College football’s Bowl Championship Series (BCS) championship game earned a 17.4 rating/27 share Monday night, making it the fourth-highest rated game in the 37-game history of the BCS despite being a mostly one-sided affair.
While trailing the numbers for last year’s title game, ABC’s 21.7/35 for the Rose Bowl, Monday’s rating was higher than the championship games from 2002-2005.
The University of Florida’s 41-14 upset victory of Ohio State University drew 28.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched primetime program of the season. The rating was the second-highest on the season, behind a November 15 of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars.
The game also gave Fox its highest-rated and most-watched Monday night since the Joe Millionaire finale on February 17, 2003.
The ratings for the game were predictably huge in Ohio, where it averaged a 49.7/69 in Columbus, a 44.9/62 in Cleveland and a 43.5/58 in Dayton. In Florida, the game did a 41.9/55 in Orlando and a 41.6/55 in Jacksonville.
