In 2008, Illinois employed a silent count where the Illini center ducked his head between his leg each snap to look for Juice Williams’ leg raise, then paused a breath before snapping the ball. The Whiteout generally tends to be the loudest date on the calendar for most teams, causing opponents haul in speakers for practice and adjust how they normally snap the ball. But that hypothesis doesn’t hold water since the 2015 Michigan Wolverines – who also played entirely during the day – were tagged with 117 penalty yards, most in Whiteout history. What’s interesting, is that Alabama game took place entirely during the day – suggesting perhaps the heightened intensity of pure Whiteout night games pressures officials to cover the field in yellow more than when the sun’s out. In 2011, Alabama came the closest, committing just 3 infractions for 35 yards. No Whiteout opponent has been the least penalized team that particular season. In five Whiteouts (2007 Notre Dame 14-97, 2010 Michigan 5-55, 2012 Ohio State 7-75, 2015 Michigan 13-117, 2018 Ohio State 10-105) the Nittany Lions’ foe was penalized for more yards than any other team that ventured into Beaver Stadium that season. Same holds true of road teams in the all-stadium Penn State Whiteout. Refs are human, right? A 2006 Harvard University study concluded as much after thumbing through 15 years of English Premier League data and finding referees called more penalties on the visitors – with the gap between home and away team fouls widening in larger and louder stadiums. DOES THE WHITEOUT INFLUENCE THE REFS TO THROW MORE FLAGS? So Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks are worth a touchdown, but rowdy Ed and Phyllis from Camp Hill are worth 10 points, Urban? OK, got it.īut to the former coach’s larger point, the Penn State Whiteout must offer some benefit for the home team, right? Well, the ForTheBlogy math wizards took a break from typing 58008 in our calculators to amuse our friends and dissected box scores from every full-stadium Whiteout to see if the monochromatic-clad crowd offers any true benefit compared to normal Beaver Stadium games…and if it does, in what ways?įor the sake of this study, we didn’t factor in games against I-AA/FCS opponents (2008 Coastal Carolina, 2009 Eastern Illinois, 2010 Youngstown State, 2011 Indiana State, 2019 Idaho) because the talent gap might skew the stats. More recently, FanDuel adjusted the 2019 Week 8 Chiefs-Packers “look ahead” spread a total of 6 points after Patrick Mahomes’ injured his leg in Week 7 against Denver. The top player? Peyton Manning at 7 points.

To put things in perspective, sports gambling icon RJ Bell authored a 2013 piece for Grantland where he interviewed a handful of Vegas odds makers and had them put a point-value on star quarterbacks. No disrespect to you, me, and the strangers I kept high-fiving (damn, remember high-fives?) all around Section EFU last October, but to claim our drunken yells are worth two freaking possessions is loony talk. I mean, in what other setting can video of a non-snap go viral?īut for Urban Meyer to say the Whiteout gives Penn State a 10-point advantage – insinuating that this year’s Witness-less Whiteout will zap away that edge – is totally hyperbolic. Penn State’s Whiteout remains the greatest stage in college football and when the weather’s right and the opponent is formidable, there’s no better scene in sports. To borrow a line from the Southern University Human Jukebox Marching Band, the Whiteout is “often imitated, never duplicated.” Blackouts, Maizeouts, Maroonouts…sorry, they just don’t hit the same. To find out if that’s even close to true, we went all ‘Beautiful Mind’ and crunched some numbers. Fox Analyst/Depressed Postgame Papa John’s Eater meme Urban Meyer recently said the annual mark-your-calendar extravaganza provides 10-point advantage for the good guys.

White out football game