Bombers name former quarterback Ken Ploen to Ring of Honour

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This article was published 11/07/2016 (3369 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The man who led the Winnipeg Blue Bombers through their greatest decade as a football club will be enshrined this week in the team’s Ring of Honour. 

Four-time Grey Cup champion and legendary pivot Ken Ploen will see his name hung prominently inside the Investors Group Field stadium, joining legendary offensive lineman Chris Walby as one of nine players who will be honoured this year. 

“This is really a tribute to the team we had back then,” said Ploen in a release from the club. “And we had a great team because it was a team in the purest sense of the word. It was full of good Canadians and Americans and we got along great together and played well together. I’m very humbled about it.”

Ploen led the Blue Bombers’ first dynasty in the late 1950s and early 1960s, winning Cups in 1958, 1959, 1961 and 1962. Ploen’s heroics throughout his career included his 1961 touchdown run, an 18-yard scamper where he victimized several defenders before finding the end zone in overtime, a play widely regarded as one of the best in football history. 

Inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1975, Ploen was named a CFL All-Star in 1965 and a CFL West All-Star on three separate occasions, 1957, 1959 and 1965. 

“Ken Ploen retired as the league’s sixth all-time leading passer and fifth on the Bombers’ all-time rushing list,” said Blue Bombers president and CEO Wade Miller in a release. “We felt it was more than fitting to include such an exemplary former Blue Bomber in the Ring of Honour, and the fans agreed.”

Prior to legendary coach Bud Grant brining Ploen into the Bombers fold, the Lost Nation, Iowa native led the University of Iowa Hawkeyes to victory in the 1957 Rose Bowl, where he was voted as the Rose Bowl’s most valuable player. 

Ploen was inducted into the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in 1987 and honoured by the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 1997. In 2005, Ploen was named one of the Blue Bombers all-time greats. In 2007, Ploen was honoured with the Order of Manitoba and a road — Ken Ploen Way — was named in his honour adjacent to Investors Group Field. 

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Seven more inductees will be announced this year — one at each home game — in the Bombers’ on-going efforts to honour their past.  The Ring of Honour, situated above the 200-level suites at IGF,  is a series of placards bearing the names and numbers of esteemed athletes voted on by fans and vetted by a selection committee from the club. 

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

Every piece of reporting Scott produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.