Rob Murphy’s retirement sees the CFL lose a great personality as well as a top player

The CFL sees plenty of significant players retiring every year, but what's perhaps most notable about this year's class is that the players who have left have been such prominent personalities as well as outstanding players. Doug Brown, Brent Johnson, Gene Makowsky, Taylor Robertson and Bryan Crawford are all going to leave voids in scribes' notebooks as well as on the field, and that class will be further boosted Thursday when former Toronto Argonauts and B.C. Lions' offensive tackle Rob Murphy elects to hang his cleats up. Murphy's long been one of the CFL's most ferocious combatants on the field, but he's also become renowned for his accessibility and candour off the field, both with journalists and with fans on Twitter. Teams are certainly going to miss Murphy's on-field presence, but his off-field engagement with fans and reporters may be an even larger loss for the league.

It's worth pointing out that Murphy has been an incredible on-field competitor over the course of his eight-year CFL career, not just a good quote. He's been named all-CFL three times at one of football's most difficult positions, and he earned back-to-back honours as the league's top lineman in 2006 and 2007. (Murphy's impressive career started before he headed north, too; a Buffalo, New York native, he was a three-year starter for Ohio State and earned a consensus first-team All-American nod in 1998, then went on to play in NFL Europe and the NFL before coming to the CFL.) For much of his career, he's been seen as one of the CFL's meanest trench warriors (the B.C. Lions' pairing of him and Jason Jimenez probably still gives opposing defensive ends nightmares), and although the Argonauts elected to go younger instead of bringing him back this offseason, there are still probably a lot of defensive linemen happy they won't have to face Murph this year.

In a world where so many have struggled to make the transition from football star to everyday life, though, it's refreshing to hear that Murphy sees his identity as being about much more than football. From Matthew Scianitti of The National Post:

Murphy will be missed as a personality as well as a player, though. How many guys are willing to talk candidly about their willingness to "grab testicles and pinch love handles" in trench battles? How many will go on Off The Record and discuss potentially-threatening comments they made without backing down one inch? How many will be perfectly honest about how they feel when friends and colleagues pass away? Murphy's farewell press release said he'll be officially announcing his retirement at a Toronto bar Thursday and added "please join me for shots and beers in celebration", and while that's something you don't see every day, it's a perfectly appropriate way for him to go out (much as teammate Adriano Belli did last season). Those of us not based in Hogtown will be lifting a glass to him, too; players like Murphy who can shine on the field and be terrific ambassadors for the league off the field don't come along all that often, and his impact isn't going to fade any time soon.