How a talk radio show helped boost Murray’s football career
NEW YORK — Bob Sturm and Dan McDowell decided to follow up on the email almost as a joke.
“We’d do a segment once a week that was just listener email,” Sturm, half of the headlining duo of the BaD Radio Show, a sportstalk show in the Dallas Metroplex area, said. “It’s not usually people asking us for money.”
But one e-mailer had a plea. They were looking for a sponsor for their youth football team, the Lewisville Vikings.
The $200 Sturm and McDowell threw in on a lark wound up earning them a lasting tie with a potential Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback.
During one of Kyler Murray’s first seasons as a football player, he wore a gold jersey emblazoned with a purple “BaD RADIO 1310 THE TICKET” across his chest.
As that season went on, the team sent the show updates and as the wins piled up, so did the curiosity.
“We’ve got to go to a game before the season’s over,” Sturm and McDowell replied to one of the game summaries.
The team had a championship game coming up. That’d be the game to go to.
So Sturm, McDowell and Michael Gruber, the show’s board operator at the time, piled into a car and headed for the title game. Gruber went to the game in a chipmunk costume.
“I think it confused everybody because neither team were the chipmunks,” Sturm said.
But the most memorable part of the day was Murray’s performance.
The group knew that the son of former Texas A&M quarterback Kevin Murray and the nephew of a former major leaguer was on the team.
They expected him to be good. They didn’t expect him to be this good.
“This is ridiculous,” Sturm recalls thinking. “It was quite clear at that moment that this kid was going to be good at football his entire life.
“We did not know what they meant . ... We had no idea we would be talking about a guy who is probably going to be a high draft pick in two different sports and maybe win a Heisman. It’s just crazy.”
A few days later on their show, the duo cracked jokes about what they’d seen.
“We need to become agents for this 8-year-old because he has a chance to be something some day,” Sturm said.
Little did they know they’d get beat out for that job by super agent Scott Boras.
They also kicked around the idea of following his journey yearly, but didn’t follow through.
They didn’t have to.
A few years later, Murray was the starting quarterback at Allen High School as a sophomore leading the Eagles to their first of three consecutive Texas state championships with Murray behind center, and their listeners updated them.
Sturm was in disbelief. They’ve been following along ever since, as Murray blossomed into a five-star recruit, followed his father’s footsteps to Texas A&M, transferred to Oklahoma, became a high first-round draft pick in baseball and now as he makes his way to Manhattan for Saturday’s Heisman Trophy ceremony.
“It’s a wild, wild ride,” Sturm said. “I’m positive he doesn’t remember us at all.”