{"id":132266,"date":"2025-09-04T12:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T12:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/132266\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T12:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T12:59:07","slug":"an-nfl-player-changed-an-authors-life-hes-still-adjusting-to-overnight-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/132266\/","title":{"rendered":"An NFL player changed an author’s life. He’s still adjusting to overnight success."},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight months later, as defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia hosts Dallas to begin a new NFL season Thursday, that overnight change has challenged Murphy to practice what he preaches. For years, he counseled athletes to perform their best under scrutiny by living what he calls a \u201cselfless and therefore fearless life.\u201d Today, months after he signed a three-book deal and with more clients than ever before interested in his advice, Murphy is adjusting to being in the spotlight himself. <\/p>\n

\u201cInner excellence is about being selfless, and I don\u2019t need the attention, or I\u2019ve never wanted the attention,\u201d Murphy said this week. \u201cI\u2019m super grateful for what\u2019s happened and that lives have changed, and that\u2019s the amazing part. My life is very different now, for sure, but I think it was kind of an interesting thing, and I was surprised \u2014 why do they keep asking about me? …<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I good at inner excellence? I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m great at it. I want to be great at it. I want to be the best in the world, but who knows where I\u2019m at right now? I try, obviously, not to compare myself to others. I want to get better every day at it. When I say \u2018at inner excellence,\u2019 I mean being more selfless and having more compassion, getting out of my own way, the self-referential life, self-centeredness, my biggest challenge. So it was my biggest challenge then; it\u2019s my biggest challenge now.”<\/p>\n

Murphy, the youngest of five siblings, grew up outside Seattle obsessed with becoming a famous athlete or at least working in sports. He lived a Walter Mitty existence chasing that ambition.<\/p>\n

Drafted in the 13th round of the Major League Baseball draft by the Chicago Cubs in 1988, he bounced among minor-league clubs in New York, West Virginia, North Carolina and Illinois for three years. He went back to school at the University of British Columbia, where he played football and wrote a master’s paper on baseball that later became a book based on his interviews with Sparky Anderson, Dusty Baker, Jim Leyland and other figures. Not yet ready to give up on baseball, he played two more minor-league seasons in the mid-1990s, briefly became a scout for Kansas City and served as a hitting coach for South Africa’s Olympic baseball team in 2000 and briefly within the Texas Rangers’ organization. <\/p>\n

If the popularity of “Inner Excellence” was a slow burn, so was its conception. In 2003, Murphy moved to Arizona’s Sonoran Desert having given away most of his possessions in an attempt to find solitude, he said. He was 36. For the next six years, he wrote a book he hoped would serve as a manual to help professional athletes perform with peace and confidence. Financing his interviews and travel put him in $90,000 of debt, Murphy has said, and left him with a “near mental breakdown,” he told NPR<\/a> last spring.<\/p>\n

Once it was published in 2009 by McGraw-Hill, the first edition of the book found an audience with professional golfers but few others. Like any successful play in football, its rise to No. 1 depended on timing. Among those who had read \u201cInner Excellence\u201d early on was DJ Giaritelli, the director of the Austin, Texas-based chapter of Athletes in Action, a Christian sports ministry. Giaritelli had met Murphy at a retreat and was soon recommending the book to athletes. One of them was Moro Ojomo, a defensive lineman he knew at the University of Texas, whom the Eagles drafted in the seventh round in 2023.<\/p>\n

Ojomo didn\u2019t read the book until months after the recommendation, Giaritelli said, but he happened to be leafing through his copy on a team flight home from a game when \u201cA.J. asks him what he\u2019s reading,\u201d Giaritelli said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read it one day and had it on my heart that A.J. would like it,\u201d Ojomo later told The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it would result into what it has.\u201d <\/p>\n

