Bobby Carpenter: Gus Johnson ‘sounded like a sad clown’ calling Ohio State-Kent State blowout

Bobby Carpenter: Gus Johnson ‘sounded like a sad clown’ calling Ohio State-Kent State blowout

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Bobby Carpenter: Gus Johnson ‘sounded like a sad clown’ calling Ohio State-Kent State blowout
Gus Johnson
Credit: Fox Sports

Gus Johnson has spent years building a reputation as the announcer who makes big moments feel bigger. Saturday, calling Ohio State’s 59-3 rout of Kent State, he sounded like he wanted to be almost anywhere else.

That wasn’t just the impression of viewers watching from home, or us at Awful Announcing. Bobby Carpenter, a former Ohio State linebacker, picked up on it, too, and by the final whistle he thought Johnson sounded thoroughly miserable.

“Gus Johnson just sounded like a sad clown out there at the end of the game, like he didn’t want to be there calling it,” Carpenter said on his The Bobby Carpenter Show. “And I don’t blame him. It wasn’t a compelling game. You knew coming in it probably wasn’t gonna be a compelling game. Maybe you get the Western Michigan-Michigan game, and something like that happens, but that’s a rarity. You probably thought with a 48, 50-point line, whatever the heck it was, 52, that it was going to be a blowout, and it was. And at the end of the game, Gus is still sitting there, like pouting, as if, like, ‘Why am I here? Why do I have to do this?'”

Johnson’s apathy wasn’t confined to garbage time, either. His call of Ohio State’s very first touchdown, a Ja’Kobi Jackson score, carried almost none of his trademark punch, and was a noticeably muted version of the broadcaster fans have come to expect.

His next touchdown call was every bit as subdued.

That same low energy carried through the Buckeyes’ third and fourth touchdowns of the afternoon, extending even to an interception deep in Kent State territory. Johnson’s trademark bravado briefly resurfaced on a Hail Mary touchdown right before halftime, the one moment that finally sounded like the Gus Johnson people actually tune in to hear.

The revival proved fleeting, as Johnson stayed just as muted on Chris Henry Jr.’s touchdown, the finish to a 75-yard scamper that would ordinarily get the full Gus treatment, and he retreated into the same flat gear on Ohio State’s next score. And by the time a defensive lineman scooped up a loose ball and rumbled untouched into the end zone, Johnson could scarcely be bothered to react.

The one moment his voice genuinely reignited arrived late in the fourth quarter, and tellingly, it had nothing to do with Ohio State at all. It was reserved for Kent State’s lone interception of the day.

This isn’t the first time Johnson has been oddly dull and dour on his big-play calls. When we look back at other times it’s been noticeable, it feels like it only happens when the game itself wasn’t expected to be competitive or, at the very least, the “game of the week.” That’s led some to speculate that Johnson is doing some form of protest for having to call a game he’d rather not be working. In this case, perhaps he wanted to travel to London for FS1’s broadcast of Arizona State-Kansas along with the Big Noon Kickoff crew.

None of this rises above speculation, of course. Only Johnson himself knows whether genuine frustration or simple exhaustion explains his muted delivery, and it would be a disservice to ignore the countless Saturdays where he shows up as advertised, channeling exactly the kind of unbridled, electrifying enthusiasm that cemented his reputation as college football’s preeminent broadcasting personality in the first place

But, as Carpenter said, Johnson seemed like xxx

The post Bobby Carpenter: Gus Johnson ‘sounded like a sad clown’ calling Ohio State-Kent State blowout appeared first on Awful Announcing.

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