You know the deal with Gus Johnson. He’s the play-by-play guy who cried miracle, the man for whom no third down conversion is insignificant. Tell Gus Johnson that your happy hour special includes dollar oysters and you’d better not be standing next to a windowpane.
There’s great danger in being such an excitable play-by-play guy, because what happens when you ARE calling something remarkable, perhaps even historic? Well, if you’re Gus Johnson, you experience what I can only describe as a kind of late-stage puberty. Listen for yourself:
Here’s the deal. Yesterday, No. 2(!) Indiana visited Happy Valley to play unranked Penn State, then losers of five straight. The Hoosiers banked a 20-7 lead in the first half, and appeared well on their way to an easy victory afterward. Pretty boring shit. Not worthy of a Gus flipout.
But then, The Spirit of Sandusky gripped Beaver Stadium and the Nittany Lions scored 17 unanswered points to pull ahead with less than two minutes to go. Amazing! A dead pedophile just got its wings! That pending upset had Gus pretty hyped, but no amount of lozenges could prepare his larynx for what transpired next. That’s because, starting from his own 20, Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza orchestrated a 10-play, 80-yard drive that ended with WR Omar Cooper going Mr. Fantastic to tap his toe down in the back of the end zone for the game-winning touchdown. Look at this shit. Fucking look at it!
This was, no bullshit, one of the best catches you will ever see, at any level of the sport. And in such a clutch moment, too! Cooper’s heroics merited an effusive reaction from the booth. But what if the screambot helming that booth has already been set to 150-percent effusiveness for the three hours proceeding it? Well, it ends up sounding like a 12-year-old being murdered right as his testosterone levels are in full bloom. Here’s the English translation of Gus’s call:
“Mendoza… in trouble! It’s out! Touchdown, wow! Omar Cooper, unbelievable! Give him the Heisman trophy now!”
Here is what it sounded like to human ears:
Mendozaaaaaa… In trubbaaaaaaa… IZZOW!... Touchdawowww!!!... ELAMAR COOPRUN!... [the sound of a grade schooler playing an electric guitar directly in front of an amp]…
You can hear Johnson’s voice shatter in real time in this clip. He’s aiming for an octave usually only available to babies, opera singers, and/or your home smoke detector. We’re talking about the high F on “Loving You,” here. As Johnson is a 58-year old man, he doesn’t possess the range to hit this note. But lord, did he try. He tried so hard that I actually saw his uvula coming flying out of the back of his throat and land next to Cooper in the end zone. If Johnson can call another game after this without sucking down 45 gallons of hot chamomile, I’ll be astounded.
And perhaps a touch disappointed. I usually forgive Gus Johnson for erring on the overcaffeinated side of things, because it’s better than the opposite style. But it was hard to appreciate Cooper’s remarkable catch yesterday with Metal Machine Music playing in the immediate aftermath. When history goes down on the field, the cardinal play-by-play rule is to stay out of the way. Gus Johnson never stays out of the way, and yesterday the audience, and his voice box, paid the ultimate price for it.
The good news is that he’s still better than Eric Collins.
