Raiders Hope to Avoid Being Soundly Beaten in Kingdome

The South Bay rocked Wednesday to the beat of . . . crowd noise?

You’ve got it, 110 decibels worth. The Raiders paid $2,000 to have it pumped through four speakers, each the size of William Perry, during practice, in an attempt to acclimate themselves to the wall of sound they’ll walk into Sunday in Seattle’s Kingdome.

Crowd noise is what they do best in the Kingdome, surpassing even their beloved blue wave. Broadcast teams have even begun measuring the noise, with comparisons provided. Ninety decibels was like a battle of the bands between Motley Crue and Twisted Sister. One hundred was like the wreck of locomotives No. 99, 100 and 101 inside a tunnel. One hundred ten, the maximum, was for Jacob Green chasing Marc Wilson.

The Seahawks are even going to hand out megaphones Sunday, although not because this is such a big game for them. It’s a standard NFL promotion this season.

Raider safety Mike Davis said: “I always thought they had megaphones.”

Coach Tom Flores added: “We have the same promotion. Ours are used differently, though.”

Yeah, to boo Marc Wilson.

“I’ve got a little decibel meter,” sound technician Eric Mellon said before the afternoon drill. “We’re going to aim for 110. That’s like a jet plane taking off. I made a tape of crowd noise that’s just obnoxious.”

There was some discussion before the season of equipping the backs and receivers’ helmets with radio gear, so they could hear the quarterback’s signals at the line of scrimmage, regardless of what the crowd was up to.

Flores said he liked the idea of an experiment with the radio gear, partly because of this annual rendezvous.

In Seattle, however, offensive linemen, who are right next to the quarterback, say they can’t hear anything he’s saying.

The Raiders already have been through one pitched battle with a crowd, marching for their winning touchdown at Cleveland through the din made by a crowd of 77,000 sitting in a steeply banked stadium.

The NFL now has its referees keep the offense at the line of scrimmage until enough fans’ lungs give out to make it possible to get a play off. At Cleveland, Wilson stayed at the line several times for more than 30 seconds, while pandemonium reigned.

The Raider coaches were screaming at Marcus Allen, trying to get him to tell Wilson to rehuddle the team. Allen, maintaining his stance since the snap might come at any moment, was trying to make the coaches understand that referee Ben Dreith had told them to stay there.

Said Allen later: “I’m sure everyone was panicking.”

Flores said: “The home teams aren’t supposed to encourage the fans. The players aren’t supposed to encourage the fans. But fans get fired up. They don’t need to be told.”

And that was in an outdoor stadium. The Raiders play every season in Denver, another high-banked stadium that is annually sold out and filled with partisans who can make some noise, themselves. But the enclosed Kingdome is a whole other experience.

“The loudest place I’ve ever played in,” linebacker Rod Martin said. “Without a doubt. They have those sound detectors set up. When we play there, it’s off the scale. And now I hear they’re handing megaphones out. It’s just a deafening sensation. You just hear this echo off your eardrums.”

Wednesday, they called down the thunder from the skies and broadcast it all over El Segundo.

A few million Seattleites could have told them, they ain’t heard nothin’ yet.