Cal Murphy
Inducted: 2002
Member of Canadian Football Hall of Fame: inducted, 2004
Head coach: 1983-86; 1993-96
General Manager: 1987-96
Annis Stukus Trophy (CFL Coach of the Year): 1983, 1984
Cal Murphy was a winner. He won as a player, as a coach and as an administrator over a long career in football, many of those years with the Blue Bombers.
A native Winnipegger who headed west to Vancouver for high school and then returned as head coach in 1983, Murphy finished his career in the game with nine Grey Cup championships – three of them with the Bombers in 1984, 1988 and 1990.
He was on the sidelines in ’84 when the Bombers ended a 22-year championship drought by defeating the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Grey Cup. And he was the man who picked Mike Riley as his successor and then helped build two more championship teams as GM in 1988 and 1990.
When he and the Bombers parted ways after the 1996 season Murphy was second on the team’s all-time coaching wins list – behind only Bud Grant – and eighth on the CFL’s all-time chart.