Miller Time
The Miller family already sent one of its top lieutenants to help the Utah Grizzlies in a time of need. Now they’re in discussions to buy Real Salt Lake and the Utah Royals.
It was a bombshell on a Friday afternoon in late March. Still recovering from a rough start to the season for their beloved Real Salt Lake team, this hit different to most fans.
» The Utah Royals, equally so, but: when Sportico announced David Blitzer was “nearing a deal to relinquish control of” RSL and the Royals to the Miller family for an unknown fee, it came out of nowhere.
Why? After all, ‘you know this guy.’
And yet nobody seemed to see this move coming.
Except for me.
When I heard the Miller family sent Doug Jardine to help the Utah Grizzlies get their house — or the Maverik Center — in order last May, just weeks before Ryan Smith started negotiations with the Arizona Coyotes of the NHL, I started putting two and two together.
Little transactions often become big events; I learned this covering bankruptcy court for a business newspaper two decades ago. What would happen next? Would the Miller family announce construction of a drag strip Utahns have been missing since my brother and his extended racing family watched in vain as Rocky Mountain Raceway gave way to the Freeport Center not long ago?
Would the Miller family move RSL to the proposed Fairpark district where a Major League Baseball stadium is scheduled to be constructed within the next decade, and appease the many RSL fans that wanted a soccer stadium built there in the first place?
That’s hard to say; the Miller family sold most of the land they owned out in Tooele County along with their race course to a Chinese conglomerate, and on the flip side they’ll need to find a way to make that Fairpark district a year-round destination beyond what’s planned for baseball. One reason they may have pounced on this opportunity is that Major League Soccer is weighing a move to a fall-spring schedule—but nothing will happen there until the 2026 season at the earliest.
Conversely, the Millers just built a new baseball stadium in Daybreak for their AAA minor-league Salt Lake Bees. Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a new soccer stadium next to the Bees—closer to RSL’s academy and training facilities in Herriman that already exist a few exits south?
Other than the car dealerships, Megaplex theaters and a few other philanthropic interests, it looked for several years like the Miller family was bowing out of owning other sports teams—other than continuing to run the Salt Lake Bees baseball team.
» » Ah, right; the Bees, that baseball, I mean, softball team in the late 1980s that a female romantic interest played for. She just so happened to have the same last name as her ‘Uncle,’ and talked a lot about him and the team during the first months of my sophomore year in athletics class while I listened and said nothing in response. [Her dad helped run one of the auto dealerships.] I, however, watched in vain as my immature Kenny-from-Can’t-Hardly-Wait persona — I really WAS him in high school — witnessed my ex-best friend and much taller club soccer teammate mack on her and succeed three months later, wearing his letterman’s jacket through the hallways for several agonizing weeks.
The next time I got the guts up to approach her, I honestly went a tad stalker-y, mailing her a letter a year later. [Some friend knew somebody who knew somebody who knew her address.] As I walked around the track with friends at this brand new high school she was attending during a football game, I said hello to her awkwardly as she was standing on top of the pyramid. Apparently she fell and broke her arm; I’d walked away from where she was cheerleading and later learned about her injury from that friend who knew most of the girls. I felt awful about it, naturally. [She was probably shocked I said a peep—since I’d never said a word to her.]
» I think that’s how the Miller family [her family] might feel about some of their past missteps: buyer’s remorse. Their Mayan restaurant was a blatant rip-off of Denver landmark Casa Bonita and so the Millers lost the rights to have it in court; they also allegedly and illegally grabbed land from a former boss of mine out in the West Desert [he longed to build Utah’s first sprint car track]. But, nothing in that regard was ever litigated until well after the fact when a 2019 state audit found that Tooele County “mishandled” the sale of public land to the Millers before the Miller Motorsports Park was ever constructed.
Before that, however, the mass confusion [and gross mishandling] of 2000-era Jazz legend Deron Williams is well documented [and so was the sudden resignation of Hall of Fame Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan]. Also, the departure of the vaunted Golden Eagles hockey team to Detroit came as a huge shock to Utahns—as did the fact that Miller’s new Delta Center provided local hockey fans with some of the worst sight lines in the history of that sport.
