A modest proposal

If you stuck around long enough in the post-game show of Monday night's Fiesta Bowl, you saw Fox reporter Chris Myers give Boise State running back Ian Johnson a prime-time window to pop the question to his cheerleader girlfriend Chrissy Popadics, but almost spoiling the moment by announcing after his interview with Johnson that it was now time to make the proposal.
Popadics heard Myers and had a shocked look on her face even before Johnson struck the unmanly on-one-knee pose and asked for her hand in marriage.
After a finish to a game that could be one of the greatest in BCS history -- three touchdowns and one two-point conversion in the final 1:30 of regulation, then more razzle-dazzle in overtime for a 43-42 finish - Johnson's proposal was just as crazy a capper as anything else.
What if Boise State, who could be the only Division I college football team to finish undefeated, had another game. Against, say, Ohio State, who's been given the honor of facing Florida for the BCS Championship on the game Glendale, Ariz., field on Jan. 8.
That's another proposal Fox play-by-play man Thom Brenneman was hardly afraid to put forth during the closing moments of the Fiesta Bowl. His strong-worded pronouncement -- I wish I had it on the TiVo, but somehow I missed capturing it -- concerned the fact that had a team like Boise State been allowed to move ahead in a post-season playoff, we could see just how they'd stack up against the so-called power conferences. Even a grumbling Keith Jackson, who'd make his displeasures known in the media, was never that forceful in his bellowing on the air during a game.
We appreciate Brenneman's sentiment. But then, it was also Brenneman who exclaimed as if he just made it up: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog," after Boise State tied the game with seconds left in regulation on a "hook-and-lateral play" as analyst Charles Davis decided it should be called.
As for the proposal by Johnson, who ran in the winning 2-point conversion on a Statue of Liberty-type play, he told the Associated Press late Monday night that he made the decision to go ahead with it "as soon as the camera got on me. ... I had the ring in my room. I was waiting for us to go back to California (the San Dimas native is a 2004 graduate of Damien High in La Verne) but the moment just hit. There was no better time."
Popadics accepted but only after saying: "I think I'm going to pass out."
"She finally figured it out," Johnson said, "and she eventually did say yes."
Fox reported Tuesday that Johnson's proposal was seen by 7 million viewers (4.4 rating/12 share), making it the the highest-rated marriage proposal in sports since the 1985 Ahmad Rashad-Phylicia Ayers Allen proposal on NBC’s Thanksgiving Day NFL pre-game show (13.5/31). That marriage didn't last. Maybe because O.J. Simpson was Rashad's best man.
Defensive back Marty Tadman said Johnson "is a little different guy."
"When you think of Ian Johnson proposing to his girlfriend, you've got to think of the weirdest circumstance that he could possible do it," Tadman said. "I think this was it."
Things could be weirder. Boise State could be facing Ohio State for a mythical national title.