Kirk Herbstreit defends Gus Johnson over call of Colorado-TCU game

College football and NFL commentator Kirk Herbstreit came to the defense of Fox Sports' Gus Johnson after Johnson received some criticism for his call of this past Saturday's game between the Colorado Buffaloes and TCU Horned Frogs.

"First of all, you don’t want to do a 45-to-3 game," Herbstreit told the Barrett Sports Media website. "So if I’m guilty of anything, I’m kind of excited when the game’s competitive. If a team gets down by a couple of scores and then they come back and tie it? Selfishly speaking, I get excited."

Colorado's thrilling 45-42 victory over TCU became the most-hyped event of the sports weekend, in part because it featured Pro Football Hall of Famer Deion Sanders winning his Buffaloes coaching debut. 

As mentioned by Sean Keeley of Awful Announcing, however, some viewers took to social media to note how the often-energetic Johnson committed multiple curious gaffes on Saturday afternoon. 

Barrett Sports Media also pointed out how individuals such as Cleveland media personality and (sometimes) national radio host Ken Carman said that it felt during portions of the broadcast that Johnson was "pulling for Colorado" to win because such a result made for a better overall "storyline." 

Carman added he thought Johnson "was great" on Saturday, and Herbstreit suggested he wouldn't have been able to hide his excitement while calling the high-scoring affair.  

"If you have a game going back and forth like they had in that particular game, it’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of the game," Herbstreit said. "It was like two or three plays, touchdown! Two or three plays, touchdown! How do you not get into that? It’s very easy to get caught up. That’s why we all love college football, the emotion of it and the pageantry." 

Sanders next leads No. 22 Colorado into a home game versus the 0-1 Nebraska Cornhuskers this coming Saturday. As of Wednesday afternoon, OddsChecker listed the Buffaloes as the favorites (-154, -3.5) to win that contest.