Oct. 18, 1975. The streets of Stillwater, Oklahoma, are still.
Two puzzled Latter-day Saint missionaries knock on one door after another, with the same result — nobody is home. Where could everyone be on a Saturday afternoon?
“My goals were always to walk away with a good feeling about the coverage and that you did your best. ... My motto was always, ‘You were there, because we were there.’” — BYUtv senior supervising director Russell Merrill
A roar in the distance provides a clue and they follow the sound until it brings them to the steps of Lewis Field — home of the Oklahoma State Cowboys. The venue is packed as OSU played host to No. 4 Nebraska.
This is where the life of young Russell Merrill, a missionary just two weeks out of the Salt Lake training center, was changed forever.
“My companion and I walked right in and found some empty chairs and started handing out Books of Mormon,” Merrill said. “The game was at halftime, so they let us in for free.”
The Cornhuskers beat the Cowboys 28-20. As the two missionaries made their way out of the stadium, they walked past a truck with a sign on it that said, “TV Production.”
“I knocked on the door and no one answered,” Merrill said. “I opened it and walked in and there it was — a control room with all the monitors, replay machines, an audio booth and mixer board and I said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ I just found out what I wanted to do.”
Feb. 4, 2023. The Marriott Center crowd is filing out of the arena after BYU’s 66-51 victory over Pacific. As the play-by-play announcer wishes everyone a good night, Merrill signs off and, after directing the last of the thousands of games in his repertoire, he walks out of the BYUtv control room for the final time.
“My goals were always to walk away with a good feeling about the coverage and that you did your best and walk away with a good relationship with your crew,” Merrill said. “My motto was always, ‘You were there, because we were there.’”
Mission accomplished.
Getting started
When Merrill completed his mission, he returned home to Orem and told a neighbor about his experience with the TV truck in Stillwater. The neighbor said, “You should go to KBYU because I think they have a truck like that.”
With the two-year degree in electronic technology, which he had earned before his mission by attending classes at Utah Technical College (now Utah Valley University) in the mornings and classes at Orem High in the afternoons, Merrill was an easy hire.
In time, KBYU asked him to assist with the football broadcasts. He took on a variety of assignments, including video replay, a camera operator, sound technician and engineer, while always paying attention to the person in charge.
“I would watch the directors out of the corner of my eye and started making notes about how if I was directing, I’d be doing this or that instead,” Merrill said. “Finally, BYU was playing Utah State and the guys said, ‘Let’s give Russ the chance to direct the third quarter.’”
As quarterback Steve Young directed the Cougars to a 32-26 victory on Oct. 2, 1981, Merrill directed the broadcast.
“I started yelling out all of the commands and never gave that seat up after that,” he said. “Once I took the hot seat, I never gave it up.”
Directing an orchestra
A director in a live sports broadcast is much like a conductor of an orchestra. For a basketball game, Merrill sits in the BYU Broadcasting Building in front of a dozen television screens. To his right is the producer and associate producer. To his left is the technical director. Directly behind him is an engineer and graphics team. Further back in the room is the audio engineer.
Out the door and down the hall is the replay room where a team of editors wait for Merrill’s commands. Next door at the Marriott Center is a group of 10 camera operators, a game clock manager, a stats person and the announcers.
It’s Merrill’s job to bring this vast ensemble together and make music in a live setting that, unlike a symphony orchestra, doesn’t include a script and no one has any idea what’s going to happen.
“It’s about keeping focus,” Merrill said. “I want to cover as much of the good action and emotion as I can, and I want to do it right at the right moment. Every camera you call out, every camera you take are going to be legacy cuts. They are going to be the highlights that people will look at for years to come.”
When quarterback Taysom Hill broke free against Texas for a 68-yard touchdown run in the first quarter of the 2013 game at LaVell Edwards Stadium, pandemonium permeated throughout Cougar Nation, but for Merrill it was just business.
From the director’s chair, as Hill crossed the goal line, Merrill called for a camera shot that showed head coach Bronco Mendenhall walking the sideline with his right fist held up in the air, then he went back to Hill getting mobbed by his teammates in the end zone, then a crowd shot of the fan frenzy, followed by a low angle replay of the run, then right to the extra point attempt and then to the sideline for more reaction from Hill and his teammates.
