The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Astros Take Game 3! BIG NBA News & Houston Will Always Hate Jeff Passan

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Astros Take Game 3! BIG NBA News & Houston Will Always Hate Jeff Passan

This is Matt and Ross in the morning. And welcome to a Thursday edition. It's Matt and Ross in the morning on Sports Talk 790. The Houston Astros clinched the season series over the Chicago White Sox. They won two out of three in this four game set so far. Two to nothing. Victors tonight. Astros now have a two-game lead over the Rangers.

for first in the Yale West. Are we jamming in the... We be jammer. This song... Greatest band ever to make hits out of songs they had nothing to do with? Correct. Club Nouveau. Yeah.

This was a... Club Nouveau had some hits when I was in high school. Yeah? And when this song first came out, you're like, are you dare try to sing a Bill Weather song and try to update it a little bit? And it's a banger.

Oh, wait. You know what? Actually, I'm thinking of UB40. I'm getting them confused with. Some too. UB40 did red, red wine and some other stuff. Yeah. That's in that same group. When you think reggae, you think English reggae.

Correct. I was going to... I thought about playing Bill Weathers, but it's too... You have to... You have to wake people a lot. Oh, hey, come on now. You know. The Weathers gets people going.

It does, but that song isn't the one I would go with. Watch his concert live at the BBC on YouTube. It's spectacular. Really? How long does it take? It doesn't matter, Matt. If it's a four-hour concert, you need to watch it. I don't have four hours.

No, I guess you don't. do. Yes, you do. I've seen you scrolling your Instagram for hours. You've got 40 minutes to watch a concert. I don't know why you're shaming me on my Instagram looks. The algorithm knows exactly what I want. I know they know what you want, and it's bouncing.

Not enough shahdi in there actually. All right. Good morning to you. It is 604 on Sports Talk 790. It's Matt and Ross in the morning. What's up, Matthew? Oh, the Astros gained a game on the Rangers yesterday. They also won the season series. So when the

Astros and White Sox play in the division series. If it comes down to a tiebreaker, the local nine has it. And they continue to beat up on teams 500 above. And it will not. It's one team. No, me, in the Yankees. Rays? Yes.

You know, the Astros don't suck against the really good teams. They just suck against the sucky teams. I am actually encouraged after last night. And you could probably guess the biggest reason why. Would that be Hayden Crazy Legs Wisniewski? Yes, Hayden Waznowski, seven innings of shutout ball. And low pitch count too. When you win and Ronelle Blanco throws like 90 pitches in four innings,

and I don't know, Prater Lambert's going four and two-thirds, and you've got to piece it together with five relievers, I don't feel super encouraged about the future. Yep. When you get seven innings of shutout ball from Hayden Wesneski, following that up from Hunter Brown's last start, which was six and two-thirds innings of, what, one-run ball or whatever it was, and he's striking out 10 and carving people up and looking like an ace.

And Hayden Wesnowski is now, at least, if you're basing it off his latest start looking like a two or three, then yeah, I'm a little bit more encouraged. I would say in the last start of the rotation, the last run of the rotation. So let's get right to it. Game one playoff series, Hunter Brown. Yes. Game two? Probably Peter Lambert.

I mean, if Wesneski gets hot, I'm all on the hot hand. Okay. Especially late in the season because, I mean, baseball guys wear it out. And think about this. If you don't have to go to a game three, then you'd, We got Wisniewski and Or Lambert ready to go. Hunter Brown can have some time off too. We're locking this thing up.

Spencer Arrigetti. No, no, no, no. There's no, no, no, no. No, no, no. By the way, is his shoulder still barking? Well, I hope not. I hope it's down to a yip. Let me tell you, when something in your body barks, that's not a good sign.

It's not good. It's not good at all. I mean, does ibuprofen take care of a bark? Inquiring minds want to know, so. Uh, temporarily. How many milligrams are talking? That's true. I guess can you take all, it's not, it's not all you can take ibuprofen, but they let you take quite a bit.

You can take up to like 32. Oh, so each pill is norm generally like 200 milligrams, unless you're getting the super ones from the doctors. Yeah, like the 600 milligrams, but I think you can take up to like 3,000 a day. Don't listen to me. Yeah, I was going to say, if there's anybody I would not take medical advice from, I mean, I might take some from you. And it's lower. You're not supposed to do that every day, obviously, and then you're not supposed to do it if you're drinking.

