It’s known as the Greatest High School Football Game Ever Played and the Miracle at Montclair. A state championship that ended in such dramatic and mysterious fashion that people are still debating what truly happened more than 30 years later.
But for one team that took part in the game, the lives of their players were never the same. And decades later, they’re still trying to pick up the pieces.
That’s at the root of a new investigative sports podcast from NJ Advance Media, “Lights Out: The loss of a lifetime.”
The eight-part serial podcast, which debuts Tuesday, is a production of Campside Media and Entertainment One, in association with NJ Advance Media and XTR. The project is based on NJ Advance Media reporter Matthew Stanmyre’s 2019 award-winning feature story, “The day that changed everything.”
Released this week, the full audio trailer gives the first glimpse of what’s coming from the ambitious project, told by Stanmyre as he embarks on a journey to examine the stranger-than-fiction twists, life-altering consequences and dramatic mysteries of the most iconic high school football game in New Jersey history.
The first episode of the serial podcast will be released Tuesday. You can listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The remaining episodes will be released weekly.
“Lights Out: The loss of a lifetime,” debuts Sept. 12 wherever you get your podcasts.
The podcast will explore the legendary state championship game between Montclair and Randolph. It was hailed as a matchup unlike any seen on any high school football field. On the one side was Randolph, a team playing for a state-record 49-game unbeaten streak and the memory of its beloved head coach, who died just two weeks earlier. On the other was Montclair, a top-ranked juggernaut looking to stamp its legacy as the greatest team ever from one of New Jersey’s greatest high school football programs.
The game came down to a series of controversial calls in the final seconds. But that was just the beginning of the mystery.
After the game, the Montclair head coach seemed to vanish and he never coached another day.
And the team’s star senior quarterback never took another meaningful snap, and his life unraveled almost instantly, plunging him down a path no one could have foreseen.
Many other Montclair players who took part that day said their lives were irrevocably altered. They could never forget the anguish they felt; some could simply never move on.
“I know players and grown men to this day who never recovered,” longtime Montclair assistant coach Sandy Hunter said.
“Lights Out” examines what truly happened to the players and coaches, and raises big questions about sports, growing up, and the moments in life, big and small, that change who we become, and who we may never get the chance to be.
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Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
