Most Raiders fans know a trip to San Diego is not really what many would call an away game. Chargers fans are feeling pretty disenfranchised of late, and may soon that may be a literal term. Combine that with the rabid Raider fan base that still exists in Southern California, and the crowd there is usually at least evenly split Silver & Black and often times dominated by Raiders fans.
Homefield advantage is something they don’t enjoy much in San Diego. At least not like many teams in the NFL do. To prepare for the influx of Raiders fans, the Chargers must do what most teams don’t have to do — pipe crowd noise into practice for a home game.
When asked this week if the Chargers often pipe in crowd noise, head coach Mike McCoy said “We’ve done that before here, yes.” As for Raiders games in particular, he said “We have done it in the past.”
The questions continued as to whether the Chargers would pipe crowd noise in this week, and McCoy said “We’ll see. There’s always that possibility.”
And here you go, the proof they are doing it this week:
Second Chargers practice of week. Second day of artificial crowd noise to prepare for "home" game vs. Raiders. pic.twitter.com/hNs0V8SSYV
— Michael Gehlken (@sdutGehlken) December 15, 2016
The Chargers are expected to make a bid to relocate to Los Angeles perhaps as soon as a few weeks from now. But they won’t find any better fan situation there than they do in San Diego, where the Raiders once made their home for 13 years.
Update: This article has been corrected to reflect Mike McCoy’s statements being about crowd noise in practice to prepare for a home game against the Raiders. Originally the questions as well as his answers were incorrectly thought to be about in-game.
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