photo courtesy Eddie Murphey
Ed Murphey during his days at UT.
This being an Olympics year (due to the pandemic postponing the 2020 Games), track and field is a front-of-mind sport, even here in football-crazed America. Merely a week after the last medals are placed around winners’ necks in Tokyo, Memphis will host a feature event on the American Track League (ATL) schedule: the Ed Murphey Classic at Christian Brothers High School (August 14-15). The two-day meet — first held in 2017 — will be packed with familiar races for those craving sprints (100 meters, 200, 400) or middle-distance (800, 1,500, 3,000), along with three classic field events (shot put, long jump, pole vault) for both men and women. Sunday’s finals will be broadcast live nationally on ESPN2.
Murphey lettered in track and field at the University of Tennessee from 1954 to 1957 and was the SEC’s mile champion each of the last three years, setting a conference record as a senior.
Who, you might ask, was Ed Murphey? Put simply, Murphey — a native of Brownsville, Tennessee — was a miler when milers were very, very cool. (England’s Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954, a feat for which Bannister was named the first Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated.) He lettered in track and field at the University of Tennessee from 1954 to 1957 and was the SEC’s mile champion each of the last three years, setting a conference record as a senior with a time of 4:14.8. Murphey finished sixth in the 1956 NCAA 1,500 meters (the “metric mile”), and competed in the Olympic Trials that year (finishing seventh with a time of 3:52.6). Though he missed out on the Melbourne Games, Murphey’s legacy includes the Ed Murphey Award, given annually since 1965 to the most outstanding men’s track and field athlete at UT. Murphey moved to Memphis after graduating from college and worked in the insurance business. He died in 2014 at age 78.
“We need to educate Americans about track and field,” says Murphey’s son, Eddie, president of the Ed Murphey Classic. The younger Murphey credits a pair of prominent local runners — Paul Sax and attorney Mike Cody — with firing the starter’s gun on the Ed Murphey Classic, a 2017 meeting at the University Club leading to what’s become a meet with national impact. “They asked me if I wanted to be involved with a race they were putting on in Dad’s honor,” says Murphey, who ran the mile at Memphis University School and, like his father, attended the University of Tennessee. “It sounded phenomenal. Nobody had ever broken the four-minute [mile] barrier in Memphis. We brought in a few athletes . . . and we broke it.” (Three runners actually broke it. In order of finish, they were Craig Engels, Eric Avila, and Travis Mahoney.) A concept originated by Nick Dwyer and Max Paquette (to this day the meet coordinator) had crossed its first finish line, both in the literal and metaphorical sense.
Memphis is one of ten American cities hosting events under the nascent ATL umbrella. Murphey points out that only one American Race — the Prefontaine Classic in Oregon, also in August — has attained silver-label status (one tier below Olympic-level competition). Noting a fund-raising goal of $125,000 (for prize money) this year with the aim of doubling that in the near future, Murphey can see the day when Memphis achieves that silver-label status. As with tennis or golf, a purse will draw track stars, and American cities are playing catch-up with Europe when it comes to achieving mainstream status. Among the headliners expected to appear this year in Memphis are LaShawn Merritt (400 meters) and Clayton Murphy, a bronze medalist in the 800 meters at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
There’s a larger cause to the Ed Murphey Classic and its partnership with Memphis Youth Athletics. Murphey describes the mission with a mantra: Let’s keep our kids on the right track. “In 2017,” reflects Murphey, “one of the milers saw me at the airport and said, ‘There are no races in America for us.’ He was headed to Ireland to compete. ‘Could you put on a race for us?’ Timing is everything. I looked into it and felt like we could do this. We’re filling a need.”
For more information and tickets, visit edmurpheyclassic.com.
