There may be a great deal of fans who truly enjoyed last night's (Jan. 9, 2012) episode of WWE Monday Night Raw but that's not reflected in the ratings that were released today.

In fact, the numbers took a significant hit thanks to the big BCS National Championship Game pitting Alabama vs. LSU that took place on ESPN. That bowl game garnered a whopping 24 million viewers and the numbers were actually down a bit from last year.

The left Raw with a 2.87 rating (down from last week's 3.10) with 4.10 million viewers for the first hour and 3.92 million viewers for the second hour, which continues the trend of losing viewership as the show goes along.

Of course, as many of you Cagesiders speculated, it's entirely possible the reason last night's show felt so different was that they never thought they could compete with the big college football game anyway. So why not troll the hell out of the viewers that did watch with segments including Chris Jericho crying his eyes out without speaking again, Brodus Clay debuting as The Funkasaurus and Kane stalking Zack Ryder all night.

Who wouldn't want to watch that over a football game?

For complete Raw results and the running live blog click here and for all the reactions to the show click here.