CHERYL MILLER : Sure, She’s a Hotdog; Sure, She’s Hollywood--but She’s Herself : With a Flair New to Women’s Basketball, Trojan Star Is Doing It All, and Her Way

Anne Donovan was fuming. Here she was, at the 1984 U.S. Olympic basketball trials, the most important competition of her life, and she’s stuck rooming with Little Miss Hotdog, Cheryl Miller.

Miller and her Hollywood ways had irritated Donovan for the three years Old Dominion had played USC.

There seemed to be no escaping Miller in women’s college basketball. Donovan, a 6-8 center, was a three-time All American, and the last thing she needed was to baby-sit for this brash kid.

“We didn’t talk,” Miller said. “She absolutely despised me. She told me she couldn’t stand me because she said I was a hotdog. She just ignored me, at first.

“One night I was lying on my bed in the room, and she was doing something at the desk. I rolled over and looked at her--she was wearing these big old Coke bottle glasses. She was blind as a bat. When she took off her glasses, her eyes were so tiny. I’d never seen the glasses before (Donovan wore contacts during games) and I started busting up laughing. ‘What have you got on your face?’

“Anne just looked at me and said, ‘I knew there was a reason I didn’t like you.’ I told her that once she got to know me, she’d like me. She said, ‘There’s no way I’ll ever like you.’ I said, ‘I’ll bet you a dinner that if you take the time to get to know me, you’ll find me an incredibly nice person.’

“She stared at me, then said, ‘God, you’re arrogant.’ Later in the week, we were at dinner. We were all getting up to leave, and Anne said to me, ‘I’ll pay for it.’ I asked her why, and she said, ‘Because you won your bet.’ ”

Miller smiled and shook her head. “Happens all the time,” she said.

Therein lies Miller’s story. She has been revered, reviled and rebuked in her four all-everything years at USC. Coaches and players have heaped upon her equal parts praise and venom, the likes of which few 22-year-olds have seen.

In the midst of this, Miller says, “Don’t judge me until you know me.”

How can you help knowing her? Thanks in part to the great USC media machine, she has become the ubiquitous Cheryl Miller, the female athlete whose name usually elicits responses such as, ‘God, I’m so sick of her.’ ”

Most everyone has something to say about Miller. Not everyone has something nice to say. A composite quote about Miller, garnered from among the nation’s college coaches, would sound something like this:

“Cheryl does some things on the court I really can’t understand. I don’t think a lot of her antics are necessary. Sometimes, she’s rubbing it in. But I’ll tell you what, she’s one of the best women ever to play the game, and she’s very good for women’s basketball.”

There’s always that kicker about Miller. People bad-mouth her up and down, but after the lengthy disclaimer, there’s the postscript: She’s not such a bad kid, just a little excitable.

As if there’s something wrong with liking Cheryl Miller.

Now, about this business of being a hotdog.

LaTaunya Pollard, former All-American from Cal State Long Beach and Miller’s teammate on the Olympic team, speaks from the perspective of having played with and against Miller.

Pollard now watches, as an assistant coach at Long Beach.

“A lot of people have to work really hard for what they get,” Pollard said. “They think Cheryl didn’t work hard. They think her head is up in the air. I think the way Cheryl carries herself, people think she’s a hotdog.

“There’s a lot of things that she does that a player doesn’t have to do to get attention. Maybe she’s doing it for the radio and television jobs she knows she’s going into. Every time you turn a newspaper, it’s Cheryl this and Cheryl that.

“I don’t think she’s changed at all. I saw it in her freshman year and I’m seeing it in her senior year. I don’t know what’s in her that she has to do that.”

Has Miller hotdogged? Yes she has.

She came to USC with a repertoire established in high school: After shooting a hanging jumper, Miller flips her wrist and backpedals--before she sees that the ball has gone in.

Miller has, in games where USC is blowing out an opponent, pointed to the scoreboard and laughed. She has blown kisses to players she knows are especially irritable. She has turned cartwheels on the court.

When she climbed to the top of the basket and sat on the rim after USC had won its second NCAA title, it seemed to many players as if Miller was saying, “See how much above you I am?”

Miller, who isn’t excited by the subject, simply says she plays with emotion, that the fans can see her personality.

