The Montour Spartans won another game Tuesday night.
Roughly 658,000 homes across the nation were tuned into the premiere edition of "Bound for Glory," the ESPN reality-based series following the Dick Butkus-coached Montour High School football team.
Paul Melvin, ESPN's assistant manager of communication, called the 0.7 rating "solid."
Although ESPN couldn't readily provide local numbers for the one-hour episode -- which aired at 10 p.m. between the 2005 World Series of Poker and SportsCenter -- the show drew mainly positive reviews from those closest to its production. The second of eight episodes will air Tuesday, Sept. 27.
"I enjoyed watching it as much as my son enjoyed playing in it," said Dan Iorio, whose son, Anthony, is a junior lineman.
Senior defensive back Joey Kulik watched the show from his hospital bed at Allegheny General. He was suffering from air in his chest cavity, but it dispersed on its own and he is cleared to play Friday. For a while, he was a celebrity in the hospital.
"When we were down in the ER room, every resident that ever played football had heard about the show," his mother, Donna Kulik said. "They were all fussing over him. They were asking him about ESPN and Dick Butkus. I said, 'Just take care of my child.' But it was kind of exciting."
The Montour fans were able to look past some of ESPN's broad license and inaccuracies -- terming it a school in hard-scrabble McKees Rocks (that's only the mailing address) -- and focus on the overall production of the show.
"It was excellent," said Rick Brosky, whose daughter, Emily, is a varsity cheerleader. "It's about more than football. They are in the hallways and lunchrooms. It's going to be more about their daily lives."
The debut included hospital trips by senior linebacker Morgan Singletary and sophomore running back Christian Wilson; a handful of scenes with coach Lou Cerro; a well-received swimming pool scene; and harsh reviews by Butkus during the early days of training camp.
"They were saying we were slow and lacked strength and stuff like that," junior safety Brock McClelland said. "Whenever they showed camp, they basically showed freshman dropping passes. They sort of made us look worse than we were."
Said quarterback Nick DiIanni said. "We looked at it as constructive criticism. It made us get after it even more and pushed us even harder."
The players watched an early release Monday night in their newly refurbished locker room, one of the new upgrades paid for by the show. Many of them gathered at junior Bryce Pfeuffer's house to watch the airing on ESPN.
"They showed McKees Rocks and Coraopolis, not where we actually live," Pfeuffer said. "That was kind of weird."
The initial show followed the WPIAL Class AAA team through training camp. Montour is 1-3 heading into Friday's non-conference game against visiting Elizabeth Forward.
Butkus was mainly in the background during the first weeks of training camp while Cerro ran the team. But the Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker is taking an increased role with the Spartans.
After the Spartans' 47-15 loss to Hopewell on Sept. 9, Butkus and defensive backs coach and former NFL player Ray Crockett changed the defense from a four-man to a five-man front. The move worked, as Montour held the Moon offense without a point in the second half of last week's eventual 21-17 loss.
Butkus and Cerro reportedly argued over some of the changes, and eventually apologized to the team for their outburst, Pfeuffer said.
"They just had to get it out," Pfeuffer said. "They are both trying to do two different things. When they had that argument, I think it kind of helped us."
