2,000 games and counting: Jerry Miller’s Bengal career
Idaho State University’s Jerry Miller recently eclipsed the two thousand game mark as the university’s play-by-play announcer.
Miller’s journey has been a long one and it isn’t over yet.
“I don’t repair cars, I don’t build houses, I don’t do plumbing. I broadcast games,” Miller said with a smile.
Jerry first came to Pocatello in 1982, calling Bengal football and men’s basketball games for a local radio station.
After 12 years, the station stopped broadcasting ISU games and in 1999 Miller came to work at Idaho State. Since then, he’s been a busy man.
“I’ve covered football and men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s soccer, women’s softball and volleyball, women’s volleyball,” Miller explained.
During a men’s basketball game against Montana earlier this season, Miller hit the two thousand game mark. An achievement that means a great deal to him.
“I am one of the fortunate guys that gets to do what he absolutely loves to do,” he said. “People ask me, “how can you do all of those games for ISU?” because they don’t win a lot. And I said, I just love what I do.”
Miller’s broadcasting path has been set since one fateful day at Sugar-Salem High School, when Jerry, a manager at the time, was asked to film one of the games.
“I taped a microphone to the side of the camera and announced the game as I just panned it back and forth from end to end of the court,” Miller said.
“When I saw the coach on Monday, he walks up to me in the hallway and he says, “Hey Miller, I heard your broadcast, you’re as good as the guy doing games on the radio,” and that’s all the encouragement I needed, I knew what I was going to do,” Miller explained.
Since then, Miller has called games at the high school, collegiate and professional levels, including time spent with BYU, Boise State and the Utah Jazz. A wall of credentials stand as mementos of countless moments and memories for Miller, but they only tell half the story.
“The things I think mean the most to me are the friendships I’ve made with the coaches and the players,” he said.
And Miller isn’t done developing those relationships. With two thousand games behind him, he’s still looking forward.
“I think if I died courtside I’d probably be happy,” Miller joked. “But I do not want to be the guy that people look at and say you know he should have quit a couple of years ago. I don’t wanna be that guy.”
In addition to his athletic commitments, Miller is also the director of student media at ISU, serving as the general manager of the KISU radio station and the advisor to the student newspaper.
Miller says that because he and his wife have things they would like to do, he’s no more than a handful of years away from calling it a career.