So I'm sorry, 1200, not 3,200. 1,200 milligrams says, says AI. Let's delete that part. Yeah, that's fine. Oh, this says 1,600, so I did it. I only doubled it. Yeah, it's only one day. What's one?

Wait a second. Uh-oh, now you're looking for more. Mayo Clinic up to 3,200 milligrams a day. I nailed it because I actually recently Googled this like a couple months. Oh, didn't you? Okay. All right. There you go.

3200 was in my brain. That's what Mayo Clinic. So let's not hide the real story, well, part of the storyline. It's the officer's offense just, it's not good. It's not good. Uh-huh. Yordon had two hits yesterday. Are you worried at all about the lack of home?

You are. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I thought you're going to say his legs. Well, yeah. You see, it was like he was at a home run trot, the double. Well, that's because the fielder missed play the ball. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, also, yeah, he was in a trot, and then he got replaced in the eighth inning for for Nick Allen to pinch run. I mean, he's not 100%. he took a foul ball off of his foot his basically inner I don't need lower knee or whatever you want to call it a couple of the days ago and it looks like he's feeling it

so I on my concern level of home runs lack thereof I think you only had what two in the month of August something like that I'm not super concerned about that because the hard hit contact has been there yeah he's still he's still the slug is still very very good

he's getting plenty of extra base hits he's got doubles and he's hitting the ball like 110 miles an hour. But I think a lot of us that were that are Yordan fans and obviously that would be everybody here would be projecting that he was headed for a 50 home run season. That's probably not going to happen. No, he's not hitting 50. So just be happy if he gets 40.

He's never done 40 in his career, which is just crazy to say out loud. And a lot of that is because of health. So thankfully he's been able to play every single day and I need to feed you for that. I've been a problem with that. Spectacular. Nice and healthy. All right. Ready to go. Although he's not 100% right now. We got a good show for you today. I think most of it you have a good show for you. Yeah.

We haven't had a bad show yet. I don't think so. And all the years we've been together? Well, maybe it's one or two. Maybe a couple of those. Yeah. I'm talking about since we moved to the mornings. Oh, yeah.

Matt and Ross in the mornings. We're batting a thousand, I think. Yes. Come up at 630. Well, the sounds at 630. Mine will be from an NFL reporter on the C.J. Stroud situation. Oh, okay. I am, I understand betting on yourself is really what you have to do in life.

But if the report that you're going to hear during the sounds at 630 are really accurate, I don't sign. the bad boy i'd be i berlianna's with you okay so we'll hear that come up at 630 wellie fritz makes his first appearance with us you're like well of course he is he's the cougar coach he's on with us at 645 so with our morning show they practice seven to nine they meet right after so for him to join us it has to be before practice okay so he'll join us at 645 these coaches get up early man oh yeah i texted him like 45 minutes ago he's a wide awake is that what he said no he just Give me a thumbs up.

That's interesting. That's not actually a bad song. Why do you actually got a reference. I did. Give me. Come on. No, I slipped those by you weekly. I know you do.

8.30, I just don't get it coming up this week. Things in life you don't get. And again, people are still trying to figure that out. That's just conundrums in life. It's very easy. Something you just don't get. Yeah. And I think of three of us always have something we don't get.

We try to help each other out. Yeah. Brian McTagher makes his first weekly 9 o'clock appearance with us here on the show. We'll have that coming up. And we will have, believe it or not, today for me, on all things, Steve Balmer. All things, Steve Balmer, really? Yeah. You're going to honor them?

Well, I mean, we don't always honor them, believe it or not. It feels like we do. Well, we most, we don't honor it. Yeah, nobody famous died recently. No, no, we have to go to the living. I mean, I don't know how much Houston cares about this, but it's a massive, massive story. So we're not going to spend a lot about it, but I do. believe it's it's not necessarily about the clippers it's about sports in general and circumvention

of of rules and what it happens and uncle dennis and uncle dennis who's gonzo is a sports representative the first thing i thought of and we'll get to obviously do more this is did kawai get away with this do you think kawai was as naive as he comes across and saying he is i will answer that question and later in the show jeff passant cannot get out of the d of the weekend oh my god what a douchebag Jeff, if you're listening to know what you're a douchebag. You just are. We're going to have to bring a hammer down on him. Because I really...

