10 FOR 10: Christian Montagliani was the other quarterback the day J.R. House made history

*** THIS IS THE FIFTH in a series of 10 local sports stories The Dominion Post believes would make a good sports documentary. They will be posted online every Saturday and Tuesday through June 30.

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — The old videos, DVDs and press clippings had been stored away in Christian Montagliani’s house in the Dallas suburbs for years.

His plan was to break them out and bring them back to Morgantown for his 20th high school reunion this summer.

“Then COVID-19 hit and that was pretty much that,” said Montagliani, Morgantown High’s starting quarterback in 1998 and 1999.

As it turns out, that wasn’t all she wrote for those memories.

At the encouragement from former classmates, Montagliani downloaded hours of old Morgantown High football and boys’ basketball footage and highlight videos into his own YouTube channel called MotownDallas.

Even with 31 videos and more than 70 hours of footage on the channel, there is a glaring hole in the form of the one memory Montagliani would rather keep stuffed away in that box forever.

In the 1998 Class AAA state championship football game, Montagliani found himself simply as “the other quarterback” on a day that has never been duplicated or approached in West Virginia prep history.

On the other sideline was Nitro’s J.R. House, who tied a national record that day in Wheeling with 10 touchdown passes in what ended up as a 69-52 victory for the Wildcats.

“I’ve never gone back and watched that game,” Montagliani said. “The only thing I’ve ever seen is I took one play from that game and put it on my recruiting video that I sent out to colleges. Other than that, in the past 22 years, I’ve never watched a second of that game and I don’t even like to think about it, to be honest with you.”

Personal reflection

In 25 years covering sports, House’s performance that day is still the single greatest athletic moment I’ve ever witnessed.

In my opinion, it even makes West Virginia’s win against Kentucky to advance to the 2010 Final Four pale in comparison simply because the Mountaineers can one day get back to the Final Four.

There is no West Virginia high school quarterback who is ever going to throw 10 touchdown passes in a single game again, let alone in the state championship.

“Some of those throws I can still picture in my head to this day,” said Glen McNew, the Mohigans’ head coach in 1998. “The one to (Chris) Martin where he laid out and made the catch in the front corner of the end zone, I still see that like it’s happening right now.”

In all fairness, we want to make it known that title game was not a battle of quarterbacks. It was not built as a Tom Brady against Peyton Manning type of game.

Where House and Nitro demolished teams through the air, Morgantown did it with running back Chris Yura and its running game.

Yura had already committed to Notre Dame that season and became a special-teams captain of the Irish in college.

In 1997, Yura was the Kennedy Award winner, given annually to the state’s top football player.

But, by late in the 1998 season, Yura had battled through a serious turf toe injury and wasn’t at full strength in the championship game.

He played in the first quarter before coming out of the game for good.

“That game was J.R. vs. Chris and everyone knew that,” Montagliani said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be asked to go out and try to do what J.R. was doing.

“Chris had been hurt through the whole playoffs and it just kept getting worse. That was a big mental blow for everyone, because Chris was our leader.”

Would it had made a difference if Yura had been at full strength?

“That’s a hard question to answer, because Nitro played so well that day,” McNew said. “I think it was more of a mental block for our guys than anything else, because you have a kid who had rushed for 3,000 yards and 50 touchdowns and we knew all week that he may not last long in that game. I think that was tough for everyone to kind of see that.”

The other QB

It is here we flash back to Montagliani, a 6-foot-3 lanky young man in those days with an athletic frame and his own rocket of an arm that rarely took a back seat to any opposing quarterback on the Mohigans’ schedule.

“Christian really was one heck of an athlete and a great quarterback for us,” McNew said. “He was also very high-spirited. I would say he had a very unique personality.

“He would do things in practice sometimes that you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Maybe I should go over and put a stop to this,’ but looking back on it now, it was great having a personality like that on our team. There was never a dull moment around him.”

It is through Montagliani’s eyes we want to tell this story, because of his unique position as being the other quarterback on the field that day.

He was also playing as a defensive back — he had been inserted there in just the week leading up to the game — and was an unfortunate witness on both ends of House’s historic achievement.

“Man, I’ll tell you, J.R. could really spin it,” Montagliani said. “After that season, I started going to some national passing camps and saw some of the best quarterbacks in the country, but what J.R. did that day was really one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from any quarterback.”

In an odd twist, Montagliani actually picked off one of House’s passes, only to have it called back on a holding penalty from the other side of the field. The next play, House went right back to receiver Jeff Clark for a touchdown pass against Montagliani.

“I knew they were going to come right back at me,” Montagliani said. “My thoughts were what route were they going to use? J.R. threw a perfect fade in the corner and there was nothing I could do.

“That’s kind of how the whole game was. There was one play where I saw the ball coming on a comeback route and I stepped in front and I knew I was going to pick it off, but the ball just sailed right over my fingers. You were dizzy out there. You just felt like no matter what you did, it was the wrong move.”

Morgantown folklore

Every community has its stories, conspiracy theories or its own little take on certain moments that are whispered about in churches or debated at length at the local watering hole.

In Morgantown High athletic circles, this game in 1998 offers up such a story.

According to historical weather forecasts, it was an unseasonably warm 60 degrees in Wheeling for the noon kickoff on Dec. 5.

Yet House played the game with a head covering under his helmet that stretched all the way down his neck.

Speak to just about anyone on that 1998 MHS team and they believe that House played that game with a microphone in his ear and was getting directions on where to throw the football.

To McNew’s credit, he offered up a “no comment” on the matter.

But, the whispers are very much real.

“I don’t think anyone was talking about it during the game,” Montagliani said. “Maybe it started on the bus ride home or maybe it was a few weeks later, but yeah, it was being talked about. A lot of us thought it was a possibility.

“They still played great. I don’t know if the story is true or not, and I’ll pretty much leave it at that.”

Through the course of 22 years, it appears to have remained a local theory.

“I had never heard of that before,” said Charleston Gazette-Mail sportswriter Rick Ryan, who covered the game. “If it was true, you’d think someone would have let the cat out of the bag by now.”

Moving on

After graduating in 2000, Montagliani had a partial academic scholarship offer from the University of Pennsylvania to continue his football career.

Ivy League schools are not permitted to hand out athletic scholarships.

Instead, Montagliani said he felt better trying to walk-on at West Virginia.

Former WVU head coach Don Nehlen, “sat down and talked with me and he told me about Fork Union Military Academy,” Montagliani said. “He thought that would be a good move for me, so that’s where I went.”

After a season at the Virginia prep school, Montagliani accepted an offer to play at Army in West Point, N.Y., where he was transitioned to tight end.

He caught his lone touchdown pass as a junior against Connecticut, which also had former MHS teammate Seth Fogarty playing receiver.

Army coach Todd Berry was fired after Montagliani’s junior season and he transferred back to WVU, gave up football and earned his degree in mechanical engineering.

Today, he is in Dallas, where he operates his own recruiting firm named Hire2Lead, which helps military personnel transition back to civilian life and find jobs after their service to their country.

Twenty-two years later, maybe his place in West Virginia prep football history is as a footnote or the answer to some weird trivia question as the other quarterback that day J.R. House threw 10 touchdown passes.

If it is, so be it.

“To me, what hurts me the most is I would say my own performance that day was below average,” Montagliani said. “It was not one of my better games at quarterback.”

There have been no off-chance meetings between the two quarterbacks since that day in Wheeling.

If that moment ever came?

“Man, that’s a good question,” he said. “I would probably just introduce myself. I wouldn’t even bring up that 1998 game, unless he mentioned it first.”

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