Detroit-native Gus Johnson was the Lions' play-by-play announcer for preseason games a couple years ago and did his best to bring some excitement to exhibition games. After all, Johnson is known best for bringing excitement to the telecast, whether it is an early-season NFL game, a late-January Big 10 basketball game, an MMA fight on CBS, or March Madness. Now Johnson will be bringing his awesomeness to Madden NFL 11 as the game's play-by-play announcer, a move finally confirmed after months of rumors.
Since the Lions are only on CBS a couple times a season, there aren't many chances for Gus Johnson to call Detroit's games. Now that he is in Madden, though, he will be the announcer every time you fire up the game, making calls like this possible:
"Matthew Stafford drops back, scrambles, under pressure. He fires it to Calvin Johnson and it's CAUGHT, OH MY GOD IT'S CAUGHT. CALVIN JOHNSON DOWN THE SIDELINE. NO ONE IS GONNA CATCH HIM. TOUCHDOWN LIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Every sport has a few announcers that make the overall experience of watching a game much better or much worse. For NFL games on FOX, for example, Joe Buck does his best each week to just suck the life out of the whole telecast. He is boring and doesn't seem to even want to be there, and that just wrecks the broadcast. In Madden last year, that was also the case with Tom Hammond, who served as the play-by-play announcer. It's not that he was just outright boring or anything, but Hammond sounded so robotic that the audio aspect of Madden just stunk. In general the game was awesome, and it's shaping up to be great again this year, especially now that we for sure know Gus Johnson will be in the game.
Sticking with the audio presentation theme, the Madden 11 developers put out a video (see below) that discusses what improvements have been made to that part of the game. On top of adding Gus Johnson to the broadcast, the developers have worked on licensing songs like Crazy Train and Zombie Nation so they will be played right before kickoffs just like they are in many of the stadiums across the country. Chants and other noises (like the Vikings' horn) have also been greatly improved this year, adding to the overall experience of Madden. I doubt we will get to listen to Theo "Gridiron" Spight sing Gridiron Heroes every time the Lions score, but one can dream. Either way, I'm already pumped for Madden 11.