With Coaching Behind Him, Miller Finds New Life in the Cards

For 24 years, the coach spent his days outdoors, helping youngsters grow to their potential. Now, he spends his days indoors, trying to nurture the growth of poker chips.

“Hi, coach,” the poker players greet Len Miller as he descends the final step into the Normandy Bar Card Club. He purchased it in March 1986, almost two years after resigning as track and cross country coach of Arizona State and moving to Cardiff.

He still works about 70 hours a week, but there’s no fresh air here. No yawning sky, either. Clouds of cigarette smoke waft above the cards, chips and players at one coffee-splotched table. Three Leroy Neiman prints occupy a wall. One is of card players, another of racehorses, the third of Bear Bryant, who died of a heart attack five weeks after retiring, having coached nearly 40 years.

“I marvel at someone like Bear Bryant or John Wooden,” says Miller, 51. “To coach a lifetime, you have to give so much. At some point in time for me, it became more difficult. I have seen coaches stay too long.”

Miller joins five others for a game of low-ball poker, quarter ante with a $5 limit. He is just a guy in a golf shirt, with white socks and brown shoes and a folksy presence.

His drawling voice addresses other players’ moves and a spectator’s questions. His sleepy brown eyes observe behind wire-rimmed glasses.

To his right, an elderly gent casually flips some chips onto the table.

Miller’s eyes widen.

“Now this man here, ‘Jack the Turk’ (not to be confused with another regular, ‘Tommy Gut’), muuuust have a good hand,” Miller drawls, “‘Cause he doesn’t want anyone to notice him.”

Miller wins that hand. Three times, he is interrupted by phone calls concerning his failed attempt to move his card room to a more enticing location. The failure was resounding--the Oceanside planning commission voted 7-0 against--but Miller diplomatically tells officials he will return. Off the phone, he repeatedly moans that his cards “stink”--he is right--but his chip pile grows. He wins five consecutive hands.

Low-ball is not his favorite brand of poker. His choice would be Texas Hold ‘Em, which he plays in Las Vegas--where he plays to win. Here in his card room, he just aims to break even. In tournaments, Miller imposes a $60-limit per hand on himself. He says he has won $2,000 in a game and lost $1,800. He has played in the Grand Prix of Poker and the Super Bowl of Poker--both in Las Vegas--and the Cajun Classic in Lafayette, La., sometimes beating out 350 of 500 entrants just to pay for his entry fee, which ranges from $200 to $1,500.

“I’ve been able to win enough money to pay for my entry fees,” Miller says. “I’ll make it to say, the last 70% of players. I’m getting better all the time. . . . One of my goals is to win the $10,000 buy-in competition at the World Series of Poker (in Las Vegas).”

The money is secondary, he says, adding that he could make $100,000 a year playing poker.

So why doesn’t he?

“I’ll give you a quote,” he says. “Playing poker has no socially redeeming value. As a recreational activity, I have no problem compromising the time I might spend. To take it out of the realm of recreation for myself would violate some of my basic tenets for what do with my life.

“For me, making money simply by playing poker does not nourish my soul.”

He divides his clientele into three categories.

About 75%, he says, play for recreational purposes. About 20% play for social interaction.

“The interaction,” Miller said, “is more important than the recreation. They know each other. . . . they need a meeting point with other people in the community.”

The sole aim of the final 5%, he said, is money.

“Only 1 of 100 of them is going to be successful, consistently,” Miller says, adding, “I would say there are two qualities about a poker player: Most aren’t as good as they think they are and many want to play for greater stakes than they can afford. It is very important to discipline yourself to play for affordable limits.

“Realize, there is no luck involved in poker. Over the long run, luck is no factor. It’s a game of skill, of money management.”

The ability to read people and to avoid losing one’s cool--known as going on a tilt--are musts for a poker player. Miller’s customers said his temper rarely flares, but when it does, it is fierce.

It also is said that before anyone can succeed at poker, he or she must learn how to throw away a hand.