And it might not have resulted in much had Fox cameras not focused on Brown on the sideline mid-chapter on Jan. 12 and exposed Murphy\u2019s work to one of the largest audiences possible in American life. NFL games accounted for the 11 most-watched prime-time telecasts of 2024 and 40 of the top 100, according to Nielsen.<\/a> The NFL is such a kingmaker that even a weather delay during a game last season drew more than 14 million viewers. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe crazy thing is,\u201d Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said on local radio a few days later, \u201che\u2019s been reading this book on the sideline for a long time. It just so happened a camera saw it this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giaritelli said he and Murphy were talking by phone on Jan. 12 as Murphy was recognizing that his life was changing. <\/p>\n

\u201cAll of a sudden he says, ‘DJ, I think a player was reading my book on the sideline,’\u201d Giaritelli wrote in a message to NBC News.<\/p>\n

Murphy was watching a days-old college football bowl game, and then \u201cI see this text, several texts, saying, \u2018Hey, you got to turn on the wild card game.\u2019\u201d He initially thought the texts were from a family member informing him his mother had died. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I turn it on, and I see it. I was like, ‘Wow, OK, this is probably going to be significant.’ And then it was very, very impactful.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the game, Brown said, reading between the Eagles\u2019 offensive possessions helped clear his mind for the next drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m doing it every drive regardless of if I score a touchdown or drop a pass,\u201d Brown told reporters. \u201cThat\u2019s how I refocus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AfterAfter Philadelphia’s Jan. 12 playoff victory, receiver A.J. Brown posted his copy of “Inner Excellence” on social media.A.J. Brown via X<\/p>\n

Murphy’s own focus was being tested, meanwhile, as he lived out both an author’s dream and a logistical nightmare, trying to handle requests for books and media coverage. After Brown was shown on camera, an NFL studio show requested that a copy be delivered to its set that night. Three days after he’d gone viral, Murphy said, he woke at 3 a.m., still filled with adrenaline. The only assistance he could afford before was part-time help from a nephew who was still in college. Much more help was now needed. He asked the manager of Brown\u2019s foundation to temporarily manage him. <\/p>\n

Within three weeks, on the eve of the Eagles’ Super Bowl title, the team released a video filled with fans and team figures \u2014 including the team’s owner \u2014 reading the book all around the city. <\/p>\n

Pre-fame, Murphy typically spent three days with new clients, then worked with them closely but remotely generally over the course of a year. He can’t commit that much time anymore, despite having more marketing, publicity and day-to-day help. Instead, he now leads three-day retreats where he can work with many clients at once, or with groups. What he wants to find out from each is the same as ever, he said.<\/p>\n

“I would want to know, how do you want to feel in your life?” Murphy said. “And so say you said, \u2018I want to feel confident, calm, peaceful, joyful,\u2019 for example, then I would help you learn what adds to that, what takes away from that.”<\/p>\n

Before Brown’s sighting, Murphy said, he felt content about how he had been living his own life, despite his slowing sales. The influx of attention changed his circumstances, certainly, he said, but he wants it to be a vehicle to help others. He plans to open an \u201cInner Excellence academy of sorts” in central Philadelphia “that trains people for job skills so they can have meaningful, fulfilling lives,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Had his affirmation about being a bestselling author proved correct years earlier, he wouldn\u2019t have been prepared to handle it, he said, believing it was a lesson from God. When he saw insufficient funds at the ATM in January while he was in town at Brown’s invitation to watch the Eagles’ next playoff game, he took it as a reminder that “it doesn\u2019t matter if your bank account says negative like it did yesterday or if it says a lot more like it does today or way more tomorrow; none of that matters,” he said. “Your purpose stays exactly the same.”<\/p>\n

Murphy was still trying to work out how he could use his new spotlight to achieve that purpose when he stepped in a Philadelphia elevator in January and heard a group of Eagles fans discussing, well, him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, well, and the author, man, this guy\u2019s got to be making a lot of money,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018Really? Well, I hope whoever it is, I hope he does something good with it,'” Murphy said. “And then we parted ways. And that is very true. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that whether it\u2019s the money or the resources or the interviews that something very good happens. And when I say very good, I mean hopefully lives change and people have more compassion, and especially for those in need.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eight months later, as defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia hosts Dallas to begin a new NFL season Thursday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-132266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}