I've defended him a lot. I really was thinking about tweeting in him, but I couldn't put it in perspective. Sometimes we've said this before, sometimes the best tweets in life are the ones you never send. And I was really going to go after it. But I'm like, what's the point of it? I mean, I'll have my listeners appreciated this. I will say that you're just a hater and your friend. the asteros. I just thought it was very typical

Jeff Passon, Weasily, Schmedium pants, medium suit, Rage Against the Machine, Air Guitar. He's got no friends. I know why he did it. Okay, so I'm curious why you will get to that as well. All right, so more on the asteros when we come back. We have the sound 630, Willie Fritz, the Clippers saga. Is that what you want to call it? Saga? You can call it that, right? Sure. Massive scandal?

Yeah. I mean, five first rounders? Well, I don't even think it could have been even harsher. And it sounds like to me, Ross, it could get even harsh. Yeah, they're still looking around. They're still sniffing around because there's apparently another scandal with Dactronics. That's the people that build the big scoreboards of those who don't know that. Yes.

DJ Kahn and Ross in one of them we've got the sounds at 630 coming up in about 12 minutes from now. Willie Fritz in about 25 minutes. So the Astros win two nothing. Astros offense. I mean, and look, you're not going to bring in every runner that gets on base. But there were so many Ross last night.

They were just... The O.O.B. is strong. It's been strong all year long. Legion of Boom? No, Legion of... Left on base. Yeah, I was trying to think of something clever. Nine left on base. Okay, it's earlier.

Two for ten with runners in scoring position. Also, White Sox, one for seven. with the runners in scoring position. Taylor Trammell. Had some hard hit contact, but he's been going through it. And then thankfully got pinch hit for in a clutch situation.

I'm sure, did Astros' Twitter give Joe Spott a full credit for the pinch hitting Nelson Velazquez and then he came through with the two-run single and then they won two-nothing? What I was afraid of is... Joe got full credit, right? As Alvarez got on the base past,

and a eighth, it was pinch run for for the second time in the last two weeks. Remember how the firesome the last time around about that was? Oh, Nick Allen? Yeah. Yeah, they were upset. I went to look at Twitter before.

Oh, yeah. And I didn't see if it was people were still pissed off about that. People were upset. People were upset even after they won. Joe Espada, when he pinch runs for Yordon Alvarez, he's gambling that there's not going to be a whole turn of. Because guess what, folks, by my math, if you get a whole turn around nine, generally, I mean, you would think that at one point one of those guys would have scored. or you've lost. It's either you lost or at least one if not more runs came in.

You can't go all the way around. Right. Generally. Generally. Or it'll be three innings and it was the eighth. So that'll be the ninth, 10th, 11th. I mean, he's not doing the fifth. Folks.

He's doing it in the eighth inning in a scoreless game. And it did not cost him. And people were still mad after the fact. This is last night too? Yes. Oh, I didn't even pay attention. People on Twitter were still upset after he gambled and won the gamble. Remember 71% thing.

the asteros, they can be a better general manager. 69% yeah, something like that. My guess would be 100% think they're better managers. Oh my god. You can't win for Lusin. You know what I try to do? When you make a move and it doesn't cost you at all, you can't still get mad at the move. Yeah. Folks. Yeah. It's ridiculous. And honestly, as you said, he's not getting around.

He ain't common Lewis Jr. You know what I mean? Well, he never is. But yeah, he's not moving around well. He's got a hurt leg. and you're going to defy it wouldn't be a situation yesterday. And you need a situation. You're on Alvres and they're going first and third on a single. No. Nick Allen could.

Yeah. Or even first to home on a double. So you need Nick Allen out there. Now you weren't now, especially if he's playing left field, that's a no-brainer. Well, I mean, even, yeah. He's also a designated hitter. So that was fine. I mean, whatever.

I got to stop getting mad at these idiots who don't matter. They're bad opinions. You know what I tried to do last. weekend. What's that is I tried to do a Google search of AJ Hinch should be fired. I know we can find it. It wouldn't take long. I just didn't have enough time to do it.

