[6] He has been variously reported to have traveled the country participating in "six-day races" at the age of 20 and to have been a boxer and a minor league baseball player.

[7] According to his obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer, "his ambition was to stand out prominently as a six-day pedestrian and at the age of eighteen he was out in the world trying to win fame and fortune on the tan bark track.

"[7] A Philadelphia sports writer later noted the "irony of fate" that Murphy had the talent to develop athletic prodigies though "nature did not deign to bless him with even an average physique.

[3] Murphy remained in Detroit for three years, and while there, he developed a reputation for having a "sixth sense" in being able to spot athletic talent.

But Murphy insisted, and from that seeming guess work selection of a future great was developed John Owen, the first amateur sprinter to cover one hundred yards under ten seconds.

[2] Of the 21 indoor and outdoor track teams coached by Murphy during this time, 15 of them won the intercollegiate championships—eight at Penn and seven at Yale.

In addition to his success in coaching the Yale and Penn teams to championships, Murphy also developed an unparalleled reputation for finding and training individual champions.

[4] At the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, there was no official American team, and several universities sent athletes and coaches to represent the United States.

At the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, Murphy was placed in charge of the entire American team, not just his own Penn athletes.

[11] On the trip across the Atlantic Ocean, Murphy was always jovial, leading the men in light exercise in which the athletes were "made to feel that it was merely play.

[8]When the American team returned from London, President Theodore Roosevelt hosted them at his Sagamore Hill home on Long Island, and singled out Murphy for special recognition.

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.

[2] He is also credited with being the first man to develop the practice of strapping the tendon with adhesive tape or rubber bandages before competition, and with innovating the use of a mixture of liniment or rubbing oil in treating his athletes.

Murphy also preached the need for a pure mind and body and abolished the old attitude that athletes in training for a physical test required ale and certain stimulants "to give them the vim and make them 'go.

"[5] The chair of Penn's physical education department once described Murphy's motivational approach as follows:Mike is a combination of a professor of applied psychology and an evangelist.

In 1905, when Murphy left Yale for the second and final time, some reports indicated it was due to an aristocratic slight to the captain of the football team, Shevlin.

At the evening meal, Chase was disappointed to discover that pie was not to be served at the camp, packed his bags, and placed them on a bus headed to the train station.

One report in 1905 noted: "It was characteristic of Murphy to encourage the belief that he was very deaf and thus break down the caution of the lads who prided themselves on their ability to outwit the veteran.

"[22] When he was in Reno in 1910 for the Jack Johnson–James Jeffries fight, Murphy recalled being approached by a woman who went on at length telling him about her marital problems.

The writer once saw him move a red and blue football team to tears between the halves of a great intercollegiate battle when they retired to their dressing room with the score against them and there appeared no reasonable probability of vanquishing their foes.

The wonderfully magnetic and persuasive powers of the dead trainer were exerted to their utmost ... Murphy's appeal to the Penn players was a masterpiece of its kind.

It fired the hearts of that disheartened, discouraged and well-nigh defeated team; it transformed every man into a fighting Titan, a giant who did not know his own strength and ability; it moved every man to tears; it converted an apparent defeat to one of the most glorious triumphs ever witnessed in the records of old Penn's athletic history.

Between 1906 and 1908, a movement developed to eliminate football from university sports programs on grounds that it was too brutal and was attracting professionalism to the college campuses.

"[24] Murphy spoke in favor of removing restrictions on the forward pass, which he viewed as a spectacular play and one that weakens the defense.

[6] 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.

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.

[5]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.