This is how a director celebrates a touchdown.
“There could not have been a more perfect person to have in that seat. He never got frazzled,” said David Phillips, BYUtv’s head of sports production. “No matter what was going on, Russ was a steady voice who brought it all back in. We wouldn’t be where we are today without him.”
Shake, rattle and roll
Merrill was tough to rattle, even when the earth shook beneath him. Working as a technical director at the World Series for ESPN in 1989, he was positioned inside the production truck behind center field at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
At approximately 5:04 p.m., a magnitude 6.9 earthquake hit the area that cut the power and forced the postponement of the game. Operating with a back-up generator, Merrill and his crew went to work.
“When ABC lost power and was knocked off the air, we were still up,” he said. “The initial pictures that everybody saw were from our truck. ABC knocked on the door and asked if they could use our signal.”
Damage to the stadium was minimal compared to the areas around Oakland and San Francisco.
“All of the police came over to us because we were the only place at the stadium that had power,” Merrill said. “It was weird. What I was thinking inside the truck was, ‘Where am I going to sleep tonight. Where am I going to eat?’ You see all those pictures of the destruction — we were on that (Nimitz Expressway) just a few hours before it collapsed.”
Merrill and the crew continued to broadcast into the night.
BYUtv gets serious
BYU football entered independence in 2011 at the same time BYUtv moved into its new broadcasting facility east of the Marriott Center.
“We were often reminded by Elder (now President) M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve that this was never about the building,” said former BYUtv managing director Derek Marquis. “Rather, all of this was being done because of what would come out of the building. It was all about the content.”
With BYU regaining its broadcasting rights from the Mountain West Conference, the incoming sports content needed cultivators. This also meant bringing back some key figures from the past who knew how to do it, including Mikel Minor from ESPN and Merrill, who was employed at BYU-Hawaii.
With Minor on board, Marquis made a face-to-face pitch to Merrill in Laie, hoping he would catch the vision enough to leave paradise and return to Provo.
He did.
“Not only was Russ at the top of the class with live sports production, but his talent and expertise has touched literally thousands of hours of content from BYU Broadcasting since coming back in 2011,” Marquis said. “The viewers never think about what goes into getting the magic on their television screen. Without a doubt, Russ Merrill has been one of the best behind the curtain — making that magic happen.”
With Minor and Merrill on board, and with the green light from Marquis, BYUtv Sports set course on an unprecedented journey producing content both over-the-air and live-streaming on digital platforms. In addition to 100 live games each year and broadcasting the WCC men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, programs like “BYU Sports Nation,” “After Further Review,” “BYU Football Media Day,” “BYU Alumni Game,” “Coordinator’s Corner” and “Countdown to Kickoff/BYUSN GameDay” have Merrill’s fingerprints all over them.
“For nearly four decades, Russ set the standard as one of the truly visionary minds behind the evolution of BYU sports broadcasting,” said Minor, former senior coordinating producer at BYUtv. “From KBYU to the Blue & White Network, to SportsWest, to BYUtv, he directed real-time shots of countless live shows, games and productions — always with a steady hand and a calm demeanor.”
Last call
The Pacific game brought Merrill’s life of broadcasting adventures to a close, but his legacy of building and improving, whether with personnel or ever-changing technology, will live on. He leaves with BYUtv Sports better prepared for the Big 12.
“There is no place in the world that has facilities like this,” Merrill said. “I think it will take a little while for the Big 12 to realize that BYU has all the facilities. They are going to be using a lot of our students. It’s going to be a great opportunity for the individual out there that wants to get into this business.”
As for missing out on BYU joining the Big 12, it doesn’t bother Merrill. He’s already been there. That warm October day in 1975, when the roar of the crowd led him and his mission companion to the Stillwater steps of Lewis Field to see what the fuss was about, is where it all began for him. It’s also where BYU will end its first season in the Big 12 at Oklahoma State on Nov. 28.
Merrill has no reason not to believe he was directed into that TV production truck to catch a glimpse of his future and point him in the direction of directing — something that steered his life right up to retirement.
Dave McCann is a contributor to the Deseret News and is the studio host for “BYU Sports Nation Game Day,” “The Post Game Show,” “After Further Review” and play-by-play announcer for BYUtv. He is also co-host of “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com.