“She has to do that,” Coach Linda Sharp said. “She has to vent her emotions. She’s aware of the crowd. She’s Cheryl D. Miller. I used to think D stood for ‘distractions.’ I’ve yelled at her about that.

“She takes her game seriously. When she goes out there, she wants to make it for everyone. She plays for the crowd. I never feel she’s gotten out of hand with it. She’s always been intense and ready to play.”

What does Miller have to say for herself?

“I think it (stinks),” she said. “I wish somebody would give me a clear definition of what a hotdog really is. I’d like to know. Is it good, is it bad? That’s what they call me.

“Everybody has a style. My style is right there. It’s always been that way. I hear people say to me, ‘Are you for real?’ No, I’m a phony. I am what I am. Believe it or not.”

Beyond the charges of hotdogging have been what Long Beach Coach Joan Bonvicini calls dramatics. Miller is a scrapper. She’ll chase a ball into the third row of the stands or slide under the scorers’ table, as she did at the Olympics.

Because of her reputation, coaches and players see this as an extension of her style, another way to get attention.

According to Miller, about 50% of what is said about her rolls off, but one incident has yet to fade. Miller has taken a beating this season. She has had several bruised eyes; she has had four stitches in one eye. She has hurt her knees and her elbows. She recently sprained her wrist.

But the night of Feb. 1, against UCLA, she got the worst injury yet. Miller was driving the lane, off balance, and fell hard. Because she takes spills with such regularity, no one was immediately alarmed.

“When I didn’t see her jump right back up, I knew she was hurt,” Sharp said. Miller was hospitalized with a neck injury and a concussion.

“After the eye, it scared me,” Miller said. “Then the concussion. But what really hurt was I heard a coach say I was faking it. That’s sick. That’s uncalled for. It’s upsetting. I can forget a lot, and I do. But that’s hard to forgive.

“I normally can’t get upset about what coaches say about me. That’s the only thing that’s probably going to stay with me for a while. That comment takes enormous nerve.”

Miller was obviously angry over the suggestion that she had faked a concussion.

Cheryl Miller and the USC Sports Information Department--a match made in Hollywood. Literally.

For four years it’s been a perfectly balanced symbiotic relationship. “I use them and they use me,” Miller said.

If Miller had gone to another school, say No. 1 Texas for example, she’d likely be as skilled as she is today. She’d certainly be known, but not as known. USC’s media machine can accommodate the needs of Miller. USC’s media machine exists to promote the Millers of the Trojan world.

Consider USC’s recruiting approach to Miller.

“I wanted to study broadcasting, everyone knew that,” Miller said. “Coach Sharp said it all: ‘There are two good schools for broadcast journalism in the United States, Columbia and USC. Columbia doesn’t have a women’s basketball team.’ That about wrapped it up.”

USC knew exactly the nature of the star package it was getting when it got in line with 250 other colleges to recruit Miller. Elise Kim, USC associate director of sports information, visited Miller and gave her the “Cheryl Miller Marketing and Publicity Proposal,” a document outlining a four-year plan to make Cheryl Miller a household name.

It was a typed page listing five major goals and detailing just which radio call-in shows, television talk shows and newspaper and magazine features USC was looking to plug Miller into. It was an ambitious and broad-based document. There wasn’t a single goal on that proposal that either hasn’t been achieved or is in the process of being achieved.

“I don’t think there has been another athlete at USC who has been as sought after,” Kim said, sitting in an office laden with Cheryl memorabilia. “I don’t think there has been anyone to have covered so many areas: sports, general news, women’s issues, minorities.

“Her visibility, as far as other athletes here, has been far greater--’Face the Nation,’ she lobbied on Capitol Hill, she’s testified before a Senate committee.”

Miller, a former Camp Fire Girl, is the 1985 national cookie chairman for the Girl Scouts. Visibility over sincerity?

It’s no coincidence that several people who know Miller well speculate that she may go into politics. Miller, at 22, appears to have the polished savvy that politicians twice her age would pay for.

“She didn’t start out like that,” Kim said. “She’s really become a polished person over the years. I think it’s all planning, preparation and encouragement. She’s very teachable.”

