Steve Schaack
ISU Athletics Media Relations
As a 13 year old boy, Jerry Miller sat in his bed with his transistor radio, listening to Los Angeles Lakers games called by the legendary announcers Chick Hearn and Hot Rod Hundley. Little would Miller realize his career would later provide him the opportunity to sit in Hot Rod’s chair and call NBA games in Los Angeles’ Forum with Chick Hearn sitting behind him in 1980.
“I said, ‘This is every dream I have ever had,’” Miller said. “What do I do now?”
Miller answered that question this week. On Jan. 24, when the Idaho State men’s basketball team played at Montana, the Voice of the Bengals called his 2,000th Idaho State radio broadcast.
Since moving to Pocatello in the fall of 1982 with four children and one on the way, Miller has been on the mic for ISU football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball, softball and soccer games.
Reaching the milestone of calling 2,000 games is something Miller can’t comprehend. During this time, one thing has become evident: Jerry Miller loves the Bengals.
“My blood is orange and black,” Miller said. “I have fallen in love with the people here, especially the student-athletes.
”Miller was destined for a career in broadcasting.
The road to Pocatello
As a senior at Sugar Salem High in Southeastern Idaho, Miller was a manager for his high school basketball team. The coaches asked him to video tape all the basketball games that year using a reel-to-reel video recorder.
“The first game I did at Sugar Salem I saw this microphone in the camera case,” Miller said. “I pulled it out knowing I had always wanted to do play by play. I plugged it into the camera and taped it to the side of the camera. As I panned the camera right and left and up and down the court, I called the game.” This began Miller’s broadcasting career.
“That was on a Saturday,” Miller said. “On Monday, I was walking down the hallway in school going to class, and I passed the coach who looks at me and says, ‘Hey Miller, I heard you on the video tape. You are as good as the guy doing Madison High School games on the radio.’ That was all the encouragement I needed.
”Following high school, Miller broadcasted Ricks College home basketball games on KVIK radio before serving a two-year LDS mission to South Korea. Upon his return, Miller resumed his play-by-play duties at Ricks, and after he graduated, he got a part-time job at KIGO AM in St. Anthony as a disc jockey and analyst for games at South Fremont High School. Miller did the South Fremont games with the station manager.
“One day after Christmas, his son called me at the station and said, ‘Dad is not feeling well,’ and he wondered if I could call the game at Firth,” Miller said. “On Monday, I come to work and the son comes in and says they want me to do the games. Just like that, I was doing high school games for South Fremont High School, and I ended up doing a few Madison games on their FM station.”
Miller admitted his play-by-play work saved his job at the radio station.
“The son wanted to fire my butt because I was a lousy DJ,” he said. “The dad said they couldn’t fire me because my wife just had a baby. He said, ‘Let me work with him.’”
Miller returned to school at BYU, took an internship at KSL and filled in for Jay Monson doing basketball games on KBYU. When the internship looked like it wasn’t going to evolve into a full-time job, Miller was headed back to Southeastern Idaho as a weekend reporter at Channel 8. Those plans didn’t last long.
“KSL called me up and said, ‘The state high school basketball tournaments are coming up in March, and we would like you to work another month and have you do a report at the end of every quarter of every game for four straight weeks,’” Miller said.
By the third week the radio station said to Miller, “What do you think if we broadcasted the championship game of the big schools tournament?”
Miller thought it was a great idea and got ahold of his childhood friend, Brad Rock of the Deseret News. The two did the game together on a Saturday night, and on Monday KSL had offered Miller a full-time job in radio.
“They said, ‘We are going to fire our overnight news editor and have you work overnights and eventually move into a full-time sports position as sports editor of KSL Radio,’” Miller said.
The same summer, the Utah Jazz announced its move from New Orleans to Salt Lake City. KSL got the contract to broadcast the games, and Miller was told by the program director that the Jazz needed someone to work for Hot Rod Hundley on weekends.
“I took a tape recorder to a game and recorded the game,” Miller said. “After the game was over, the assistant general manager says, ‘Do you have the tape?’”
Miller handed him the tape, and after three minutes of listening, was given the job as the backup radio announcer for the Utah Jazz. Miller did games in San Diego, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Houston and Madison Square Garden.
“It was unbelievable,” Miller said.
The move to Pocatello
Miller’s life changed for good during the summer of 1982. While working at KSL he took a story off the wire that said Larry Eckenrode, who was the play-by-play announcer at Idaho State, had a heart attack in his car on his way home from vacation in California and died.
“Larry just got contract back after the championship year,” Miller said. “I sent a tape to Pocatello. They brought me up for an interview and hired me. That is how I ended up in Pocatello. KSL offered me a job to come back, but the money wasn’t worth it.”
