BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana University has received a donation to support its sports broadcasting programming.
John Miley, 93, recently donated more than 44,000 sports broadcasts to the National Sports Journalism Center at the Indiana University Bloomington School of Media. Miley’s collection includes audio and video files of television and radio sporting events dating back to the 1930s.
According to an IU news article, the media school plans to use the collection as a resource to enhance its sports broadcasting courses, such as Big Ten Plus and WIUX, as well as extracurricular programs related to sports broadcasting.
“Providing students with the opportunity to listen to some of the great sportscasters of the past will help them grow as broadcasters and professionals,” Galen Clavio, director of the National Sports Journalism Center at Indiana University Bloomington, told IU News.
The Media School will hold a celebration of the collection on September 16th at 1pm ET in Franklin Hall, with Miley in attendance.
Franklin Hall will also feature public exhibits and computer access terminals that will allow IU students and faculty to access the collections, and researchers and historians from outside IU will be able to request guest logins, according to an IU news article.
Miley’s collection includes every World Series game since 1954, every Super Bowl game, decades of recordings of the Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500, college and professional basketball, hockey, golf and more.
Miley grew up in Long Beach, California, and moved to Evansville, Indiana when he was 10. He began collecting these files in 1947, and in 1977, he began receiving tapes from a network of people across the country, and his collection grew.
When it came time to find a permanent home for the collection, Miley turned to Indiana University alumnus Mark Cuban, who put her in touch with Clavio, the media school’s associate dean for undergraduate education and professor of sports media. Miley also reached out to Don Fisher, the play-by-play announcer for Indiana University men’s basketball and football, who helped her create audio files highlighting Indiana University basketball games.
“Our extensive archive of sports broadcasts will be of great help to our students and their professional development, while also enhancing Indiana University’s reputation as a premier research institution,” Clavio said. “We have an extensive sports broadcasting program comprised of incredibly talented students, and providing students with the opportunity to listen to broadcasts by great sports broadcasters of the past will aid in their development as broadcasters and professionals.”