Give 'Dirty Old Man' Brent Musburger a Break, Say Katherine Webb's Parents

Some people got upset during the BCS college football championship game on Sunday when 73-year-old ESPN sportscaster Brent Musburger went gaga over 23-year-old Katherine Webb, the beauty queen girlfriend of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron.

"You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women," Musburger said when the cameras turned to Webb, the reigning Miss Alabama. "What a beautiful woman."

Critics immediately tagged Musburger as a “dirty old man.”

But while ESPN apologized for the comments, Webb's parents are asking Musburger's detractors to lay off.

"On one hand, you can look at it as being kind of like the dirty old man,” Alan Web
told Fox 5 Atlanta. “But I'm used to this and I think if you really look into what that he was trying to say, he was trying to be complimentary, and I think they need to give Brent a break."

Webb’s mother also expressed surprise over the dust up.

"She didn't even know that they had the camera on her," said Leslie Webb. "She didn't see it."

Webb’s parents say they are very proud of her, and all the attention is just part of her role as Miss Alabama. They told a local news station that Webb was once an ugly duckling, but has since gained confidence.

"That's actually what the Miss USA pageant did for Katherine is to help develop a better self-esteem to finally love herself," Leslie Webb said. “Her self-confidence grew dramatically because of that.”

ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys sent out a tweet on Tuesday apologizing for the comments.

"We always try to capture interesting storylines and the relationship between an Auburn grad who is Miss Alabama and the current Alabama quarterback certainly met that test," he said. "However, we apologize that the commentary in this instance went too far and Brent understands that."

Speaking of tweets. According to The Daily Beast, Webb saw her Twitter followers explode from about 2,300 before kickoff to close to 200,000 by Wednesday morning. And ever the opportunist, Donald Trump tweeted, “We are going to ask Katherine Webb to be a judge at the Miss USA Pageant coming up in Las Vegas.”

McCarron iced the cake by leading the Crimson Tide to a 42-14 trouncing of Notre Dame.