You can find A.J. Hinch to be fired. You can find Dusty Baker to be fired. You can certainly find this past year Joe Espada being fired. It's just the easy thing for people to do is to say, when in doubt something goes wrong, game over, game lost, a managerial change. What is this guy doing? He should be fired. I would hope that any of you listening, you 6 o'clock maniacs, if you did something wrong at your work, if you had somebody immediately come to you and say, oh, you put a 7 instead of a 4 on that spreadsheet,

you're fired. Yeah. Or you estimated we were going to have $10,000 in business and we wound up getting $99,000. Oh, that's not what you said. You're fired. Now, look, I'm not blind to this. I think Joe's in If the fate hasn't already been sealed

I think it's pretty close to me You would have to be some incredible postseason run But even so we saw Jim Crane fire a general manager After winning a World Series So I found a tweet from 2019 From one Matthew Thomas Yeah go ahead From midnight

June 13th, 2019 That must have been doing the 10th inning show that night Yeah Okay First call, fire Hinch Oh there you go see Second call Astros would have won if Verlander goes out for the 8

I really questioned some Astros fans. I should have lied and said tech problems can't do the show. I'm an idiot. That's me? That's a damn good tweet. Oh man, that was unbelievable. 2019, you said?

Yeah. Over seven years ago. You got a fire hinge. This is 2019, by the way, like the best season in team history. Didn't win the world serious. They wanted to hinge fired, but yeah, I mean, well, the nationals. But I mean, we had Dusty Baker firings all the time. Did we not?

I mean, I remember those fresh. And Joe Spott has never. really been given a chance. Look, when in doubt, the manager will be fired. By the way, how many times you heard the hitting coaches have to be fired? How many times a pitching coach got to be fired? They've cooled off on the hitting coaches because at least they change it. Although, bad night by the hitting coaches last night.

Just two for ten with runners in scoring position. Unfortunately. I'm looking at the lineup right now. A lot of Tigers fans are saying fire hinch. Yeah, well, I know. A lot of six is in front of OPS. That's not good. Cam Smith, OPS, 668.

Lamott Wade, 657. Oh, Taylor Tramel, 653, Dalton Varsho, 653. Nick Allen, who doesn't play

every day, but 678. Jesus. That's why you got to lean on Hayden Wisniewski. That's why we played it because it was... Hayden Wisniewski?

I'm leaning on him. Let's go. And Hunter Brown. Get us all the way to the World Series. Take on the Dodgers. You know, Matt, you can't just pitch

those two guys every game. Well, that's why you're bullpen games. You open up a... Benzusser. Then you go with Angel de la Santos. Oh, yeah, okay. And hopefully you're not down 5-0-0-0 at that point. Mm-hmm.

Does the postings include the innings thing, too? I don't know. I mean, sure. Maybe they can win a wild card series and then escape a DS. They're not winning a seven-game series with this pitching staff. It'd be fun. We'll be talking baseball. It'll be fun.

I want to talk baseball. Okay. I'm also going to be realistic. I know. But I'm feeling better. You're realistic Ross, and I'm class-half-full Thomas. No, I'm optimistic Ross after Hayden Wisniewski's throwing seven innings of shutout ball. Carving them up.

Let's go, baby. And you know the best part was he was just, there was very little innings fatigue and pitch fatigue. Yeah. That's something that we just had no even see. Yeah. Efficiency was great. All right. It's the sound of 630 are up next.

A little update from an NFL insider about what C.J. Stroud and his agent David Mulligetta are thinking. Well, that sounds very inviting. Well, it all sounds exciting. That sounds like a threat. That sounds stupid. Matt and Ross bring you sounds at 630. And at 631 in Rappaport, giving us an update on the C.J. Stroud negotiations or perhaps lack thereof. Here we go.

It is. Now, the first part of it is the Houston Texans know they have their franchise quarterback and that C.J. Stroud. They have had discussions about a big time long-term deal. And considering where he left off last year, this is good news. This is a great place to be for C.J. Stroud. As far as his decision goes, certainly seems to be this. Now, quarterbacks at his level, and there are several of them, Trevor Lawrence, Jared Goff, and there are a bunch of them who make somewhere between $52 and $55 million based on new money. Jordan Love is in that mix. Really good young quarterbacks make that kind of money.

