ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

St. Louis led the United Football League in attendance and television ratings for regular-season games involving the local teams and followed with a strong performance for the circuit's inaugural title contest even though it didn't involve the hometown Battlehawks but was played on their field.

The affair Sunday was dull through the first half, then a blowout in the second as Birmingham pulled away to stuff San Antonio 25-0, and Birmingham drew the country's biggest TV rating for the game. Nielsen, which measures viewership, reports that 6.8% of that market in Alabama tuned into to Fox's telecast. San Antonio was second (3.6 rating) and St. Louis finished third (2.1).

The game eventually will serve as the answer to a trivia question: When, where and with whom did seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady make his Fox broadcasting debut? It was Sunday in the Dome at America’s Center, when he made a cameo appearance in the booth with play-by-play announcer Curt Menefee and analyst Joel Klatt. Brady is joining Fox's No. 1 NFL broadcasting team this season, supplanting commentator Greg Olsen alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt.

Brady appeared during the dry-as-dust first half.

“You get into these (title) games and there’s a lot of defense out there right now," he said. "The defense goes out and plays with a lot of energy, but someone has to get the ball down the field and try to open the field up a little bit. It’s been a lot of horizontal passes, and the defenses are swarming and trying to punch the ball out. Make them defend every blade of grass is what we used to say.�

Former standout St. Louis Rams (and Arizona Cardinals) quarterback Kurt Warner also was on hand and presented the game ball before kickoff, after getting it from a robot that looked like a dog. He also brought the league championship trophy to the stage afterward. Before the game, on Father's Day, he tossed a few passes to his son, Kade — a San Antonio receiver who did not have any receptions in the contest.

Nationally, the game averaged 1.6 million viewers to make it the most-watched spring football title contest since NBC drew 2.91 million for the 2001 XFL finale. The UFL was created with the offseason merger of the XFL and United States Football League, and Sunday's viewership figure surpassed last season's championship games for those circuits. The XFL's drew 1.44 million on ABC, the USFL's 1.16 million on NBC.

That's according to ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ Media Watch, which said that the entire UFL season averaged 850,000 viewers across five networks, a 34% increase from the 635,000 the two leagues combined to average last season.