Moe Elewonibi used to quip that anytime he flashed his Super Bowl ring to the attendant, it was worth free parking.
Two Island players are among the 17 Canadians who have Super Bowl rings. Ed Murray has one from the 1994 NFL champion Dallas Cowboys and Elewonibi from 1992 champion Washington.
Neither came out of a high school, Mount View/Spectrum or Vic High, that at the time featured football. Murray was a soccer and rugby standout at Colquitz Junior High School and Mount View/Spectrum Secondary, and earned the nickname the Bionic Leg for his booming kicks. He played 18 seasons and is in the top 25 of career NFL scoring with 1,594 points.
“The numbers show this is just a select few,” Murray once told the Times Colonist.
“I am very proud of my Canadian roots, being from the Island, and coming out of Spectrum. I came to Victoria from England at age 15, and gravitated to soccer and rugby, sports with which I was most familiar. That led to coming out to play football for the Saanich Hornets under Roy Vollinger … that was my introduction to football.”
Elewonibi was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and raised in Victoria, and was a standout and imposing goalkeeper for Vic High in soccer and a star on the school’s basketball and rugby teams. He played football for the Vampires and Hornets organizations in Victoria and won the Outland Trophy in 1989 at Brigham Young University as the top offensive lineman in U.S. collegiate football. It led to a 16-season pro career in the NFL and CFL, becoming an all-star selection in the CFL. Elewonibi’s No. 64 jersey is retired in Victoria junior football, the team which is now the Westshore Rebels.
Murray later worked for a telecommunications company in Detroit, where he spent the majority of his NFL career with the Lions. Elewonibi became an addictions counsellor in Nanaimo. Murray was inducted into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame in 2004 and Elewonibi into the Victoria Sports Hall in 2009.
“As a kid, you go out and play for no other reason than just for fun,” Elewonibi said on the night of his induction.
Other Canadian players with Super Bowl rings: Roy Gerela of Powell River, Mitch Berger of Delta, Allan Kennedy of Vancouver, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif of Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Que., Mark Rypien of Calgary, Klaus Wilmsmeyer of Mississauga, Ont., Luke Willson of LaSalle, Ont., Jon Ryan of Regina, Ryan Hunter of North Bay, Ont., Tom Nutten of Magog, Que., Daniel Federkeil of Medicine Hat, Tyrone Williams of Halifax, Michael Hoecht of Oakville, Ont., Alaric Jackson of Windsor, Ont., and Antony Auclair of Notre-Dame-des-Pins, Que.
