A lameen Murphy is a man of few words and none were needed as he skidded to a stop and dropped to his back on the sweet Autzen Stadium turf. All around, his Stanford football teammates leaped, danced and screamed in jubilant chaos.
Body prone, Murphy stretched his arms wide and balanced the ball in his right hand before he too was engulfed by the celebration. In the aftermath of Stanford’s 38-31 come-from-behind victory over Oregon, Murphy, as he always seems, was calm even as his end zone interception ended the overtime showdown.
It was 11:38 p.m. in Fort Washington, Maryland -- 2,388 miles away -- when the ball settled in Murphy’s hands. Sitting on the edge of the sofa with the TV in front of her, Princess Martin sprung to her feet. Ali Murphy celebrated with her, and mother and son smacked hands in a glorious high-five. Within seconds, her cell phone chimed like a slot machine as texts and messages flooded in.
In Providence, Rhode Island, where he now coaches, Peter Quaweay had one thought: This is so fitting. Murphy’s journey to Stanford was forged by a hard-working mother, but polished by the faith of ‘Coach Q’.
In College Park, Maryland, RaVon Davis could relate to Murphy’s game-clinching interception, having done so earlier in the day himself in Maryland’s victory over Minnesota. Years ago, the friends and high school teammates found themselves on different roads, but challenged themselves to reach the same destination. They were living up to those vows.
When a player puts on a uniform, he is symbolically surrendering individuality for team and institution. Still, the individual’s story, particularly one as dramatic as Murphy’s, should not be overlooked beneath the matching shiny helmets and spotless jerseys.
The odds say that Murphy should not be at Stanford: He was raised by a single mom, his late father’s education ended in middle school, and the family shared a tiny apartment with roaches and crickets that climbed walls and pattered across the floor. At Murphy’s public high school, pages were missing from textbooks and the books themselves were shared among classmates because there weren’t enough to go around.
Yet here stands Alameen Murphy: fifth-year cornerback, two-year team captain, and Stanford graduate with a master’s degree on the horizon.
How rare is this?
“It does not happen,” said Quaweay, Murphy’s coach at Friendly High in Fort Washington. “Not to the kids who come from Alameen’s background.”
"To be able to say that you made it to Stanford and graduated … it makes you feel like there’s not much that you can’t do."
» Alameen Murphy
Murphy is the first male on his father’s side to graduate from college, earning a degree in science, technology and society in June while co-terming toward a master’s in communication with a focus on media studies.
“I’ve always had to compete, every second of my life,” Murphy said. “To be able to say that you made it to Stanford and graduated … it makes you feel like there’s not much that you can’t do.”
Murphy described his early life as, “humble beginnings.”
There were two ripped sofas and a small wooden table in the little two-bedroom apartment in Oxon Hill, Maryland, southeast of D.C. and bisected by the Capital Beltway. All three kids – Aisha, Ali, and Alameen -- shared a bedroom. Alameen and Ali shared a bed.
Princess Martin grew up in Headland, Alabama, graduated from Alabama A&M before coming north toward the Mason-Dixon Line. Martin and Troy Murphy had three children, but never married -- he was Muslim, she was Baptist.
Troy, a muscular man who taught his boys how to lift weights, was a D.C. native who lost two brothers to gun violence. He remained in his children’s lives until he died of a heart attack when Alameen was a high school sophomore. Though Troy lacked a middle school diploma, he understood the value of education and preached that to his children. Today, Aisha is a graduate student in applied meteorology at Mississippi State, and Ali attends Prince George’s Community College.
Martin had to raise a family on her own, and it wasn’t easy. When Alameen was little, she had no car and had to push his stroller to a babysitter’s house while carrying or dragging two toddlers down the street each day. After dropping them off, she crossed Route 210 to catch the Metro bus line into D.C., where she worked in information technology for the federal government.
When Martin finally bought a car, it was a Ford Escort with the side bashed in, for $400.
“If you’ve ever heard a woman say, especially black women, ‘A mother’s just got to do what she’s got to do,’ that’s the way it was,” Martin said. “You do what you have to do.”
Martin knew she must further her career to properly care for her family, and that led to more sacrifice. She rose at 5 a.m. to study, and stayed up late to study more. She now is a project manager in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, working with programs that help house the elderly.
“Don’t look at where you are, look at where you want to go,” was a phrase Princess learned from her mother, Nina Gibbs, and passed to her children.
These were teaching moments, of perseverance, of taking responsibility, of appreciating what you have.
“No matter how bad it may have seemed, you could never tell by my mom’s face,” Alameen said. “We always had a roof over our heads, we never missed a meal, we never had a Christmas without a present.
