CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - It's impossible for 5,000 to 6,000 people to duplicate the home-field advantage the University of Montana football team enjoys in Missoula - especially in a stadium with no end-zone seats to hold in the noise.
But the Grizzly fans who made their way to Finley Stadium on Friday night for the NCAA Division I-AA national championship sure tried.
"My linemen were complaining that they could not hear me at the line," James Madison quarterback Justin Rascati admitted after his Dukes beat Montana 31-21.
However, he noted that Montana suffered several penalties that may have been the result of an also boisterous JMU crowd.
Lots of Grizzly fans were just happy they made the kickoff.
Fog in Missoula wreaked havoc with several charter flights. The UM marching band didn't arrive until midnight Thursday, too late to perform at a pep rally, and others didn't get in until hours later.
Then, once here, hundreds of people who ordered their tickets through UM but couldn't pick them up until game day were left standing for nearly three hours in a will-call line that featured lots of people but no tickets.
"They told us to be here at 4 (p.m.), and we were," said Melody Harris, mother of Montana cornerback Tuff Harris and first in a line that stretched way down a sidewalk outside the stadium.
"Then they said it was a mistake and it'd be 6, but now it's 6:30 and there's still no one here with tickets," added Wes Rockman of Great Falls.
"We're blaming James Madison," said Jay Harris, Tuff's older brother.
Meantime, Sara Simkowitz of Missoula stood in the "Montana will-call" line only to reach the front and learn, since she ordered her tickets through someone other than UM, she was in the wrong line.
"This has just been a comedy of errors," Simkowitz said. "We were supposed to leave Missoula at 9:30 (Thursday) morning. There were two planes leaving at that time, and one took off. Then the fog moved in."
At noon, she said, they promised travelers an announcement by 1 p.m. as to what would happen, but it wasn't until 2 p.m. they learned they would bus to Helena and fly out of there.
The buses stopped at a grocery store so folks could buy something to eat, then took off for Montana's capital. They finally got on a plane, got in the air, and were told it would be three hours and six minutes to Chattanooga.
"But after we were in the air for awhile, they came on and said since they'd been flying for so long we had to go to Minneapolis for a crew change," Simkowitz said.
The fans on the plane did not check into their hotel in Chattanooga until 3 a.m. Friday.
"It was 19 hours," Simkowitz said. "We could have flown to Australia in that amount of time."
But no one missed the kickoff.
And no one was quiet, either.