What Kim has taught Miller, among other things: how to apply makeup, how to dress, how to speak, what to say in interviews, how to behave in a television segment, how to remember names at an alumni dinner, how to circulate at a reception in your honor, appropriate small talk for Sen. Edward Kennedy’s chambers.

It’s all a long way from her backyard half-court in Riverside.

“I came to college wearing baseball pants, overalls, sneakers,” Miller said. “I just didn’t know. I had to go home for 2-3 weekends in a row to buy clothes. It all was an adjustment. Elise scared me, I must admit. I wasn’t used to 2-3 interviews a day, all the makeup and the glamour.

“Elise would brief me all the time. She’d tell me who was going to interview me, what he was like. She’d type up a memo, and at the bottom it would say, attire, underlined. Casual, dress, like that.

“In the beginning, I thought, ‘This isn’t me. I’ll just put on my baseball cap.’ It took a full year for me to learn.”

Miller made the adjustment just as the powers at USC had gambled she would. She managed the media requests. She answered the 15 letters a week that she received. Miller said yes to everything. A rejected request was exposure missed.

Sharp, though, was growing concerned about the outside pressures on Miller and the escalating distractions. Her gag Christmas gift for Miller one year was a “How To Say No” coloring book.

But no one ever said it.

“Sometimes we have to pull back,” Kim said. “There are still conflicts. When she needs the break, I’ll make the appropriate apologies for her.

“She’s young. It’s hard for someone to cope with the kind of pressure Cheryl has. There are times she wants to go out with friends for a pizza and a movie. It’s more interesting for her than some black-tie dinner. I want her to feel like a normal college kid.”

Bumped into any average college kids lately who have performed with Donna Summer on the Grammy awards show? Or were invited to Live Aid? Borrowed any class notes from an average college kid who is a spokesperson for the American Diabetes Assn., the American Lung Assn. and the American Cancer Society?

After four years of grooming, what’s next?

Miller could play in an overseas women’s basketball league. She could play in Brazil or go to Europe or Japan and become the highest paid woman there. The going guess is that Miller could pull in $100,000 a year, plus free housing and a car.

Miller is the embodiment of what Europeans love in American ballplayers. She’ll be paid to whoop it up and pour it on. There’d be no criticism, just guaranteed adulation. Her name on everyone’s lips, that sort of thing.

Surprise--Miller doesn’t want any part of it. Ditto for the NBA.

Miller in the pros? Not if Marty Blake, an NBA scout for 30 years, knows his business. “It’s ludicrous to think Cheryl Miller can play in the NBA,” Blake told the New York Daily News. “Only an idiot would think she can play on our level.”

And now the kicker.

“I’ve seen Cheryl play. She’s an exciting player, she’s got great charisma and she happens to be the best woman ever to play the game.”

So, the best woman ever to play the game has no game to play after college. Not on the basketball court, anyway. Hence, Miller’s four-year preparation for the other pros--pro modeling, pro television, pro movies, pro color commentary.

“She’s attractive, she’s a woman who can do a lot of things with her career other than basketball,” agent Ed Hookstratten said. “She could have a career in sports broadcasting, in communications. She’s young, she speaks well on her feet. She has grace--because of that, she’ll go far.”

Miller will go far because Miller has always gone far. “She’s been a person who’s been so successful,” Sharp said. “I don’t think she’ll fail. I don’t think she’ll ever fail at anything.”

This talk of her new career in entertainment has an ironic ring. Hasn’t she always been an entertainer? Hasn’t that been the irritant all along?

“On the Olympic team, a lot of people were saying, ‘She can’t play with the great players. She’s not a team player.’

“I’d sit down at a table and the rest of the team would just get up and leave. They didn’t know me. They wanted to break me. No one has. I’m still myself.

“If you don’t know me and you go on the impression of me on the court, you’ll think I’m too much. But if you take the time to know me, you’ll probably like me.”

That is the hope that Miller holds for her future. That she will be liked. That she will be permitted to be herself.

‘Everybody has a style. My style is right there. It’s always been that way. I hear people say to me, “Are you for real?” No, I’m a phony. I am what I am. Believe it or not.’--CHERYL MILLER