“I know that my mom put a lot of work into getting out of that situation. She was really determined and that stuck with me. She instilled that in all of us. If you really want something, and really believe in something, go get it.”
The family spent each Christmas Day at the home of Alameen’s godparents, Irma and Terrence Lewis. Irma also came from Alabama, and joined Princess on the piano at Fort Foote Baptist Church where Irma went on to become a minister.
Before opening gifts, the families spent time in Christian fellowship. Afterward, they ventured into the community and gave fruit baskets to shut-ins, sang Christmas carols at nursing homes, and passed out gifts to cancer-stricken children at St. Jude’s Hospital in Arlington, Virginia.
On some of these outings, as they walked through nice neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights, Princess gathered the children. She would say, “We’re going to live in a house like this one day.”
This seemed like hope beyond hope until Alameen was in eighth grade. One day, Princess took the kids for a drive.
When they reached their destination -- the front of a three-level, five-bedroom house in Fort Washington -- Princess pulled out a key. The house was theirs.
That night, there was nothing inside but a pair of air mattresses. Alameen and Ali shared one and Princess and Aisha shared the other.
“We were all in the living room when we went to sleep that night,” Alameen said. “We had no lights, no lamp, no nothing. I remember that being the happiest moment of my life.
“It was like we made it.”
•••
•••
Notre Dame, USC, Oregon, Washington? Murphy has played big games for Stanford, but some of his most memorable were those played in the new house. With mom at work, he, Ali, and friends pushed aside the furniture to play tackle football and wrestle, and took the games outside in the snow, mud, and summer heat.
“Have you heard of WWE wrestling? The Rock? They would do all of that stuff, everything they would see on TV,” Aisha said. “I’m talking about do-not-try-this-at-home wrestling. Another chair would break and I would just look at them. They were going to do what they were going to do anyway.”
Alameen, who joined his first football team at age 7 as a lineman, was something of a daredevil, launching himself from the upstairs loft onto a couch below, or off a friend’s balcony.
He collected his share of C’s and D’s in middle school and, clearly, there were few indications of the success to follow. But upon the death of his father, the Murphy we know began to take shape.
“Me and my brother both felt like we were now the men of the house,” Alameen said. “That’s why most people tell me I act more mature than I am, because I had to be at a young age. My dad passed away, so I had to grow up really fast.
“I knew that if I didn’t get good grades in high school, I probably wouldn’t be going to a university. I don’t think my mom would be able to afford it. I knew if at least one of us was able to get a scholarship, that would open doors for the others to go to school too. I started to take football a lot more seriously after that. And good things started happening.”
Quaweay said he saw Murphy’s potential immediately, even in comparison to Davis.
“He just had this natural drive to be great,” Quaweay said. “He was not as fast as RaVon. He didn’t jump high. But he did whatever task he was asked to do, and he worked to master it. He always went above and beyond whatever it was that was required of him. And because he was doing it and RaVon was doing it, the rest of the team followed.”
When the Patriots took the field, it was often with 19-20 players against teams of 50-60, and they still won.
When Friendly opened in 1970, it served largely upper- to middle-class families. But over the years, Friendly and other public schools in Prince George’s County, became largely segregated toward African Americans and were criticized for underserving students. Fewer than half now go on to four-year colleges.
Quaweay saw himself in the kids he coached. Born in Liberia, Quaweay was 12 when his family of nine moved from Africa to the U.S. and settled in ghettos around Providence. Sometimes there was no food or heat during the brutal New England winters. They made due by eating noodles for weeks at time, or huddling under an electric blanket.
Quaweay wanted to get out, but didn’t know how. There was little motivation at his school and few willing to provide direction. However, there was one individual who told Quaweay that he should consider college. Quaweay never thought of it until then, and would become the only child in his family to go.
Football was Quaweay’s ticket and, after competing at a community college, he walked on to a Michigan State team coached by Nick Saban.
“It changed my perspective on life – totally,” Quaweay said. “I met people who grew up differently than I did. I found out that, yeah, they had better preparation, but they were not more intelligent than I was. As far as critical thinking, they were not deeper thinkers.
“Looking back to my younger years, I felt cheated, because nobody saw the potential. I just saw so many people quit on life. They were from the ghetto and they didn’t believe they could do anything about it. But I finally realized that not only can I do this, but I can do this really well.
“I wanted to come back home and relay that message to kids – that you can get out.”
In his vision, Quaweay held Stanford aloft as an example of what was possible.
“Stanford has set the standard for greatness,” Quaweay said. “I always talk about Stanford, even though I have no connection to it. I see Stanford as the epitome of what you should aspire to be.”