So his options are essentially this. Get a contract extension of around there, not sure at this point where that would come in or wait. And if C.J. Strouds elects to wait, that's when it gets interesting. You're right. They do have them under contract for two years after the season, would still have one year left they could do an extension at that point. But the 2026 season, when then go into the equation of how you value C.J. Stroud,

consider the Texans have one of the NFL's best defenses You have all sorts of weapons on often. It sounds like Stroud has had an excellent, excellent training camp. He goes out, kills it this season. They go deep into the playoffs. Then he's got even more ammunition to make more than the Texans offered him this year. Obviously, that's a gamble because there is the downside as well. So what Stroud and the Texans have to figure out is, is there a path toward a new contract before the season?

Or is it, as Casario said, something they table until next season? All right, so Rini between the lines, he being C.J. and his agent David Molligetta were being offered in the North of 50 Club. Yes. Wow, Ross.

That is. So let's put this in perspective. You throw four interceptions and the last time you get on a football field in a divisional playoff game, and yet the Texans still want to offer you $50 million a year. I mean, say it, go ahead.

I guess. Not and I just don't get it because athletes bet on themselves all the time. They do. They do. I mean, and I would say that type of contract would be basically C.J. Straussaud's worst case scenario. Not worst case scenario, but about a baseline, about an average. So they're trying to bet that they can be above average. C.J. Stroud thinks he's a top five AAV type of guy. That's what they're going to go for. So I'm going to give you the perspective of what he sees. If I kick ass this year, which I'm,

I'm speaking like I'm C.J. I'm going to kick ass this year. We're going to have this great defense. I'm going to be better. I've got a better offensive line in my mind. I've got a better running back core. I've got Nico Collins. I'm not going to make the same mistakes.

I'm going to make that $10 extra million a year. And over four or five years, that's $50 million more a year. Yes, yes, yes. But even if I take a step back, I still have one more year to prove it to them. Yes. And so I got two years to get that $60 million threat. threshold. And then if I still can't do it, they might have even franchise tag me. God. And see, that's the thing. The only way he really, really lose, truly loses is if he's,

he's a disaster. Or is out for a year plus injury. Yeah, I mean, yeah, tears in Achilles and then the next year, tears an ACL. So I'm going to say, Ross, and we may say this for 830, I'm going to go with, I get it. I get it. I don't agree with him. It sounds completely far-fetched because, again, When someone is going to offer you 200, I'm assuming four or five-year deals, so $250 million of money, which probably 80% of that is guaranteed, it's hard to go, CJ did what? But if you just dumb it down a little bit, you kind of understand what he's thinking. If he thinks he can be better than Jordan Love,

Trevor Lawrence, Jared Gough, Brock Purdy, Justin Herbert, those guys are all making over 50 plus AAV. Can he be better than half of that lot? He thinks so. I don't know he can, but he thinks so. David Mulligata does. I get it. David Mulligata thinks he can.

Me sure does. As Cowboy fans, I mean, they're split on Dak Prescott, who's making $60 million a year. They're off, here's my fluff. I don't want to speak for all cowboy fans, but it's like, that's good. But the reason why we are in the spot we are in is because we spend 60 on our quarterback and that precludes us from taking care of other positions. Yeah, and you've got to trade away Michael Parsons. Yeah. All right, those are my

sounds at 630. What you got today? I'm going to go with, well, I'm going to keep in a college football this week, pretty heavy. Yeah. Have you seen, did you see the pictures from over the weekend of USC football against San Jose State, Matt? It was far from a sellout at the Coliseum. They're saying it was probably

about 50,000 butts in seats, even though, well, actually the actual attendance, they're saying 51, 14, 144, And of course, Matt, as you know, in the Pete Carroll heyday, USC, I mean, it was full every week. Yeah, Kyle seems about, what, 90,000 somewhere around there. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a dump, not in a good part of town, but Lincoln Riley on other coaches, because Joey McGuire, one of the ones taking shots.

