BOISE, Idaho — This Day In Sports…September 19, 1992:
Defending national champion and second-ranked Washington wins one of the highest-profile games of the season, 29-14 over No. 12 Nebraska at Husky Stadium. It has been called the loudest game in the history of the facility—maybe in the history of college football. A retrospective on the contest on its 30th anniversary two years ago by Mike Vorel of the Seattle Times noted it was UW’s first night game in seven years, and the sound carried from the sold-out crowd of 73,333.
Midway through the first quarter, ESPN play-by-play man Ron Franklin introduced reporter Adrian Karsten—who, wrote Vorel, “was wearing headphones and holding a black ‘Realistic Sound Level Meter’ along the sideline. ‘Forget about jet engines,’ Karsten said. ‘We’re getting up close to 120 decibels. That’s in the danger-of-impairment area.’ The meter topped out at 133.6 decibels, the highest number ever recorded at a college football game.”
Nebraska quarterback Mike Grant tried to deal with it with hand signals, but he was dragged down in the end zone for a safety, accounting for the game’s first points. “That play mercilessly followed an illegal-procedure penalty, a delay-of-game penalty and a Cornhuskers timeout,” wrote Vorel. Grant threw two interceptions and lost a fumble, but the Huskers were still in it until Washington scored two touchdowns in 42 seconds in the fourth quarter to pull away.
The win was part of an 18-game home winning streak that began under legendary coach Don James in 1990 and ended with successor Jim Lambright in 1993. During the run, UW reached three consecutive Rose Bowls and averaged near-sellouts all the way through, peaking with an average attendance of 72.284 in the 1991 national championship season. The 1992 campaign would turn out to be James’ last with the Huskies, who would finish 9-3. James resigned suddenly the following August in protest of a series of sanction handed down by the NCAA and Pac-10.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
