When new isn't necessarily good ...

Sunday night, the Patriots will be playing in Indianapolis for the fourth time in a row (including the 2006 AFC Championship Game), and they will be playing in an enclosed structure. Even though Lucas Oil Stadium, seen in the photo above, has a retractable roof (and one of the end zones opens up to a courtyard as well), everything will be closed up tight for the 8:20 p.m. ET start of the NBC Sunday Night Football broadcast.

The Patriots played for the first time at Lucas Oil Stadium last Nov. 2, an 18-15 loss in which David Thomas (no longer a Patriot) drew a 15-yard penalty on what could have been a game-winning or game-tying drive.

The first thing I noticed about Lucas Oil Stadium -- aside from its resemblance to the Butler University field house that was immortalized in "Hoosiers" -- was how quiet it was compared to the Colts' former home, the RCA Dome.

Of course, many people believe that the Colts artificially stoked the crowd noise in their old home (seen at left) by either playing recorded crowd noise or turning on microphones to amplify what little noise there was in the place. Much as the Colts tried to generate a home-field advantage through whatever means, it was obviously artificial and not very effective.

The loudest stadium I visited over 30-plus years of NFL coverage was obviously the old Mile High Stadium in Denver. The stands there were very steep, and the noise was focused downward into the enclosed end of the stadium. I was standing behind the end zone when Rulon Jones made his famous sack of Tony Eason, and the raised voices of 80,000 Broncos' fans made my bones vibrate, I kid you not.

The new Invesco Field? Pfft. Not even close.

Most folks seem to think that today's loudest NFL stadium is Qwest Field in Seattle, and I can see why. The stands are steep there and the footprint is smaller than many of the newer stadiums, and the noise travels down and stays there. Others cited on the many Internet sites I visited today were Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City (more on the strength of the fans' leather lungs than the construction or design of the stadium) and the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, which is another of those Teflon-covered domes

Gillette Stadium is universally regarded as a tough place to play, but more because of the quality of the Patriots and the elements, not anything the fans do. In fact, it was the general consensus that Sunday's game against Miami was one of the quietest in recent memory. Personally, I still think it was a big mistake by the Krafts to accept a design that centered all of the club seats in two big sections in the middle of the field. Those "fans" spend more time in the bars inside the clubhouses instead of outside in the elements watching the game. Those seats should have ringed the stadium instead.