This has earned him the scorn of broadcasting purists and decibel-averse fans alike. "He has absolutely no ability whatsoever to distinguish between the various stages of a basketball game," grumbled one blogger last year, while Michael Hiestand wrote in USA Today that Johnson "once again seems to be getting intermittent shock therapy while he's trying to call basketball."
But the naysayers just don’t get it. "He could make a chess match sound exciting," exulted ESPN.com's Bill Simmons, whose near-obsession with Johnson is often credited with fomenting the Gusmania. ("You helped change my life. I gotta give it up to you," recognized Johnson in an interview on Simmons's podcast.) And his over-the-top exuberance happens to be perfectly suited to the early rounds of March Madness. Because there are so many games going on simultaneously, fans outside of local TV markets only see brief stretches of most games, so there's not time for Johnson's style to wear thin. (It wasn't a very good fit, for instance, for last year's Louisville–Stanford match-up, a snoozer the Cardinals led by more than 20 points for essentially the entire game--but few outside of Kentucky and California saw it.)
Johnson has a special knack, though, for turning close, exciting, nationally televised games into enduring memories. All announcers wind up doing some of these contests, but Johnson is far better suited to them than are most of CBS's other play-by-play announcers, like the anodyne Brown or the plodding Dick Enberg. Enberg announces March Madness as though it were a first-round doubles match at Wimbledon or Thursday afternoon at the Masters. But it isn't, especially during games like the UCLA–Gonzaga showdown of two years ago. Other announcers narrate what they see, as if you couldn't already tell from watching. Johnson manages to convey how he feels. During memorable games, that's a much more useful--and exhilarating--piece of information.