A seismic look at the college football

NC State edged out Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on Saturday 35 - 28, bringing the Hokies 2023, at least at home, to a close. Fans shook the Earth as the team took the field, as they do every home game.

While the team is judged by metrics like time of possession, passing and rushing yards, and of course wins and losses; the fan base has its own set of numbers such as attendance and how loud they get.

Hokie fans do pretty well with consistent sellouts of the 66,233 lane seat stadium but Clemson fans take the ACC noise title as their 80,000 fans have been measured at 132 db. These are sound levels similar what you might hear standing next to a lightning strike, approaching jet engine noise levels.

But Hokie fans bring another, uniquely seismic, metric to the table.

Since its introduction at the August 27, 2000 game against Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech fans are clearly visible on the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) seismometer a half mile to the south of Lane Stadium as Enter Sandman fills Lane Stadium, and 60,000+ fans jump in their seats.

"A seismometer records motions in three directions, vertical and both directions horizontally. It is very precise and sensitive. Typically we use them to record actual earthquakes anywhere on the planet. We use that information to determine where it occurred and how big it was." explains Dr. Derek Sawyer, associate professor at the Ohio State School of Earth Sciences. "Fanquakes are measured in the vertical motions."

The tradition has made its way next door to basketball games in recent years. “Both Lane Stadium and Cassell Coliseum are built on solid rock, those vibrations are going to travel.” explains Dr. Martin Chapman, research associate professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech

Other games have registered on nearby seismographs.

LSU's 1988 upset over #4 Auburn became known as the "earthquake game" when it registered on a seismograph even closer to the stadium. A 2022 Garth Brooks concert in Tiger Stadium also registered.

A 70 yard touchdown pass play by the University of Utah clearly registers in front of a record crowd during 2023 home opener against Florida. "that wasn’t even the strongest activity registered by the seismograph station at the stadium" according to Jamie Farrell, an associate research professor and seismographer there.

Professors in the Earth Sciences departments of universities have seized on interest in these fanquakes to help teach in the classroom. The University of Michigan installed a digital seismometer to measure the movements created by sellout crowds of 107,601at "the Big House". Geology professor Ben van der Pluijm shares the data with students in his introductory geology courses in a project he calls "Michigan Shake".

Ohio State installs a seismometer on the concrete floor of the 102,780 seat Ohio stadium. "The biggest event football-wise was in 2016 when we played Michigan here, a double overtime game." explains Sawyer . "The last play of the game was a score for Ohio State."

Virginia Tech might not be the only school with fans who can move the Earth, but they could be the most consistent. This hasn't happened just once or even only at a few big games. Home football game regularly register seismically. So much so that the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences began sharing the heliocorder (seismograph) plots each game day last season.

This provides an interesting way to compare games.

Saturday's game against NC State was a sellout and produced one of the strongest seismic readings of the season. Interestingly, fans shook the ground noticeably more during the only non-sellout game of the season.

This seismometer isn't there to measure football fans though, it is part of the a network of USGS seismic observatories studying movement of the Earth's crust.Earthquakes hundreds or even thousands of miles away show up, as was seen on the day ODU visited Virginia Tech.

The seismic readings during Purdue's September 9th visit to Lane Stadium standout as the lowest of the season as well as the only game when Enter Sandman was played twice. The weather was terrible that day. Weather delayed the start of the game by thirty minutes then officials were forced to suspend play with 5:50 left in the first half as several weather moved into the area.

Five hours, 27 minutes, and 2.77 inches of rain, later the teams returned to the field. Virginia Tech tried to get the crowd back into the game with a second jump, but many fans who waited out the storm in their cars, didn't return. But an earthquake in the North Pacific did show up several hours later.