Chadron State College Athletics

Long regarded as one of the Eagles’ all-time great athletes, Miller not only starred in football and basketball for the Eagles, but also played in the line for two National Football League teams for three years before a knee injury ended his career.
Miller, who was 6-foot-2, 225 pounds while playing for the Eagles, moved from Litchfield, Neb., to Crawford in 1929 and helped the Rams go undefeated in football that fall. After skipping school for a year, he enrolled at Chadron State in 1931, where he crashed the football team’s starting lineup early in the season by bumping a senior. He made the all-conference team all four years at CSC. At the end of his college career, the Chadron Chronicle reported that he had been on every all-opponent team chosen by the Eagles’ opponents.
Miller helped the Eagles win the conference football championship in 1933 in both basketball and football. The CSC football team lost only to the University of Colorado that season and went 6-2 his senior year in ’34.
As his college career was winding down, Miller was contacted by Brooklyn in what would become the NFL. Ruffus Trapp, the CSC head coach, reportedly told Miller that if the pros were interested in him he might as well play for the Chicago Bears since they were the world champions.
“So I wrote to them, they offered me a contract and I took it,” Miller said during an interview in the early 1970s. His salary was $100 a game his rookie year in 1935.  He got a $10 per game raise the next year.
Miller recalled that there were three tackles on the Bears’ 28-man roster his rookie year and they played both offense and defense. He said he played as much as the other two.  In the next to last game his rookie year, Miller suffered a knee injury that would cut short his pro career.
After the knee was reinjured early in 1936, Miller was traded to the cross-town Chicago Cardinals. He related that his leg was so heavily taped the remainder of the season that he could hardly bend it.  He was forced to quit before the season ended, after being hit so hard that the tape tore in two.
Miller returned to the Cardinals and played all of the 1937 season, but he said the game was no longer fun because the injury hampered his mobility. After the season, the Cardinals offered to renew Miller’s contract, but at the same time recommended he give up football while he could still walk.  He took their advice. He walked with a limp the rest of his life.
Miller served in Europe during World War II. He owned and operated a tavern in Chadron for more than 30 years prior to his death in April 1981. He was inducted into the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame in 2004.