Midnight in Chattanooga

Mickey Matthews was still fuming as the Dukes broke the huddle on second down. Rascati faked an end-around to Antoinne Bolton and settled into the pocket. Downfield, Boxley and Bolton ran pass patterns into the end zone. The JMU line held strong but Rascati had no open receivers. He motioned to Boxley, slid to his right and stepped up to throw. Three yards in front of him, Montana defensive tackle Kerry Mullen broke into the backfield and charged at the Madison quarterback.

The sheer mechanics of throwing a football leaves a quarterback completely open to a big hit. Rascati, with his deliberate, over-the-top motion, was exposed as he pumped to throw. No one was open and he heaved the ball through the back of the end zone. A split-second later, Mullen jumped into the air, swung his right arm around and caught Rascati with a punch to the facemask.

The recoil snapped Rascati’s head back like a bobblehead doll and sent the Madison quarterback to the ground. The pass landed out of bounds. The penalty flag landed a few yards away from Mullen, who, in the heat of the moment, had completely lost control. “I couldn’t believe it,” Durden later said. “I kept saying, ‘This guy needs to be ejected.’ The kid threw a punch and he should have been thrown out of the ballgame. That could have changed everything if he knocked [Justin] out.”

In the Finley Stadium pressbox, writers strained their necks toward the two small corner TV’s to catch the replay. On the Montana sideline, a frustrated and stunned Bobby Hauck stared in disbelief before removing his headset and motioning for Mullen to come out of the game. The hit was so surprising that it caught almost everyone off guard. Matthews and Dudley later admitted they didn’t see it until they watched film the following day. Mike Barber said the play shocked him. “The game didn’t have that flavor to it,” he explained. “Sometimes you’re sitting in the pressbox and you’re waiting for something to happen because you see it building on the field. This wasn’t one of those games. At no point was anyone expecting someone to take a shot at Justin.”

Instead of third-and-goal from the 13, the Dukes now were awarded a first down at the Montana six. In the JMU huddle, Rascati’s emotions had taken over. His normally reserved demeanor had snapped into overdrive after the previous play. Rascati barely realized what had happened; to him it simply was a late hit to the facemask. He wouldn’t fully understand until long after the game. Yet he was visibly pumped up, as though he wanted to make the Grizzlies pay for Mullen’s costly mistake. “I remember leaving the huddle and thinking I wasn’t going to be stopped,” he later said.

The Dukes walked to the line and Rascati pointed toward the Montana defense. “You guys just lost the national championship,” he is believed to have yelled. And then Rascati boldly cut through the middle and raced into the end zone for his second touchdown run of the night.