Winnipeg Blue Bombers coach Cal Murphy holds the Grey Cup after his team beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Grey Cup game in Edmonton, Nov.18, 1984. Murphy, who was part of nine Grey Cup-winning teams as an assistant coach, head coach and CFL general manager has died at age 79.
Somewhere in the great beyond, Bob Ackles and Cal Murphy are having a riotous talk, reliving those days when they went at each other hammer and nail.
Ackles, the former B.C. Lions' general manager, will be chortling over the time he cut off Murphy's sideline communications during a 1985 playoff game due to a CFL rule. And Murphy, who was the Winnipeg Blue Bombers' head coach back then, will be shaking his head and remembering how he repeatedly called his foe "a weasel" for doing it.
Rule breaker. Weasel. Oh, how they'll be laughing.
We lost another member of the CFL's good old guys on Saturday. Murphy passed away in Regina, where he had been hospitalized for broken ribs after suffering a fall earlier this month. He was 79.
Feisty, combative, jovial, quick-witted, Murphy was a favourite among fans, players and media alike. He spent more than three decades as a coach and GM in the CFL and was widely regaled for his ability to spot a football player. He took one look at University of Calgary football player Dan Federkeil and said, "You're good, but you'll never make it to the NFL. Have you thought about playing on the offensive line?"
Murphy was scouting for the Indianapolis Colts and liked Federkeil's footwork. Sure enough, Federkeil was signed by the Colts and played in the NFL.
But the best thing about Murphy was that he was proudly, fiercely Canadian. He coached at the University of British Columbia before joining the Lions and being named their head coach in 1975. Midway through the following season, Murphy was canned by the man who had hired him, Bob Ackles.
"I remember the time Bob fired me," Murphy said when Ackles died of a heart attack in 2008. "A few months later, I was in Fort Lauderdale at the NCAA coaches' convention. Bob was there and asked me if I wanted a couple of tickets to the Canadian dinner. Then he said, 'You want to have a drink?' I called my wife and said, 'I'm in the bar having a drink and you'll never guess with who?' I told her it was Bob Ackles and he's buying."
Murphy guided the Blue Bombers to the 1984 Grey Cup championship then coached the rival Saskatchewan Roughriders as well as in NFL Europe and the XFL. Eventually, he became a regular visitor to every CFL stadium press box, where he scouted for Indianapolis and his friend, former Colts' GM Bill Polian, who once worked with Murphy in Winnipeg.
Ackles was one of several CFL figures who died in 2008, including Ralph Sazio, Earl Lunsford, Joe 'King' Krol and broadcasters Don Wittman and Leif Pettersen. (In December of 2007, former commissioner Jake Gaudaur and broadcaster Don Chevrier also passed away.) Ironically, the guy who suffered two heart attacks and underwent a heart transplant in 1992 out-lasted them all. That was Cal Murphy. Rule-breaker.
His buddy, the weasel, ought to get a chuckle out of that.