Homegrown champion always had Maple Leaf on his heart

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/02/2012 (5233 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During the 1970s and ’80s, CFL teams were mostly owned by private individuals with two exceptions — the community-owned Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders.

The standard argument favouring private ownership was it was more efficient because the priority was to make money. Publicly owned teams were often dismissed as “socialist collectives” that existed primarily for the entertainment of the masses by encouraging broad-based community participation. Most wise people believed they were at a disadvantage against the efficiencies of teams that operated in accordance with strict capitalist principles.

The bottom line was privately owned teams were expected to be more successful on the scoreboard and at the box office.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank.

Those privately owned teams, especially in Eastern Canada, might have the readily disposable income and rapid decision-making processes to sign big names like Vince Ferragamo and other “ordinary superstars” like Johnny Rogers, but they were also losing money and games much more regularly than those commie teams out on the Canadian Prairies.

This was difficult to explain since the general managers of the privately owned teams had all sorts of motivation to trim costs and toe the bottom line to balance out some of those big paycheques they were paying out to players (who were mostly a big bust). The GMs of publicly owned teams were expected to operate like bureaucrats; with no big worries about running a deficit and even lesser trauma when the program has little success when it comes to wins and losses, just like any other publicly run (read: government) organization using public funds (read: taxpayer or burdened masses).

Enter Cal Murphy.

Cal wheeled into his first Bomber practice on a rusty, second-hand “girl’s bike” he must have picked up at a thrift store. He told everybody his doctor had recommended he start exercising because he had a bad heart but it soon became whispered that Cal was simply too cheap to pay for gas.

Cal Murphy tossed nickels around like manhole covers when he really didn’t have to. GMs of community-run teams were kind of expected to be less efficient and, when money ran out, it wasn’t as if some owner’s back pocket suddenly went empty.

There was always this bottomless collection plate that could be passed around.

So, it made me wonder why the next time I met Cal it was on a Christmas Eve, when he and his coaching staff and their wives were all flogging merchandise out of the Bomber Store. According to Murphy, the night before Christmas is one of the best times to move merchandise, and if that meant giving up your holidays for the sake of the team’s bottom line, you did that.

Cal may have gone too far when he installed a drink machine in the Bombers dressing room that made the players dig for change every time they wanted a carbonated refreshment. But it was the Bombers who bailed out those privately owned teams out east in the days when the CFL demanded “equalization payments.”

And Cal’s teams beat them on the scoreboard as well as the bottom line. Murphy’s Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup when he coached them and they won when he had the wisdom to hire a young Mike Riley to lead them to the Grey Cup. In all, Cal Murphy served on nine Grey Cup-winning teams during his lengthy career. You always knew you would have a competitive team whenever and wherever Cal was involved.

Cal was kind of run out on a rail here in Winnipeg — unfairly blamed for some massive red ink that was mostly due to those bailouts that came during the good times but weren’t there for the Bombers during the bad times.

But he is now fondly remembered because time heals all wounds and history eventually gets it right.

All of this and Cal was a Canadian, too. He redefined the image of Canadian players by making them stars instead of just filler for teams dominated by imports, and his own success revealed Canadians can excel at coaching and management.

He wasn’t afraid to hire the best man for the job regardless of nationality (Murphy once told me he offered all 12 of his starters on defence for Doug Flutie) but the Maple Leaf was tattooed on his heart.

A heart that finally gave out at the age of 79.

Cal Murphy was one of the great ones. Misunderstood, but aren’t they all?

I hope this sets some of the record straight.

Don Marks covered the Bombers as a sportscaster with CKND-TV during Cal Murphy’s reign and worked with Murphy on The Coach Cal call-in show.