Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

sports football

Murphy successful on the field, in the classroom

spIUvsPennSt

Mark Murphy’s football IQ began to develop well before he was even allowed to step onto a football field.

The senior safety used to lay in his bed as a boy watching film of his father, Mark Murphy Sr., playing safety for the Green Bay Packers in the 1980s.

Those early film sessions molded Murphy into the player he is, as he learned the game directly from his father, who was inducted into the Packers Hall of Fame in 1998.

Off the football field, Murphy has put similar effort into his studies in the classroom. An informatics major, Murphy boasts a 3.85 GPA.

He’s one of 17 finalists for the National Football Foundation’s Campbell Trophy, awarded to the nation’s best scholar athlete, which bodes well with his safeties coach Noah Joseph.

Joseph has a motto he likes his safeties to follow: “Dumb gets you beat.” That hasn’t really been a problem for Murphy, a perennial Academic All-American contender.

Unless, of course, he runs late for a team meeting. Then Joseph starts to heckle Murphy a bit.

“If he’s ever running late to a meeting or something, he’ll just say that he’s more focused on his schoolwork than his football work,” freshman safety Chase Dutra said. “But you can’t really dog on him because he’s a really, really smart kid and it shows on the field and in the classroom.”

Murphy’s classroom success named him to the Capital One Academic All-District V Team for the third consecutive year and placed him on the ballot for Academic All-American consideration.

Murphy, who shares his number 37 with his father, was never pushed into playing football. He didn’t even start playing until he was in fifth grade.

Since he couldn’t play football, he watched it. In the classroom, he quickly became a top student, and when he was finally allowed to play football, he learned to balance his time between studying his textbooks and playbooks.

He treats both the same, giving priority to whichever one’s up next. When he’s on the field it’s all about football. But when he’s off, school becomes a priority.

“For me, growing up, my dad always said, ‘You can control your attitude and your effort no matter what you do,’” ?Murphy said. “Even if it’s school, you want to make sure you have the best attitude and don’t slack off. It’s always been my goal, no matter what I’m doing, to pour my heart into and get what I can out of it.”

Joseph described the safety position in much the same way the quarterback is described on the other side of the ball.

Lining up the farthest back on defense, the safety must compensate for the mistakes of others. That means knowing the alignments and communicating with teammates and having them trust the voice behind them.

The play itself is a bit like problem-solving in the classroom.

Murphy must determine what the offense is showing and anticipate what play is coming. Once the ball is snapped, he has to recognize if it’s a run or pass and almost instantaneously locate and mend any defensive breakdowns in front of him.

All that happens in a matter of three or four seconds while, at the same time, Murphy is trying to make plays on the run.

“It’s a lot going on at that pace,” Joseph said. “There’s a lot of guys who are smart in the books and not the streets, or the other way around. A guy like Mark, he’s got both.

It lets you process things quickly with a strong football IQ.”

Dutra described Murphy as the “grandpa” of the safeties room. Having watched film since elementary school, sophomore safety Antonio Allen said there are times when he thinks Murphy knows the playbook better than the coaches.

In team meetings, it isn’t rare to find Murphy correcting others watching film or making a point to speak up and correct the team’s mistakes.

With only three college career games left that are guaranteed, Murphy said he hasn’t put too much thought in a future after graduation. He’s thinking about graduate school or possibly studying law if a professional football career doesn’t pan out.

For now, the focus is beating Rutgers at 3:30 p.m. Saturday and finding a way to win three games to become bowl eligible.

“I’m just taking it week by week right now,” Murphy said. “When the last play is over, we’ll see where I’m at. Right now, we’ve got to go beat ?Rutgers.”

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe