Mike Murphy

Father of American track athletics

Fifteen intercollegiate championships with 21 teams In 1892, Murphy returned to Yale where he served as coach and trainer of the track team and trainer of the football team. Over the next 11 years, Murphy moved back-and-forth between Yale (1892–1896, 1901–1905) and the University of Pennsylvania (1896–1901, 1905–1913). After turning Yale into the dominant power in track and field, Murphy brought immediate success to Penn when he moved there in 1896. In his first season at Penn, the school captured the intercollegiate track championship, scoring 34 points to defeat Yale, and finished with 24.5 points.

In addition to his discovery of Owen in Detroit, Murphy's discovery of Maxie Long is another oft-cited example of Murphy's ability to recognize and develop raw talent. Long, who became the country's top quarter-miler, was a bicycle rider when Murphy discovered him. Murphy coaxed him into sprinting, and on seeing Long run his first spring, Murphy reportedly declared, "I have discovered a champion." Upon their return, the American team also presented Murphy with a silver loving cup in gratitude for his efforts.

1912 games in Stockholm By the time of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Murphy was already ill with tuberculosis, and his illness was reported to have "thrown a scare into those interested in the welfare of the American track and field team." He was nevertheless selected as the coach of the American team and accompanied the team to Stockholm with assistance from Lawson Robertson. It was reported that the long trip had an adverse effect on his health, and he died less than a year later. In Stockholm, the Americans again dominated the track and field competition, winning 16 of 32 possible gold medals, and 42 of 94 total medals.

Murphy received principal credit for the dominance of American athletes between the 1890s and the Stockholm Olympics. The praise for Murphy was so great that a backlash developed among westerners who felt that, though many of the country's greatest athletes were coming out of the Midwest, the Eastern establishment sought to heap all of the credit on Murphy. For example, during the 1912 Olympics, the Minneapolis Journal noted that Murphy was not responsible for developing Midwestern stars Jim Thorpe and Ralph Craig and wrote:They are still at it down East, attempting to grab off the glory for the splendid work of the American athletes in the Olympic games as the personal due of Mike Murphy. ... Mike Murphy is unquestionably a great trainer, but he falls far short of deserving all the credit for the winning of the Olympic games. ... It is an injustice to other less-famed trainers to have their products blandly attributed to Murphy as some of the eastern writers, with their usual provincial complacency, are doing. Murphy is big enough and well enough known by past performances as a trainer to stand upon his own merits without having his misguided friends attempt to seize for him leaves of a bay rightfully belonging to other men.

Innovative techniques He was considered the premier athletic trainer of his era and was said to have "revolutionized the methods of training athletes and reduced it to a science." Others suggested that the real reason for Murphy's move to Penn had more to do with the question of salary, In 1908, The Washington Post noted that, though Murphy had been "rather deaf" for several years, his deafness had worsened, such that anyone wanting to speak with him "has to shout at the top of his lungs." Murphy joked at the time, "I'm not much of a one to tell secrets to."

Murphy suggested that his deafness made him more sympathetic to others and contributed to his success as a handler of men. However, Murphy was an opponent of brutality and insisted on fair play among his football players. In 1907, when he witnessed one of Penn's players "slug a man," an angry Murphy rushed out on the field and made the offending player leave the field, and required him to apologize before he would be allowed to play football again for Penn.

Head coaching record

Family and death Murphy and his wife, Nora Long, had three children. One of their children, George Murphy, became a well-known movie actor in the 1940s and 1950s and then a U.S. senator from California from 1965 to 1971. Their other son, Charles Thorne Murphy, was a football player at Yale before settling in Detroit. He reportedly lapsed into unconsciousness after the 1913 Penn track team gathered at his bedside to tell him they had won the 1913 intercollegiate championship. According to some reports, Murphy's illness began when Michigan and Penn played a football game in a blizzard at Ann Arbor, Michigan. From that time on, Murphy was "a sick man, suffering from tuberculosis." Upon his death, the flags at the University of Pennsylvania were lowered to half mast and The Philadelphia Inquirer proclaimed, "Mike Murphy is dead—Long live 'Mike' Murphy." The sports editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger wrote:Michael Charles Murphy will never be forgotten. Long after the generations who loved him personally ... have passed away, his name will be written indelibly in the most glorious annals of American's track and field history. His name and fame can never die. He will ever stand as the track wizard of his age, the hero of coaching achievements of his time. The funeral was held at St. James Catholic Church at 38th and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia with many of track's greatest athletes serving as his pallbearers.

In 1941, the University of Pennsylvania dedicated Murphy Field House as a tribute to Murphy; the Murphy Field House was destroyed by fire in 1968.