Football fans tuned in after midnight for the wild finish of Monday night’s Fiesta Bowl, the first of the college Bowl Championship Series games on Fox.

From midnight to 12:51 a.m. ET, when spunky underdog Boise State scored on three trick plays to tie mighty Oklahoma twice, then go ahead to keep its undefeated season alive, viewership averaged a 8.4 Nielsen Media Research household rating, up from the previous 90 minutes, which averaged a 7.6 rating.

Overall, the game scored an 8.3 rating, down from last year’s Fiesta Bowl, which featured two high-profile teams, Ohio State and Notre Dame. Fox contends that a better comparison is the 2005 game because it featured another mid-major conference team, Utah, against Pittsburgh. That game drew a 7.4 rating.

After the game, 7 million people were watching when Boise State runner Ian Johnson, who scored the winning points, proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend during a post-game interview. Fox said it was the highest-rated proposal in sports since Ahmad Rashad proposed on Thanksgiving Day 1985 on NBC.



(Editor: Gilbert)