You learn a lot about a guy when you work with him for nearly three decades, especially when he sat next to you most of that time I learned a ton about sports writer Ed Miller while working at The Virginian-Pilot – that he's a humble guy and a good dude who will listen and offer sage advice when you're having problems. He's got a kind heart and a good soul and he is one of my best friends.
He's also one of the best journalists I've ever met. He's hard-working, at times a perfectionist, and has a wry sense of humor.
Once, when we were doing an ODU Blitz Podcast, I was prattling on about Senior Day for the football team as a serious, somber event. His quick reply: "Of course, every day here is Senior day for you and me, Harry."
Ed is well known to ODU fans. He's covered the men's basketball team for 11 seasons, Monarch football three and written dozens of stories on other sports.
He was tough on ODU when he had to be. No one here enjoyed reading his stories when he wrote about players and off-the-field issues or when he cataloged last fall just how much ODU football attendance has fallen.
But that was his job and he did it fairly. He never took gratuitous shots and he cared deeply about covering his beat thoroughly.
Like him or not, he kept you informed about everything happening with ODU football and basketball, both the good and the bad. And you can't ask for anything more from a true beat writer.
So it is a huge loss to ODU, sports journalism and to me personally that Ed will cover his final game as a Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press reporter tonight when the Monarch basketball team hosts UTSA.
Ed was one of many Pilot and Daily Press employees to accept a buyout offer. His last day of work is Friday.
The list of outstanding reporters headed out the door is long and will grow longer tomorrow when at least one more big departure will be announced. But I will only deal with three reporters who all covered ODU for an extensive time.
Dave Johnson, a long-time Daily Press reporter who covered Monarch athletics for many years and has a son attending ODU, is also leaving.
Dave and I rode to Blacksburg together many times when we were covering Virginia Tech football and sat together at press conferences and in the decrepit Foreman Field press box for the six years I covered ODU football for the Pilot.
I've never met a kinder, gentler soul than DJ, as we call him.
And the damage doesn't stop there. Lee Tolliver, a long-time sports writer and a dear friend, is also stepping down.
He's spent the last three years covering breaking news, but spent 40 years in sports. He covered a ton of ODU field hockey games including, he remembers, a Final Four at UConn played in a driving snowstorm. He is a legend in the fishing and hunting communities, given his decades of outdoors coverage.
Between them, more than 100 years of institutional knowledge is leaving the newspaper.
ODU President John R. Broderick, joined athletic director Wood Selig, basketball coach Jeff Jones and former football coach Bobby Wilder in lamenting Ed's departure.
President Broderick, a former newspaper reporter, developed a rapport with Ed, who would call the President when he heard a rumor or wanted some clear-headed advice on a topic he was about to tackle.
President Broderick and Ed shared a common love for teams in New England, including the Red Sox and Patriots.
"Ed and I always connected through sports and much of that beyond ODU," President Broderick said.
"He was always honest and always fair to anyone and everyone he wrote about. To call Ed anything less than a good person and outstanding journalist would be pure fiction."
Selig was ashen faced when he learned of Ed's impending departure.
"Ed has done a remarkable job covering our coaches and student athletes and has done so much to inform our fans," Selig said.
"I'm not sure he wants to hear this, but he's probably helped grow our fan base during his tenure because of his outstanding reporting. He was unbiased and was always fair.
"He did a thorough and comprehensive job without being overly intrusive. He was always respectful and courteous. He respected the relationship that goes with being a journalist and being aggressive without going overboard."
He expressed the concern I've heard from fans about what his departure means for newspaper coverage of ODU.
"The appetite of our fans has been fed for decades by Ed Miller," he said. "We're interested in learning what this means moving forward for coverage of our program."
Ed wrote some difficult stories about ODU football, but Wilder said he did so professionally.
"I always felt with Ed that he was going to print the truth. No matter what it was, good or bad, he was going to tell the truth," Wilder said.
"I never told Ed this but our staff had a nickname for him. We called him 'Honest Ed.'"
Wilder went 1-11 last season and although Ed often asked toward the end of the year about Wilder's job security, he did it without being a jerk.
"He could have taken a lot of shots at me this past year when things were going poorly," Wilder said. "But he kept it very professional.
"What I appreciated most about Ed is that he understood he was dealing with kids who were 18 and 19 years old. He realized this isn't professional sports, that the athletes here are young and as student athletes, are under so much pressure."
Jones had the same appreciation, although he didn't know Ed well when he came here in 2013.
"Ed is abundantly fair," he said. "I didn't know this when I came here but learned that he pays close attention. He knows what's going on not only with our team but around Conference USA. I'm not sure a lot of people who cover Conference USA do that."
