) you can’t hear, you can’t hear.”
As he explains it, it's a matter of fact, like how coaches can console their players in a rainy game: At some point, you can only get so wet.
The combination of game and practice experience led Cook to a conclusion that downplayed the challenge of facing Texas A&M and its fans on Saturday.
“In my opinion, the noise at practice is actually louder,” Cook said, explaining the speaker set-up. “Stadiums, it’s loud, but it’s like a surrounding, more distant loud. It’s a little different.”
Enter Aggies coach Mike Elko, on the prowl for bulletin board material. He caught wind of what Cook said and turned his weekly radio show into a spin class.
“It has been interesting that we’ve had people call out Kyle Field a little bit,” Elko said. “I heard their quarterback say that it’s louder in practice than it is at Kyle Field. To me, that’s a challenge to the 12th Man.”
The Tigers will, right around 11 a.m. Saturday, find out if that challenge is accepted. Regardless, they’re planning to not be able to hear.
“Communication is going to have to be at a premium,” MU coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “You watch back the Alabama-A&M game last year, I mean, it’s first and second down and their center and quarterback are having trouble on exchanges. It’s something that we’ve been preparing (for). We’ve worked a noise segment of our practice every single day since the start of fall camp. But now it’s going to be noise for a full three hours and five minutes. It’s going to require a lot of concentration and a lot of focus.”
New this season, the noise can impact helmet communications, especially for offenses. Cook is prepared to simply not hear the play calls or instructions relayed to him through the speaker in his helmet.
Even with the added communications, Mizzou has still displayed signs and signals on the sideline this season and will continue to do so Saturday. In the event Cook can’t hear — or his teammates can’t hear him — the Tigers will go back to relying fully on visual cues from the sideline.
And there’s some optimism, or even confidence, that Missouri could functionally turn down the volume.
“As long as we execute,” wide receiver Theo Wease Jr. said, “the crowd won’t be loud.”
Because Saturday’s game is a morning kickoff, the Tigers fly down to College Station on Friday afternoon, giving them time for a walkaround at Kyle Field before turning in for the night and rising early on gameday.
Because it’s MU’s first road game of the year, Drinkwitz seemed to have some travel anxiety.
“It’s an interesting situation,” he said, “just because we’ve got 46 new players on the team, so it’s going to be a lot of newness for everybody traveling. We’ve all traveled before, but it’s the first time traveling together. For a head coach who worries about everything, that’s a little bit of a point of concern.”
The weather forecast for Saturday in College Station looks clear, though the temperature is expected to be in the upper 80s at kickoff and could cross the 90-degree threshold during the game.
It may officially be fall, but that doesn’t mean much when it comes to playing a daytime football game in Texas.
“It’s going to be hot,” Drinkwitz said.
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