Doing his best to make NSU the best it can be

Marty Miller does his best thinking while tooling around in his little red Corvette. In those moments, Norfolk State's athletic director imagines a dynamic future in which the Spartans dominate the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Miller believes 2009 will be the football team's best season since joining Division I in 1997. Men's and women's basketball - both under upstart coaches - are two to three years away from separating themselves from the rest of the conference, he assures.

If NSU's major sports programs follow his lofty time line, it will largely be due to Miller's commitment to the program, which he took over on an interim basis in December 2004. He fashions himself a winner, and he has high expectations for the future. Whether it's Scrabble or any game the Spartans are involved in, Miller hates to lose - one reason the former Army lieutenant coached the Spartans' baseball team to 700 victories. "I'm always competing in everything I do," Miller says. "I wonder how I got to this point in life. But I'm like that at everything I do. In life, I want to be the best."

His wife of 35 years - and mother to their son, 33-year-old Marty Eric - confirms that. "He would come home after coaching, and I knew when he walked in the door whether he won or lost," Liz Miller says. "It's always been about NSU for him. "NSU is the other woman in my life."

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