Sports writer Robert Miech is a San Diego State alumnus that has been covering sports since his college years at SDSU. He started at The Daily Aztec and has since written for the Los Angeles Times, CBS SportsLine and the Las Vegas Sun. He has written three books, each focusing on college athletes and their teams. Miech’s most recent book is entitled “Eleventh Heaven: Ed O’Bannon and the 1995 National Basketball Champion UCLA Bruins.” The book surrounds Ed O’Bannon as the key to the University of California, Los Angeles Bruins winning the 1995 NCAA Basketball Championship.
O’Bannon had planned on playing for UNLV, but wound up playing for UCLA and soon thereafter was injured. Following a radical procedure, O’Bannon returned to the court determined to lead the Bruins to victory. “Eleventh Heaven” is the story of his dream and of the team that was ready to follow him. It is available for purchase on Amazon and at local bookstores.
Miech found his dream of sports writing at a junior college in the Bay Area.
“In an introductory composition course, the professor announced, ‘the first rule of writing is: there are no rules.’ That broke the whole rigid and strict rules of concocting a sentence that seemed to be the high school system of writing,” Miech said. “Plus, I was a big fan of ‘The Odd Couple,’ in which Jack Klugman played the sportswriter Oscar Madison. It appeared to be a fun way to spend a career.”
Interested in journalism, Miech came to SDSU. After he graduated in 1987, his interest in basketball started when he took a job at the Pasadena Star-News, where he focused on UCLA basketball and football.
Miech’s original plan was to write about the Bruins immediately following the team’s amazing championship win in 1995, but the project was unfortunately delayed due to a stolen computer bag that contained information he had collected for the book. Defeated, Miech focused his energy on other works before returning to the 1995 Bruins.
“At the time, it was devastating,” Miech said. “But I can say with no doubt that I did not have it in me, in April 1995, to do that one justice.”
In 2012, Miech found himself with a timeframe applicable to giving the book the respect it deserved. Miech committed 22 months to travel and research for “Eleventh Heaven.” Miech visited Thailand, Japan, the Czech Republic, and New York, to name a few places, all with the intention of meeting those who were part of the victorious time in Bruins basketball history. O’Bannon recounted his life over countless meetings and hours of conversation with Miech. The work for “Eleventh Heaven” took time and effort, which Miech learned to deal with first hand while at The Daily Aztec.
“The raw ability to talk to a tennis coach at 11 p.m. and spit out a coherent 18-inch story for the next day’s paper by midnight is something that can only be learned by actually doing it,” Miech said. “No teacher can replicate what that is like. It is sink or swim, as quirky and adrenaline-fueled and demanding as any actual newsroom. It is impossible to minimize what The Daily Aztec means to me.”
