Bidwill, Bobby and more: Best of Newsmakers Week Day 3

The guests for Doug & Wolf’s Newsmakers Week rolled deep on Wednesday.

Arizona Cardinals chairman and president Michael Bidwill, ASU men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley, Arizona State athletic director and VP for university athletics Ray Anderson, Arizona Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet and Fiesta Bowl executive director Mike Nealy visited with 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.

Here are the highlights of their talks with the show and the full audio clips of their interviews.

Michael Bidwill, Cardinals chairman and president

On Kyler Murray taking another step forward in his 2nd season:

“Clearly this offseason is going to be critical for him. Kliff’s been talking a lot with him about the things he needs to be doing, the people he needs to be speaking with, taking that next level of his professional career. This is a really important offseason and he’s doing everything right. He understands the hard work that needs to be put in and he’s doing it.”

Bobby Hurley, ASU basketball head coach

What changed leading to the current three-game winning streak:

“Really did some soul searching about figuring out the blueprint to success. I know that’s like cliche-ish but just trying to not do more than what we’re capable of doing out there. I think that led to some of those turnovers in that game four games back versus Washington State. I think we’ve played more together as a team and we’ve executed the minor details.”

Rick Tocchet, Coyotes head coach

On the team’s tough 2-8 stretch:

“We’re a team that’s had some adversity and I like to see how we react to that adversity. I think so far, especially the last week or so, I think the team is starting to play well.”

Ray Anderson, ASU athletic director and VP for university athletics

On Colorado’s recent loss of head football coach Mel Tucker and how the Pac-12 can compete and retain coaches:

“We will lose coaches, as we’ve lost assistant coaches in the last month, because the SEC and the Big Ten will come along and say ‘we can double your salary’, as I hear Michigan State did with Mel Tucker: ‘We can double your salary pool for your assistant coaches.’ And we’re gonna have to deal with that, but we have accepted that we have more to offer as a conference, with a different model, providing more opportunities for a broad base of student athletes over more sports, and we’re OK with that.”

Mike Nealy, Fiesta Bowl executive director

If he thinks there is going to be any expansion in the College Football Playoff:

“Well, the short answer is, ‘Yes I think it’s going to happen.’ I think from myself personally and I think if you canvas the bowl directors, I don’t think anybody really wants the expansion because think of what that would impact. We saw, for as great as the playoffs have been, the heightened (stakes) of those games and the, ‘Are you in or not?’ and you know people shooting to be in that playoff. The rest of the bowls, I think it ended up questioning, ‘OK, well how important are these other bowls now?'”

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