Miller had learned that by 1963, when he and his wife, Moira, went to Las Vegas. The young couple brought with them coupons to be redeemed for 29 breakfasts and 79 dinners. After two days of craps, 21, chuck-a-luck and roulette, Miller tried 5-card stud poker.

“I was an absolute novice,” he recalled. “I sat down with $10, and it took about two hours to lose my money. But I enjoyed playing and bought a book, Herbert Yardley’s ‘Education of a Poker Player.’ We would go to Las Vegas three times a year.

“From ’64 to ’71 I never lost, every trip to Las Vegas was a winning trip.”

Miller has made money playing against some of the sharpest poker players in the world. So it can be assumed he is a man who thoroughly considers the effects of his actions.

But he says he failed to consider what effect certain actions of his would have about 1982. As a result, his track-and-field program at Arizona State was put on probation twice.

Two years later, Miller had resigned from a position he had worked 19 years to reach.

“I’ve never suffered more heartache than I have the last five years at ASU,” he told the Arizona Republic at the time.

To tell you about Miller the track coach, it would be best to go back to 1960 and meet the newlyweds, Len and Moira.

Len had just graduated from UCLA. There, he had spent many hours competing with a fraternity brother named Denny Crum. The future coaches battled one another in golf, basketball, Ping-Pong and bridge. And, for 27 hours in a row in Las Vegas, they played poker. It was in Miller’s blood for good.

Not as much as coaching, though. Miller was eager to begin that vocation, even at tiny Porterville High, amid the sun-baked dirt and brush between Fresno and Bakersfield. Moira was pregnant, but the couple made do on about $130 a week, which, even in those days, was little.

Baby , let’s go out to the bowling alley and share a slice of pie and some coffee and watch some folks bowl. We can afford that at least.

It would still be cool and dark when Len got up. He faced a 15-hour day, but he would look in the mirror and laugh.

Shoot, I would pay these people to let me work. This is free money.

He coached cross country, basketball and track. His athletes became part of his family--Moira was endearingly referred to as “Mrs. Coach.”

But such devotion costs, as any coach or spouse knows.

Sacrifices?

Miller saw only one of his three children graduate from high school--one of them, Rick, now is a high school football coach in Texas.

Len’s father, Richard, a wealthy businessman, offered his son a more lucrative job several times. Instead, Miller moonlighted as a security guard, real estate salesman and bus driver to supplement his income.

“On a teaching and coaching salary, I could never do for my wife and children what was just fundamental in responsibilities of a father and husband,” said Miller. “The way I look at teaching and coaching professions, other than football and basketball, it’s a calling--like the priesthood. . . . You do it solely because you are willing to commit a time in your life in the interest of helping people.”

Says Crum: “Len was amazing--I’m surprised he didn’t leave coaching sooner. He would work all-year round, 16, 18 hours a day.

“What I do is I get totally away from it, two to three months . . . I think he probably could have been a good basketball coach (Miller switched to track and cross country exclusively in 1965).

“He’ll do what it takes, work 60, 100 hours a week.”

Miller’s efforts brought success, if not financial. First at Porterville. Then at Victor Valley High, then Laguna Beach. The year before Miller took over at Laguna Beach, the track team had averaged about 10 points per dual meet. His final year, 1973, it averaged about 90 and won every meet.

That got him a bigger venue and more work when he became track and cross country coach at UC Irvine. His teams there won two NCAA Division II titles in cross country and one in track.

After six years at UCI, Miller accepted the job at Arizona State.

Miller’s athletes again fared well. They won ASU’s first Pacific 10 track title in 1981. A pupil of Miller’s, Steve Scott--who did not attend ASU--still holds the American record in the mile.

That was 1982, about the time Miller’s world unraveled. His rapport was good with ASU Athletic Director Fred Miller, but he clashed with the two athletic directors who succeeded Miller, who was fired in 1981.

Further, Scott--representing Miller on a recruiting trip--got the program in trouble with the Pac-10 as a result of his visit to Overland Park, Kan.