He thought for a minute, then continued on: "I genuinely like the guy. He's pleasant to be around. When he asks questions I feel like I can answer the questions honestly and by that I mean I don't feel like I have to be guarded."
Ed has such a way with words. He drips with talent that most writers would kill to have.
I loved this line in a story he wrote about the late Sweetpea Whitaker, the world champion boxer from Norfolk.
"Sweetpea is harder to hit than a lottery jackpot."
He wrote a two-part series on the Martin wrestling dynasty overseen by Billy Martin Sr., and it was one of the best stories I ever read in a local newspaper. ODU wrestling coach Steve Martin was a huge part of the story.
The first few paragraphs enticed readers to keep on reading.
"A gentle man fell in love with a grueling sport.
"He was a philosophy major, farmer and teacher. But nothing gripped him like wrestling. He made a science of it. His wrestling room was his laboratory, and something was always cooking."
Ed Miller story on the Martin wrestling family
Ed doesn't care much about awards – he never bothered to join the Football Writers or Basketball Writers of American associations, which have annual writing competitions. And he never made himself a candidate for Virginia Sports Writer of the Year.
Even so, he collected about a dozen Slover awards as the best sports writer at The Pilot, was honored eight times by the Associated Press Sports Editors' Association and won at least a dozen Virginia Press Association awards.
Most impressive of all is that six stories he wrote over the years were selected for "notable mention" in Best American Sports Writing, and that's the ultimate compliment for a sports writer to receive.
An Arlington native, Ed graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in economics. He was negotiating with a brokerage firm out of college that would have paid him $100,000 per year to cold-call doctors, lawyers and other potential investors.
Mind you, that was $100,000 35 years ago.
Truth is, he had already been bitten by the journalism bug. He covered athletics for the W&M student newspaper.
He had short stints with newspapers in rural West Virginia, Alexandria and Quincy, Mass., before being lured to Norfolk in 1990 by then Pilot sports editor Bob Kinney.
He covered news beats as well as sports in his first three jobs, but realized the best stories, the ones writers love to tell, occur in sports.
"I just wanted to write stories about people, to tell their life stories," he said. "People behind the stats. People who didn't get a lot of headlines but who had compelling lives that would interest people."
He went to Turkey and lived with former ODU star Odell Hodge for several days and wrote about how a young kid from America fit into what was in some ways a different civilization. Ed came home with great admiration for the Turkish people.
And he wrote about the little guy as well, including a profile of ODU fan Tom Garrett, who worked hard to convince people that Sam Allen deserved to be considered among the best Negro Baseball players of all time.
Ed went to a ton of ACC basketball tournaments and about ten Final Fours and could have move up the food chain in sports for a bigger newspaper. But he never really pushed to leave. He loves Norfolk and was content covering ODU.
"Old Dominion has been a great school to cover," he said. "It plays at a high level, but the coaches are accessible and they make their players accessible. Practices are open and you learn so much about a team from watching practice.
"You can write the kind of stories here that you can't covering bigger schools because most limit access."
The highlight of his career? That stumped him for a few minutes but then he said covering Virginia Tech and Michael Vick in the 1999 BCS national championship game against Florida State in the Sugar Bowl is pretty high on his list.
I spent a week with Ed covering the buildup to the game and then the game itself. Tech led going into the fourth quarter but then was worn down by a bigger, deeper FSU team.
Another game high on his list also involved Virginia Tech football: ODU's 49-35 over No. 13 Virginia Tech in 2018. "That was a pretty special game," he said.
Fans sometimes asked he why wasn't he more positive. His answer to that is right from a Journalism 101 text book.
"I'm not a fan," he said. "I can't be a fan and do my job.
However, now free to express his opinions, he says that in time, he believes ODU will become to Hampton Roads what the University of Louisville means to the city of Louisville.
"I always thought this region needed an ACC school or a school at that level," he said.
"I don't think people always appreciate what a good football program they have here and how important it is to this community.
"They're not in the ACC but they are bringing ACC teams to this area."
Virginia Tech, North Carolina and N.C. State have played at ODU in the last five years and both Wake Forest and Virginia play at ODU in 2019.
He's not sure what's next on his horizon. He is too young to retire so he's looking at other avenues, including writing jobs at newspapers and Web sites. He has too much talent to be unemployed long.
When Jones asked me why Ed is leaving, I told him it was a business decision. Newspapers are offering lucrative buyouts to trim high-salaried people from their payrolls.
After thinking for a few seconds, he replied with a rhetorical question that I think sums up the tragedy unfolding at so many newspapers.
"That begs the question, 'what is the value of quality?'"
In Ed's case, immeasurable.
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu
Minium: Ed Miller Covered ODU Athletics Thoroughly and Fairly and Will Be Sorely Missed