Miller’s first Idaho State broadcast was the first football game of the 1982 season at Drake. The Bengals were ranked No. 1, and Drake was in the Top 10.
“There was so much excitement after the championship year,” Miller said. “The athletic department came up with the money to charter the broadcast team on a private small plane on trips to Des Moines and Flagstaff.”
As the plane took off with Sports Information Director Glenn Alford, Jim Beck, Bill Kalivas and Miller, they hit windy weather as they headed over Wind River Mountains in Wyoming.
“The pilot is going back and forth against the mountain range trying to find a hole in the clouds,” Miller said. “I am sitting behind the pilot, and he asks for permission to go higher than 12,000 feet, which is required if you are in a cabin that isn’t pressurized.”
Once permission was granted the pilot asked Miller for an oxygen tank.
“I looked all over, and there is no oxygen tank,” Miller said. “He says ‘Oh well,’ and starts climbing.”
Once the plane got through Wyoming, the rest of the trip was smooth, but it was delayed a day coming home due to the same storm.
Miller’s first Idaho State broadcast was also memorable, as it was 85 degrees and 90 percent humidity outside.
“I thought I was going to die in a steam cooker,” he said. “ISU won and I thought, ‘This is awesome.’ We followed up on a championship season by beating a nationally ranked team. I am watching this team for the first time and I just fell in love with Idaho State. I will always remember that first game because of the travel, humidity and how well the Bengals played to beat Drake.”
The rest of the year didn’t go as smoothly, as the team suffered eight losses, five by a total of 13 points.
As Miller reflects on other memorable moments calling games for the Bengals, he can’t help but to smile about two wins over Boise State.
“When Jim Koetter was the head coach, we were playing at Boise State,” he said. “The Broncos had scored a touchdown late in the fourth quarter. There was a minute or two left in the game, and on the kickoff Frank Selto ran it back for a touchdown. We beat them on their field. I will never forget how happy everybody was after the game.”
Miller was also on the call for the famous Globe of Death game where Idaho State beat Boise State in Holt Arena on another last minute touchdown.
“I will never forget the feeling looking to the other end of the press box and seeing the expression of the Bronco radio announcers when we won,” Miller said. “It was so self-satisfying because Boise State looked down their noses at us.”
On the basketball court, the memories of Kenny McGowen and Ethan Telfair hitting last-second shots to beat Weber State in Holt Arena and Reed Gym stand out.
Miller called an Idaho State game at Oklahoma when Wayman Tisdale was a freshman, and on a trip to Iona for a tournament, Miller and the team went to the Broadway play “Cats.”
“I will never forget the look of amazement on the faces of those players as they watched the athletic ability of the actors on stage,” Miller said. “It was quite the experience.”
Miller cherishes the experiences he has getting to know the student-athletes.
“I remember when Nelson Peterson played basketball here,” Miller said. “His senior night was in Holt Arena. After the game he came up to me with his girlfriend and baby, and I got to hold Adrian Peterson after a basketball game.”
In late 1999, Miller became the general manager of KISU, and in the fall of 2000 he was approached by then-Director of Athletics Howard Gauthier about broadcasting women’s basketball.
“He said we are going to have a pretty good team this year and asked if we could carry the games,” Miller said. “I told Howard we would do all the home games and any road games they could send him on, but that they needed exclusivity.”
The women’s basketball team won 21 games in a row that year, won the Big Sky Conference and played in the NCAA tournament.
“They became so popular I started finding guys in all the cities they played at to do the games,” Miller said. “I got athletics to pay the announcers on the road trips. It was awesome doing women’s games for eight years.”
In the fall of 2008 Miller was asked to once again take over football and men’s games. He has been in that role ever since.
Family time
The Bengals have not only been an important of Miller’s life since 1982, but they have played a vital role in the entire Miller family.
“When we came here we had four kids and my wife was pregnant with our fifth,” Miller said. “Rozan has had to take on a lot of responsibility. One of the saving graces for her is she is just an avid sports nut, and she loves ISU as much as I do. If she can go to a game, she is there.”
His daughter Kristine assisted Miller as a basketball statistician for many years, and early in Miller’s broadcast career in Pocatello, he took one of his kids on the Montana and Montana State bus trip.
“I have always been grateful they let me do it,” he said.
The days of listening to games on a transistor radio are gone now. Instead of plugging a microphone into a reel-to-reel video camera, Miller is now preparing for broadcasts using Ethernet lines, and people can listen to him call games on the Internet.
Miller is still living his dream he had as a 13-year old boy, and it is only fitting his dream job continues to come to fruition in the same region where his career started.