•••
•••
In Quaweay’s view, the players at Friendly were the ones the private schools didn’t want, lacking pure athletic talent and academic discipline. Not exactly Stanford material. But Quaweay felt structure and discipline could change them, and used the lure of football to convince them to improve their academic standing, which was his true goal all along.
Murphy flourished in that environment. “When he started to do well academically, it was like a drug to him,” Quaweay said. Murphy became an honor roll student and set a goal of improving his grade-point average each semester.
On the field, it was clear that there was something special about Murphy. He was named team captain as a sophomore. Then, and now, teammates gravitated toward his understated leadership and wisdom.
Among them was Davis, who could run a 4.3 in the 40-yard dash and jump 40 inches off the ground. However, Davis was in danger of squandering his gifts. He struggled in school, got in some trouble, and interest from big-time programs dried up just as Alameen’s began to take off.
Princess recalls Alameen coming home and pleading, “Mom, we gotta help him, we gotta help him.”
In truth, Alameen and RaVon helped each other.
“I always looked up to him,” Davis said. “He was on the right path, doing the right things and I was hanging out with the wrong crowd. He convinced me that the decisions I made would affect me later.”
They trained and studied together. Davis was a true athlete and Murphy aspired to be one. Murphy excelled in academics and Davis wanted that too. They pushed each other in ways neither could have foreseen.
Even so, there was a point when Davis, at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, “hit a wall,” he said. He considered quitting school and football. Murphy encouraged him to stay.
“You can do this,” Murphy told him.
“He explained to me that you can learn from wisdom,” Davis recalled. “You don’t have to make the wrong choices and learn from experience. Alameen always looked at the brighter side of things. He always walked with his chin up. He helped me gain confidence in myself.
“I would not be where I am without Alameen.”
Davis walked on at Maryland in 2016 and now is a senior starter in the secondary and majoring in family science.
“They became these kids who no longer thought about ghetto life, but thought about doing great things, and grew together because of this,” Quaweay said. “They’re close, they’re brothers. They love each other. They look out for each other, and they’ll be close for life. And they continue to do nothing but inspire each other to greatness.”
With the Stanford ideal in mind, Quaweay sent tape of Murphy to Stanford coach David Shaw.
“Is Alameen coming to school today?” texted Friendly’s athletics director to Martin one morning. “Because someone’s coming to see him.”
Murphy thought it might be North Carolina State, which had shown some interest.
“This school’s a little bigger than North Carolina State,” the A.D. told him.
Waiting was Stanford assistant David Kotulski, who scouted the region. Soon, Kotulski offered a scholarship, and Murphy committed to Shaw at a Stanford summer camp.
How did this happen? His brother Ali gave a simple explanation: “He’s always been the hardest worker. Hard work got him to where he is today.”
Quaweay agreed.
“He wasn’t Superman,” the coach said. “He made himself Superman.”
In true Murphy fashion, he spent the summer before his first Stanford training camp following a workout regimen provided by Shannon Turley’s sports performance staff, but with a twist … Murphy did three times what was asked.
At Stanford, Murphy brings the same wisdom, the same quiet leadership, the same “greatness,” that Coach Q saw years ago.
“Alameen is very serious about everything he does,” said Shaw, Stanford’s Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football. “He’s very serious about what he believes, about how hard he works, but he’s also approachable. The guys love him and they respond to him.
“Even with guys his own age, he just seems older and more mature. The example that Alameen puts out there is a guy who does everything right, works extremely hard, says what he means and means what he says. He’s just a great example to follow.”
Said linebacker and classmate Joey Alfieri, “He’s definitely more of a leader by example, but when he talks, guys listen.”
As a freshman, Murphy saw how hard veterans like Ronnie Harris and Jordan Richards prepared, how serious they took the game. Murphy wants to be that way for his young teammates.
“Every time I step out on the field, or even in the weight room, or walking around the locker room, I try to make sure I’m leading a really good example for people,” Murphy said. “I hope that if anybody ever takes anything from me when I leave this place, it’s that Alameen, no matter what it was, always gave 100 percent. He did it the right way and did it the way it’s supposed to be done.”
Murphy, sitting in a small conference room at Stanford’s Arrillaga Family Sports Center, then began to smile.
“I’m lucky my mom raised me like that,” he said. “My mom is my favorite superhero. Superheroes do things and you don’t know how they did it.”
A couple of years ago, Shaw asked Murphy to break the team down after practice. This is an opportunity for a player to provide words of inspiration and the lasting impression of the day.
Murphy stood and his teammates grew quiet.
“All dogs go to heaven,” he said.
That was it.
“It means, just be a dog,” Alfieri said. “Be a dog on defense. Fight for your teammates and it’ll all work out in the end.”
It was brilliant.
•••
