Alfred Paul Ries (November 14, 1926 – October 7, 2022) was an American marketing professional and author. He was the cofounder and chairman of the Atlanta-based consulting firm Ries & Ries with his partner and daughter, Laura Ries. Along with Jack Trout, Ries is credited with resurrecting the idea of "positioning" in the field of marketing.
Earvin N'Gapeth (born 12 February 1991) is a French professional volleyball player, member of the France national volleyball team and Italian club Modena Volley, 2015 European Champion, gold medallist of the World League (2015 and 2017), French Champion (2010), Italian Champion (2016), and Olympic Champion (2020).
Dennis Arthur Murphy (September 4, 1926 – July 15, 2021) was an American sports entrepreneur who helped co-found the American Basketball Association (1967–1976) (with Gary Davidson), the World Hockey Association (1972–1979), the original World Team Tennis (1973–1978) with Larry King, Roller Hockey International (1992–1999), and several other trend-setting amateur and professional sports concepts and events. Each of his innovations exhibited ground-breaking marketing and promotional tactics, new rules, and a style of play that forced the evolution of the entrenched incumbent. Among the many visionary rules and promotional concepts introduced by Murphy include the 3-point shot (ABA), the Slam-Dunk Contest (ABA), team cheerleaders (ABA), the first $1 million contract (WHA), and he paved the path for the ever-growing wave of European and Russian hockey players that now play in North America.
Murphy's WHA and the ABA competed directly with the entrenched National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association, respectively. Murphy and company enticed one of the game's best players, Bobby Hull, to flee the NHL to the WHA with an unprecedented $1 million contract, and “Mr. Hockey,” Gordie Howe, soon followed. Murphy was the commissioner of the WHA for three years, and the Dennis A. Murphy Trophy was presented annually to the WHA's best defenseman. Both the WHA and ABA eventually merged teams into the more-entrenched leagues.
"Dennis Arthur Murphy was a second baseman on the varsity team at University High School in West Los Angeles – notable alumni include Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Nancy and Frank Sinatra Jr., – but his love for sports and building new leagues greatly surpassed his own playing skills."
According to his 2013 autobiography, "Murph: The Sports Entrepreneur Man," Murphy was born in Shanghai, China, on 4 September 1926, to a father who worked for Standard Oil and a housewife mother, Murphy and his family moved back to the United States a year before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. A staff sergeant in World War II, Murphy joined the reserves after the war and came out of the Korean War as a captain. Murphy attended the University of Southern California on the GI Bill majoring in economics. He was a one-term mayor of Buena Park in Orange County, California (April 15, 1958 to July 17, 1959), before becoming a marketing executive for one of California's biggest civil engineering firms, Voorheis, Trindle, and Nelson.
In 1958, Murphy was elected and began to serve as a one-term mayor of Buena Park, California; but his career path changed when he met Jim Hardy, a close friend of future Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis. Hardy had also attended the University of Southern California with Murphy, and he asked for his fellow alum's help in pursuing a team for Anaheim's new stadium (set to house Gene Autry’s California Angels of Major League Baseball) for the new American Football League. Anaheim's proposed team was quashed in 1960 when Al Davis, as one of the conditions of accepting a merger between the National Football League and the AFL, agreed that no additional team would be permitted in the Los Angeles market alongside the L.A. Rams.
Stung by this defeat, Murphy set his sights on pro basketball. In the 1960s, the National Basketball Association consisted of 12 teams, and had successfully fought off a challenge by Abe Saperstein's (Harlem Globetrotters) America Basketball League. Teaming up with attorney Gary Davidson, Murphy worked on creating a league, the American Basketball Association, that eventually merged several teams into the NBA. The ABA became famous for its three-point shot, slam dunk and red, white and blue basketball... not to mention players like "Dr. J." Julius Erving, Rick Barry, George Gervin, Connie Hawkins, and many others. In 1967, ABA Commissioner George Mikan presided over the league's 11 teams in the inaugural season: the Pittsburgh Pipers, Minnesota Muskies, Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels, New Jersey Americans, New Orleans Buccaneers, Dallas Chaparrals, Denver Rockets, Houston Mavericks, Anaheim Amigos and Oakland Oaks.
"Ultimately, four ABA teams were absorbed into the older league: the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. Two other clubs, the Kentucky Colonels and the Spirits of St. Louis were disbanded upon the merger. A third, the Virginia Squires, had folded less than a month earlier, missing out on the opportunities that a merger might have provided."
The ABA folded after its 1976 season, but Murphy had been working on two other professional sports leagues, the World Hockey Association and World Team Tennis. The WHA debuted in 1972 and ran through 1979 and was the National Hockey League's first major competitor since the Western Hockey League in 1926. The WHA gave the more established league fits by cannibalizing NHL rosters, signing players under 20-years old directly from Major Junior (Wayne Gretzky), by placing teams in major cities that didn't host NHL teams, and by successfully challenging the reserve clause that bound players to their teams. This victory gave NHL players the opportunity to split to the upstart league, and Bobby Hull took full advantage. Hull signed a record 10-year, $2.75 million contract, and 66 NHL players followed Hull's lead in the NHL's first year.
As in most of Murphy's leagues, franchises appeared and disappeared like figures in Whack-a-Mole. The league finally disappeared in 1979, but not before four teams joined the NHL – the Edmonton Oilers, New England Whalers, Quebec Nordiques, and Winnipeg Jets. On May 20, 1979, the Jets won their third AVCO World Trophy by defeating the Oilers in the final WHA game.