» The point I’m trying to get at here is that everybody deserves a second chance. Yes, that Delta Center is now home to the Utah Hockey Club of the NHL that Ryan Smith owns and he’s made do with those horrible sight lines that will be corrected within three years. To be sure, the Millers have made major errors in handling other pro sports—but: saved one beleaguered franchise before they surprisingly ceded control of their beloved Utah Jazz to Ryan Smith for about $2 billion—he later went in with Blitzer on purchasing Real Salt Lake and the Royals for about $400 million from Dell Loy Hansen.
But, each club the Millers may purchase here deals with a completely different dynamic as the family enters talks to kick off potentially new eras in Utah professional soccer. Whereas Major League Soccer has a relatively easy path to a playoff spot — nine of the 14 teams in each conference advance — the National Women’s Soccer League, or NWSL, has in one short year alienated about 90 percent of the Royals fan base with all the pride flags it demanded be flown at America First Field in a politically conservative state. Its insistence on being not just a sports league—but a cultural movement—has not helped matters, either. Could Gail Miller be the link to mend some of these fences caused by the behavior of both clubs and angry fan bases?
» To borrow a term from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, ‘if you don’t look around once in a while, you might miss something.’
If memory serves me right, it was Larry H. Miller himself who saved the Utah Jazz’ bacon more than once when owner Sam Battistone wanted to move the team to Miami. It was Larry’s family who after his passing established that legacy trust, and it is they who long to have a Major League Baseball team here and have already held a news conference on the proposed MLB stadium site three miles east of the airport alongside top local dignitaries.
If we put two and two together, the Miller family caught a glimpse of what was and was not happening down the street from their company’s headquarters. In turn, they’d be lending a helping hand to Blitzer, but: let’s not forget about the promise Smith made to the development of hockey in Utah and the $10 million he’s donating to the construction of 20 hockey rinks here on the heels of his purchase of the Arizona Coyotes’ NHL franchise [Smith only played rec soccer as a youth, by the way]. Does Gail Miller have a few grandkids playing club soccer?
In all actuality, this sale —if it happens—might be the best-case scenario for RSL and the Royals; if there’s one family who can put their trust in a major league franchise in this state and follow through on keeping them here for good, it is the Miller family. «
Stockton’s Mark
RUMORS » While the talk of the town is clearly how BYU mens’ basketball captured the hearts and minds of the state at the NCAA Tournament until they ran into a buzzsaw named Alabama at the Sweet 16, the other talk around town has been about the Utah Jazz tanking so bad that they’ve now lost 60 games, a franchise record.
There is also some talk about Duke star Cooper Flagg and if the Jazz are indeed interested in the great white phenom that Kevin Garnett himself labeled “a cold white boy” after the native of Maine torched Team USA’s first-team before the Paris Olympics in a scrimmage.
The other discussion, albeit one that has been muddled, is the daring pursuit of a long-standing Jazz record by one Isaiah Collier, a rookie guard out of USC who for the past several months has been dropping dimes all over the basketball court.
Well, on a Monday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, Collier broke John Stockton’s rookie team assists mark—the thing I said was a possibility several weeks ago when I accused, and rightfully so, some Jazz fans on that episode of the BVU Show about not giving a hoot whether this 40-year-old record was about to go down.
Collier, who was once projected to go as high as a lottery pick months before the 2024 NBA Draft, dropped like some anvil off a red rocked cliff to the tail end of the 1st round. The Jazz snapped him up and have played him more minutes than what Stockton did during his rookie year, which is what most arguments center on. «
Overthink This Photo 📸
📷 » FOX Sports
» This past Monday afternoon in the City of Sin, one man took time off work to watch his beloved Utah Utes play in the inaugural College Basketball Crown postseason tournament.
The 16-16 Utes were the only in-state team left playing college basketball after BYU got dumped out of the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 by Alabama this past Thursday.
And though attendance at Utah’s game against 14-19 Butler was sparse at best at MGM Grand Garden Arena, this guy made his presence felt and heard—especially when the Bulldogs were taking free throws.
In the end though, the heckler’s courtside ka-kaws were no match for Butler, who won 86-84, ending the Utes’ season at 16-17 overall. «
NOTE: my book review will be back after March Madness. Enjoy the tournament.
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Thanks for reading; be safe and be well. I’ll see ya next time. «