Jeff Montgomery, a Park Hill graduate, was named a Missouri Sports Hall of Fame Elite 11 recipient this year. The hall honors former high school and college standouts as well as those who have made positive contributions to the game of football in the Show-Me State.
He was a standout football player and later ended up playing at Missouri. He would then return to Columbia to coach for the Tigers before getting out of coaching to become a State Farm Insurance salesman in Webb City, Mo.
To this day, he still is part of Missouri football games for his work on the chain gang at each home game.
“I was born in Columbia,” Montgomery told the Citizen. “I had black and gold blood.”
That dates back to his father, Rich, who was also on the chain gang for football games at Mizzou. He just concluded his 20th year working each home game, but still shy of his dad’s 50 years of service.
Some of those years, his dad got a front row view of his son playing for the Tigers. Jeff Montgomery was a standout for the Trojans and earned all-conference honors in 1983.
He decided to walk-on at Missouri as a tight end and joined a pair of former teammates from Park Hill on the roster in Jeff Stein and Jeff Kelso, who won the Simone Award in 1983.
Montgomery was a tight end for coach Warren Powers and earned a varsity letter in 1988.
JACK ST. LOUIS/Special to the Citizen
Park Hill graduate Jeff Montgomery holds the down marker during the Missouri vs. Tennessee football game held on Saturday, Nov. 23 at Faurot Field in Columbia, Mo. Montgomery has been on the chain gang since 1999.
He recalled his high school football coach, Joe Minter, told him to go to MU and ‘don’t ask what if?’ years later. Montgomery was at MU from 1984 to 1989 and after graduation started working for his dad’s State Farm location in Blue Springs. He found being away from football hard and got into coaching at his alma mater, working for Park Hill in 1991 and 1992 for coach Kelly Groom. There were no teaching jobs for Montgomery so he was a campus security supervisor who roamed the halls to make sure wayward students went to class, while overseeing lunches and the in-school suspension room.
In terms of football coach, he spent two years putting the Trojans playbook on a computer system.
The opportunity to return to Missouri presented itself in the way of a graduate assistant spot for coach Bob Stoll to start the 1993 season.
When new coach Larry Smith rolled into to town, Montgomery became the director of football operations for the Tigers. He was there for four seasons working for the Tigers, a team that struggled to get wins in the Big 8 Conference, but things started changing during his tenure. The school brought in running back Brock Olivo and defensive lineman Jeff Marriott — who now resides in Platte City — who landed in the NFL and versatile quarterback Corby Jones, who led the Tigers to their first winning season in 13 years. Montgomery left after the 1996 season and moved to Phoenix and the next year, the Tigers made a bowl game for the first time in 15 years, going to the Holiday Bowl.
After two years away from Mizzou, he joined the chain crew with his dad in the fall of 1999. At the time, he was working as an insurance agent in Arizona, but he and his wife moved to southwest Missouri in 2000. That made the commute to Columbia to work with his dad a little bit easier.
He didn’t know much about the town but recalls the Tigers recruited a pair of players from there during his tenure named Grant and Tracy Wistrom. Both brothers chose another Big 8 school — Nebraska — before going onto to playing in the NFL.
Growing up in Kansas City, Montgomery recalled spending every Missouri home game with his dad. When he was in junior high, his job was to go under the bleachers and pick up plastic cups that fell below for other members of the chain crew.
Those, though, were different times and a much different looking Memorial Stadium. There was a lot of memory over the years for Missouri football for him. Upset victories, stunning losses, crazy endings and even iconic memories such as the ‘5th down’ game against Colorado in 1990. For those who don’t know the history of that, the Buffaloes were given an extra down on what should’ve been a turnover and instead scored the go-ahead touchdown against Missouri. In 2010, ESPN did a 20-year anniversary special on that game and talked to his dad.
The younger Montgomery, now 53, spent this year not going to Columbia for the first time in his life without his dad. Now, Rich Montgomery is slowing down a bit. He retired as an insurance agent after 38 years. He landed a part-time job at Chick-fil-a in Blue Springs and serves as spotter in the press box during the Kansas City Chiefs home games.
Montgomery can be seen holding the box down marker on the start of drives at Faurot Field still. He took the same job his dad had and he said the timing was right with the fast-paced offense the Tigers had under former offensive coordinator Josh Heupel, now the Central Florida coach.
“It has been a treat,” he said of his time with Missouri. “It is very humbling to be a part of it.”
Contributed photo
Webb City resident Jeff Montgomery (right), a Park Hill graduate, receiving his Elite 11 Award from Gordon Kinne this fall.