Joplin man works dream job this weekend at NFL Draft
Apr. 26—This week, you might catch Matt Miller on television during the sports network ESPN's coverage of the NFL football Draft.
Miller, who grew up in Liberal and now lives in Joplin, has been living his dream, analyzing college football players and covering the way NFL franchises build their teams.
He's been doing this for more than a decade, but said 2023 is special because Miller gets to cover the NFL Draft as it comes to what is essentially his backyard for the first time — Union Station in Kansas City.
"For this to be something I grew up obsessed with and now to see that it's basically in your backyard, wow," Miller said. "There's also for me the element of it being my debut on camera for the draft. Especially for a company like ESPN, there have been a lot of surreal moments throughout my career, but this is definitely the most surreal. To have it happen in Kansas City it feels like someone wrote this script, it doesn't feel real. I covered the draft in Cleveland (in 2021) for ESPN. I was in Vegas (in 2022) for the draft. Those were surreal moments, but this one is so different."
Draft obsession
Miller, who grew up across the street from Liberal schools and graduated from there in 2001, said that even as a kid he obsessed over the NFL Draft and why some players who were great on Saturdays during the college football season couldn't make it on Sundays in professional football.
" ... so I don't remember anything that told me this is it, this is my thing," Miller said. "I think what it is and always has been for me is this question — why do great college players not become great NFL players? I can verify this story ... I loved Tom Brady. I had a Tom Brady Michigan jersey when he was there in college. My mom is from Detroit so we grew up watching Michigan games and I loved Tom Brady. I can remember wondering: Why is Tom Brady a great college player but I knew he was not going to be a first-round pick.
"There were others before him. I remember thinking: Why are these guys not the ones being drafted early? I think that's when I really dove in and tried to really read about the draft and learn about it."
He said his parents supported his obsession, but no one — including him — could see how to break into becoming an NFL Draft analyst professionally.
"It's always been something I wanted to do, but it's one of those professions where you don't know how to do it," Miller said. "If you want to be a teacher you go to college to be a teacher. If you want to be a nurse, you go to college to be a nurse. If you want to be a farmer, you go to work for a farmer and learn the trade. But if you want to be an NFL Draft evaluator, how do you do that? It seemed like something I would never know how to get into I guess."
Sidetracked
Even in high school, Miller's teachers could see he had potential as a sports writer. He got good grades in English classes and he even enrolled in journalism classes at Pittsburg State University, but the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, changed his outlook.
"I remembered I wanted to enlist in the military," Miller said. "My dad's a veteran and he said, 'No, no.; He served in Vietnam and he was like I don't want you to do that, so I enrolled in classes to become an EMT. I found that as kind of my way to help and feel like I was contributing to everything that was going on at that time.
He eventually got burned out by and started working in customer service for a company in Pittsburg.
During his free time, Miller served as an assistant football coach at Liberal High School and for the Joplin Crusaders, the semi-pro team that still plays in the area. He also started working as an independent scout for teams in the arena football league and the Canadian Football League.
Back to writing
Miller got back into writing about the NFL Draft by creating his own website and working hard to build a following. When Twitter started in 2009, he jumped on it, using it to promote his website and his writing. Then he responded to an ad on a journalism website from a company called Bleacher Report seeking writers.
Miller worked his day job for a while and wrote hundreds of articles as a stringer for Bleacher Report in his spare time, then in 2011, he happened to be in San Francisco, where the company was based, and met with website officials in person.
"I met up with a man named Dylan MacNamera, who was the talent coordinator or hiring coordinator, and we met up for dinner," Miller said. "He said Bleacher Report has never hired a writer, but we want to make you our first paid writer, would you be interested? I was like, 'Yeah.' I didn't even ask how much money it was, I was like 'Yeah. He said it's not much money, you're the first person we're doing this for, it's a trial and we'll see how it goes. It was $400 a month, which at the time paid my rent — my half of the rent. And I was like, 'Oh my God, my rent's going to get paid and all I have to do is write about football. That was Feb. 11, 2011."
Later that year, Miller took another leap. His stories were being seen by hundreds of thousands of people and he decided he needed to break into sports journalism while he was still young.
"So with no parachute at all I walked into my boss's office and said, 'I'm turning in my two-week notice, I'm going to try to make this football think happen,'" Miller said. "I said I've got to do this now while I'm young, I've got to try to make this happen. Then I walked back to my desk and I opened Twitter on my work computer and I sent off a tweet and said I just put in my two-week notice, best feeling ever."
Miller said Bleacher Report officials contacted him fearing that he had taken another job with a rival company. They offered to make him their first full-time sports writer.
"Eventually they were like how much money do you make now?" Miller said. "They had never hired someone full time before, they had no idea. I said this is what I make and they were like, ok, we'll give you $10,000 more than that to come here. Don't go anywhere else, so May 2011 I was full time at Bleacher Report and making more money than I had ever made before. We found each other at the exact right time."
Miller worked for Bleacher Report until 2021 when he made the jump to ESPN. There he got to know his boyhood idol, long-time draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr., and this week for the first time he'll share a stage with Kiper on television.
"We've talked a lot on the phone but we've never met in person, so this ... will be the first time I've met him," Miller said. "I don't know what that will be like. They say not to meet your idols, but I have and it's always surreal. It's so bizarre, but I think it'll be different because we have communicated, we have a relationship. It's going to be special though, I'm going to try not to be a fan and ask him for an autograph or anything like that. I'm going to ask him for a photo, that's going to happen, I guarantee it."
When to watch ESPN said draft analyst and Joplin resident Matt Miller will be part of ESPN's coverage of the NFL Draft starting at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 29 on ESPN and on ABC. To see Miller's latest mock draft on ESPN, go www.joplinglobe.com and go to this link. For ESPN's official announcement when it hired Miller in 2022, see this link.
