A word of advice to anybody with a weak heart: don’t tune in to the Big Ten Network on Wednesday night.

That’s because the channel is broadcasting the Michigan-Ohio State men’s basketball game, and play-by-play man Gus Johnson could give even the healthiest viewer a coronary.

The 43-year-old has become a phenomenon. Unique as an announcer, Johnson is notorious for his exciting, hair-raising style. If the play on the court is anywhere near compelling, count on Johnson to unleash enthusiasm like few others could, not hesitating to raise his voice to levels most humans are incapable of reaching.

Johnson represents a refreshing departure from most of his peers, who traditionally tend to embrace a reserved and stoic manner in front of the microphone. In an interview with The Michigan Daily this week, Johnson explained that his approach is simply a product of the excitement that unfolds before him.

“I’ve always been a big basketball fan,” Johnson said. “I think that the enthusiasm and the great energy that you see in college arenas with kids is transferrable to me when I call games. They get excited, I get excited … I just delight in the excellence in their play.”

Though Johnson has experience with a wide variety of sports — he currently calls NFL games for CBS and has called NBA action, mixed martial arts and boxing in the past as well — he’s most renowned for his college basketball work, particularly in the NCAA Tournament every March.

Through a host of clips of his calls on YouTube, Johnson's popularity has skyrocketed in recent years. His esteem is manifest in the website gusjohnsongetsbuckets.com — a soundboard containing bytes of his most recognizable exclamations.

“I wish I would’ve thought of it myself,” Johnson said. “Whoever thought of that, they deserve a shout out and I’d like to say thank you very much.

“It’s always great to get that positive reinforcement about what you’re doing. Hopefully, as time goes on, (we can) continue to add more bytes to it, and people can continue to have fun playing around with it and enjoying it.”

He became so well-known that EA Sports hired him to do the voice work for both NCAA Basketball 10 and Madden NFL 11. Johnson joked that it wasn’t until his seven-year-old son started hearing him on his video games that he actually began to think his father was a “big star.”

The result of his greater visibility has been a surge in the number of Johnson’s fans.

LSA senior Jacob Tugendrajch, one such enthusiast, said he will always flip to a close game solely because Johnson is broadcasting it, and that he will record the Ohio State game on Wednesday so he can go back and listen to Johnson's calls.

“He’s the most excitable person in the history of the world,” Tugendrajch, a member of the Maize Rage, said before the Kansas game last Sunday. “He makes a 20-point blowout seem like it’s overtime in the Super Bowl. It’s pretty awesome.”

When Johnson comes to Ann Arbor to work the game with the Buckeyes, it will be a homecoming of sorts. He grew up in Detroit and attended University of Detroit Jesuit High School (the same school that Wolverine redshirt freshman forward Jordan Morgan went to).

Broadcasting was natural for Johnson. It's something he learned from participating in oratorical contests while growing up in Michigan. Though he majored in political science at Howard University, Johnson interned at a radio station and then a television station, quickly realizing he wanted to be an announcer.

His mother and other family members still live in the area, and Johnson said one of the reasons the Big Ten Network was such an appealing job was that it would allow him to come home to Michigan fairly often.

Johnson will have a bias to put aside Wednesday night, as he said he grew up and remains a Michigan fan. He remembers watching the Wolverines during the program’s glory days of the 1970's and 1980's, all the way through the Fab Five era in the early 1990's.

Having broadcast Michigan’s recent game at Wisconsin, Johnson is familiar with this edition of the Wolverines. He’s impressed with what he sees, recognizing that they’re a young team, but improving all the time.

“Sometimes it takes a while to get back, but I think (Michigan coach John) Beilein has them on the right path,” Johnson said.