Murphy co-founded World Team Tennis(WTT) in 1973 with Larry King, Fred Barman and Jordan Kaiser, and league play began in 1974 with 16 teams, a four-color tennis court, and teams made up of two men and two women. This made WTT the first professional sports league to give equal weight to each man and woman competing for their teams. Elton John wrote the theme song Philadelphia Freedom for his good friend Billie Jean King. The first league ended play in 1978.
In 1988, Murphy moved on to try to create the International Basketball Association. As in all of his leagues, there were tweaks made to the traditional game. The IBA, which began with 12 teams in May, 1988, was limited to players 6′4″ and under.
Roller Hockey International (1992–1999) was Murphy's most recent professional sports league. In his autobiography, |MURPH, The Sports Entrepreneur Man and His Leagues: ABA, WHA, WTT, RHI, IFL, GHA, and Bobby Sox Softball," self-published in 2002, Murphy wrote that one day in 1991, he saw some kids playing roller hockey, and he told his brother John what he had seen:
"He informed me that inline skating was a hot ticket and people everywhere of all ages and sizes were playing roller hockey in parks and playgrounds. This immediately appealed to me. Imagine hockey being played on concrete rather than ice. Imagine being able to play hockey anywhere in the world, rather than being limited to ice arenas. Wow! What a way to finish up my career."
Murphy, then 66 years old, was inspired to begin working to develop a new sport. He invited entrepreneur Alex Bellehumeur and Larry King to join him in developing roller hockey at a professional level. King, born in Ohio and raised in California, was an attorney by trade as well as a sports entrepreneur. In addition to helping create World Team Tennis and womenSports, which eventually became Women's Sports Magazine, King helped develop the Women's Sports Foundation and the Kauai-Loves-You Triathlon in Hawaii. King was once married to tennis star Billie Jean King. Bellehumeur had his hand in many inventions and was on the board of directors for the Port of Long Beach, California.
Murphy was named RHI's president, Bellehumeur was the chairman of the board, and King became the league's general counsel. Murphy, Bellehumeur and King converted Bellehumeur and Murphy's preexisting corporation, World Sports Management, Inc., into RHI, Inc., and the two men retained controlling interest in the new entity, with King as co-founder and part owner. “We were missing one thing – a high-profile hockey man,” Murphy wrote.
Ralph Backstrom, who had won six Stanley Cup Championships with the NHL's Montreal Canadiens, was hired as the new league's commissioner. Murphy had known Backstrom from his days as a player in the WHA following his NHL career. Then living in Denver, Colorado, Backstrom was the National Hockey League's Rookie of the Year for the Canadiens in 1959. Backstrom oversaw the league's rules and style of play.
John Steven "Jay" Kordich (August 27, 1923 – May 27, 2017) was an American author and advocate of juicing and juice fasting. Kordich was best known as the "Juiceman" and the "Father of Juicing" in the United States.
Budd Albright (born August 18, 1936) is an American actor, singer, stunt man, and sportsman.
Jaime Cuadra (born in Lima, Peru on 26 November 1970) is a Peruvian music producer, marketing specialist, singer, and composer. He produced three songs heard in the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace, and is currently Peruvian Cultural Ambassador (Promperu-Marca Peru).
Toby Wing (born Martha Virginia Wing; July 14, 1915 – March 22, 2001), "Toby" being an old family nickname, was an American actress and showgirl, once called "the most beautiful chorus girl in Hollywood".
Ruth Miriam Siems (; February 20, 1931 – November 13, 2005) was an American home economist who created Stove Top Stuffing.A native of Evansville, Indiana, Siems graduated from Bosse High School in Evansville and earned a degree in home economics from Purdue University in 1953. She was employed for almost four years in product research and development at the old Igleheart Brothers plant of General Foods in Evansville, working on quality control for angel food cake mixes and researching the Swans Down brand of cake mixes and flours. She developed the stuffing, one of General Foods Corp.'s (now Kraft Foods Inc.) top convenience products, in 1971 while working at the corporation's Tarrytown, New York facility.Her name was the first on a patent application for the product. Her patent was based on a certain size of bread crumb that makes the rehydration, or addition of water, work. In an interview with The Evansville Courier in 1991, Siems said the idea for the instant stuffing came from the marketing department, but it was up to the research and development staff to create the product. The test kitchens, the chefs and all the workers in research and development were given a shot at developing the stuffing, but Siems' idea was the one the company chose. The brand was later acquired by Kraft Foods, which, as of 2005, sells about 60 million boxes of it at Thanksgiving. Some sources say that Siems first sold the recipe to the Mrs Cubbison's corporation, and that later she further developed it for wholesale purposes in the General Foods Kitchen."Everyone always had me pegged as a creative person," she said in a newspaper interview. "I've always liked to put things together."Siems retired from General Foods in 1985 after a 33½-year career. She died from a heart attack at her home in Newburgh, Indiana, on November 13, 2005, at the age of 74. In 2023 Holiday World announced that a new ride set to open in 2024, Good Gravy, pays homage to Siems.
John Stephen (28 August 1934 – 1 February 2004), dubbed by the media the £1m Mod and the King Of Carnaby Street, was one of the most important fashion figures of the 1960s.Stephen was the first individual to identify and sell to the young menswear mass market which emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was also the pioneer of the high turnover, disposable fashion ethos of such contemporary operators as Topman.
By 1967, Stephen operated a chain of 15 shops on the thoroughfare in central London which he and boyfriend Bill Franks made the epicentre of Swinging London: Carnaby Street."Carnaby is my creation," Stephen said in 1967. "I feel about it the same way Michelangelo felt about the beautiful statues he created."
