Jim Murray (football)

Jim Murray is the co-founder of the Ronald McDonald House and a former General Manager of the Philadelphia Eagles. He is a native of West Philadelphia and is also president of Jim Murray Ltd, a sports promotion and marketing firm.

The son of Irish Catholic parents who worked long hours at hard jobs, he grew up in a rowhouse in West Philadelphia and attended Our Mother of Sorrows Parish grade school and West Catholic High School. He graduated from Villanova University in 1960. Jim is the brother of Francis W. Murray, who was so influenced by his sibling's success in professional sports that he embarked on an impossible odyssey to purchase the New England Patriots of the NFL, in the late 1980s, after Jim's tenure as GM with the Eagles had ended due to the financial pressures faced by Leonard Tose, the former owner of the Eagles. His influence was truly based in their childhoods, as both brothers, growing up poor Irish kids in West Philadelphia, sought the sanctuary of sports in a tough neighborhood where a basketball court was an impenetrable fort.

Jim and Fran preferred a ball rather than a book, and athletics became a metaphor for where life was a game and to live your dream was the only way to score. One generation later, Jim would influence his nephew and the youngest son of his brother Fran, an independent award-winning filmmaker named T Patrick Murray who produced for ESPN a football documentary that USA Today critic Mike Clark gave "4 out of 4 stars" entitled THE LAST GAME.

He began his career in sports administration with the Tidewater Tides of baseball's South Atlantic League. After a tour of active duty with the Marine Corps Reserve, he returned to baseball as assistant general manager of the Atlanta Crackers, an affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1964, he left baseball to enter the restaurant business, but returned to Villanova as sports information director in 1966.

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