He was there to see an athlete named Brent Steiner, who had committed to ASU, Miller says, but whose father wanted to hear from Scott about Miller before sending his son so far away.

Scott made two mistakes, for which Miller now blames himself:

One, he participated in a workout with Steiner and others on Steiner’s team, violating the NCAA tryout rule. Also, on the day of Scott’s departure, Scott and Steiner talked with one another, constituting an extra and illegal contact.

The Pac-10 placed Arizona State on probation and, one semester after he had been there, declared Steiner ineligible. Steiner eventually transferred to Kansas.

Two years later, Miller’s program was found to have awarded more than the allowable number of scholarships while under penalty for the violations relating to Steiner.

Says Miller: “I should have told Steve about what he could do. I stand fully responsible for (all of) the violations, even though there wasn’t any intent.

“But are these violations such that you make the kid ineligible? Put a school on probation? Make an example of my program and me because of these violations?

“I’ll never get over it. The kid (Steiner) and I had been excited about working together. We accomplished a lot.

“For them to suggest anything unethical is pure unadulterated . . . What the general public perceives as reality in intercollegiate athletics and what is reality are two different things.”

After Miller resigned from Arizona State, he coached milers Scott and Tom Byers through the 1984 Olympic Trials. Thereafter, his 24-year-old affair with the sport was over.

“I almost went to the Michelob Invitational,” Miller said of last month’s prestigious meet in San Diego, which featured a victory by Scott, who still consults Miller. “I think it might have been too painful for me.

“I have not been to a single track meet since I left coaching. I’ve removed myself from that world. I have athletes and coaches I see periodically. I get on with the rest of my life.”

No matter how well you play the cards dealt you, sometimes all you can do is congratulate the winner and move on. Miller learned that as a coach, and he says it helps him in poker.

An official from a local community college would visit Miller often and ask him about coaching there. Finally, the man moved on.

“I couldn’t coach anymore,” Miller says. “I gave everything I had.

“I can’t do it because I don’t have it to give, because I know what it should be.”

Miller says he was ahead of his time. In the early ‘60s, his athletes lifted weights and took vitamins. Bruce Bochte, a former major league baseball player, says Miller’s positive input and exercises on psycho-cybernetics rejuvenated his career. Too, in an era in which the young often clashed with coaches, Miller considered his athletes’ lifestyles out of his jurisdiction.

“I once asked a kid at Laguna Beach how many of the students there smoked pot; he said 90%,” Miller recalled. “I don’t condone it, but I had no rules on dissipation.

“I had two rules: you’re late, you miss practice. Miss practice, you miss the meet. Then, if you come to practice, I ran their butts off.

“Once they start to pay a price to be on a team, you thing they’re gonna do things that are counterproductive? I wish kids didn’t smoke, or drink a beer; but in the world of the ‘60s . . . “

Which brings us to 1965, Victor Valley High and Grant Crimmel.

Crimmel smoked cigarettes and ran with a “motorbike crowd.” He recalled: “I got kicked out of school. I had poor self-esteem.”

Yet Miller had seen Crimmel outrun many of his classmates in junior high. He talked the youngster into applying himself in the classroom. Eventually, Crimmel set two school records in the sprints; the memory of Crimmel’s career-capping anchor leg in the 4 x 200-meter relay against Antelope Valley, in which he made up about 20 meters, still thrills Miller.

Crimmel was scheduled to receive a partial scholarship to Brigham Young, but ended up in Vietnam as a paratrooper.

“Mr. Miller gave me a shot,” said Crimmel, 41, now a welder in Deer Haven, north of the San Gabriel mountains. “My past didn’t bother him. It really changed my life, having somebody take an interest me and developing me. He put some pride in my life--I owe it to him. It takes a guy like Len Miller to pull it out of you.

“His passion was track, and I’m sure it still is today.”

Told that Miller no longer even attends track and field meets, Crimmel paused. And paused.

“You might as well have knocked me over with a feather.”