Canzano: Money talks -- and SMU is knee-deep in it
Canzano: Money talks -- and SMU is knee-deep in it
San Diego State and SMU poised for Pac-12 entry
David Miller made his fortune in fossil fuels. He founded a Denver-based oil and gas company in the early 1980s. After that, he launched EnCap Investments, one of the country’s leading providers of private equity to the energy industry.
When Pac-12 Conference Commissioner George Kliavkoff made that well-documented visit to Southern Methodist University in February, he watched the Mustangs play on “David B. Miller Court.”
Miller and his wife, Carolyn, also have their last name on SMU’s event center and on the ballroom of the school’s indoor-training center. A satellite campus in the mountains of New Mexico carries the family name, too. And the Millers made a splash in 2019 when they gave the SMU business school $50 million — the largest individual donation in the university’s 112-year history.
Miller played basketball for the Mustangs in the 1970s. He was a center on the team and is now a major donor to the university’s NIL fund — “The Boulevard Collective. And he happens to be knee deep in SMU’s quest to join the Pac-12.