The article provided by the claim, Oregon Ducks Beat Ohio State: Deafening Autzen Stadium Breaks Attendance Record, doesn't provide a lot of proof that tells us that Autzen Stadium is the loudest stadium in the Big Ten Conference. However, one piece of information that helped the claim was that during the Ohio State and Oregon games, Autzen had “a top-five highest-ever recorded level of 127 decibels in college football.” Yet, that data alone does not validate that Autzen is the loudest stadium in the Big Ten conference so after some research and looking at other articles for the loudest college stadiums, including Autzen, I have found that Autzen is indeed the loudest stadium in the Big Ten and maybe even in college football.
To start, the design of the bowl-shaped stadium was intentional to make the stadium louder. In an article with Si.com, Christopher Mitchell, an architect for the Autzen Stadium, explained to them how “the seats and noise created from the wild Ducks fans don’t get broken up by structure and rings of glassed-in luxury seating. Add in a suite building on the north side with a flat, solid surface and a roof on the south side both bouncing sound back toward the field, and ‘all those things help concentrate sound back in toward the bowl.” This adds validity that Autzen was created to be one of the loudest stadiums in college football, especially in the Big Ten.
In another article by The Register-Guard, they pulled out a quote from the star Ohio State Quarterback, Will Howard, who said, “It was a tough place to play," and “For me, I thought it was a smaller stadium, but it got loud. I don’t know what it was about the shape of the stadium, but it got very loud on the field, especially down there at the end. I think the fact that it was a really good game the whole time, kind of kept them in it and credit to them, man, they had a good atmosphere." Additionally, in the same article, Josh Pate, a national college football analyst for the 247Sports and CBS Sports HQ came out and said that “The Big Ten’s loudest stadium is in Eugene, Oregon," and "This place is louder than any other venue in the Big Ten, including places with 30,000 or 40,000 more seats capacity than Autzen Stadium has…” To conclude, although there’s no chart or data compiled of every Big Ten school’s noise level, we do know for a fact through people like Will Howard and Josh Pate, who are credible sources that Autzen is one of the loudest stadiums in college football and the loudest in the Big Ten conference.
References: https://www.si.com/college/2014/09/05/stadium-spotlight-autzen-stadium-oregon
https://www.registerguard.com/story/sports/college/football/2025/01/15/louder-than-a-jet-what-makes-autzen-stadium-challenging-for-opponents/77590441007/
https://www.si.com/college/oregon/football/oregon-ducks-will-stein-hire-candidate-replace-chip-kelly-ohio-state-ryan-day-dan-lanning-Brian-Hartline-Shannon-Dawson-Joe-Moorhead