Here's Lincoln Riley responding back on people taking jabs at their crowd size. This is USC, right? People are going to pay attention. People are going to have an opinion. It's part of being a blue blood. I don't buy into the false narrative. I think that comes from a lot of people that don't follow our program. And most of those who have never stepped foot in the Coliseum,

the reality is during my years here, attendance has gone up every single year, as has our play in the Coliseum, including running the table last year in front of a lot of epic atmospheres. And I expect that to happen again this year. Well, there's only one problem. Lincoln Riley said attendance has gone up every year. That's a lie. He didn't, yeah. last year

a 67,783 average, which honestly is kind of low for you calling yourself a blue blood in your USC and this seat's 90,000 plus. The year before, 71,571. So attendance went down from 24 to 25, Lincoln Riley. I don't know if the math isn't mathing for him. Do you think he just made that up or did somebody give him some bad information?

It has got, and technically it went up. So his, yeah, his first year and then it went up to 64,000, as you say, 64, 66, 71, but back down to 67 last year. So it did go up his first three years, but then it took a dip last year. Do you think he's sitting there going, I could have said at Oklahoma, now granted, we were about to go to the SEC, so it was going much more competitive. Or did he say, I need to find a nice safe space to make good money and to crush opponents? Because USC and UCLA, I mean in Oregon, too, for that matter, kind of owned the old Pac-12. You've seen how much money he's making it, USC?

I know. He's fine. He don't care. He's good. But he didn't go to the U.S.C. to join the Big Ten. More prestigious program all time. USC or Oklahoma? USC for sure.

I think you're right, but it's, I think it's close-ish. It's gotten closer. Better place to live. Norman, Oklahoma, or Los Angeles, California? Safer campus, Norman, better city, Los Angeles. Have you been to USC's campus, by the way? I have not. I've been to the Coliseum.

It's beautiful. And I've been around that area. But it's enclosed. There's like a rose garden over there. I've been there too. It's like a long wall that kind of separates. It's in south central Los Angeles, which is the worst part of Los Angeles. I've visited the area.

Yeah. It's not great. That was fine. But the USC campus is beautiful. It's just, it's kind of like its own little sheltered inner city thing. But yeah, it's, being in the Coliseum at night's not great. And it's San Jose State. also it was uh well what some people may go for certain 11 o'clock start cards it was apparently very sweltering hot in los angeles and an 11 o'clock kick as well or i guess 1 o'clock their time or no that'd be 9 o'clock no i didn't win that early then no it wouldn't be like 9 o'clock maybe it was 2.30 yeah okay well heat shouldn't be a factor when you are an awesome team and that's why you need to be at the cougars game on saturday if you're a cougar fan or you're just a college football fan go see live football i'm busy i guess i

Yeah, a lot of stuff going on. What do you got going? I got family in town. You always have family in town. Your family lives in town. No, I got extra family in town. Oh, okay. Cousin, Jeremiah?

What's my uncle's memorial, Matt? If you were wondering. Yeah, he died. Nice. Yeah, my mom's brother. Let's move out of this. Oof. Say you sorry.

Yeah, keep pressing, Mr. Pryor. Sorry. All right. The down Friday, 1130. Yeah, thanks. Well, this show got quiet all of a sudden. So let's do this. Those are the sounds of 630.

It's fine. You didn't know. Of course I didn't know. You know how to go down that road? Hey, I don't think I'll take a shot at Ross's dead uncle. Why not? You asked me what I was doing. All right.

May he rest? Uncle Paul. I'm named after. What times of service? Friday at 1? Oh, you could be at the stadium at Saturday. No, we're hanging out. No, then we have family stuff happening Saturday.

What is wrong with you? I'm not going. You'd be there by 11 out of my 2.3. I'm morning my uncle. I'm not going to go watch mid-college football. It's not mid as championship football. It's top 25 football. Please drop this.

And we will talk to Willie Fritz next here on the program, and you'll take a short time out. I was going to work on believe it or not, but I'm going to be working on believe or not. Okay. You get the Steve Balmer stuff's good. You know what you're going to do? You're going to be at home watching college football, aren't you?

In Eaton. Well, I might be. Nothing can stop me. I'm all the way up. 647. It is Matt and Ross in the morning. on Sports Talk 7-90. And I would say the next man joining us here

would have to make an adjustment because we move from the middays to the morning, but that's not the case because Willie Fritz, my assumption is coach that you are up always around this time of the morning. Good morning to you, coach. Yeah, good morning. Yeah, we're a morning practice team, so we actually started meetings at 7.30,

and then we'll practice this morning at 9, and we're just because of class schedules. the majority of class during the afternoon. We have to do it in the morning, so it works out. Great. I'm glad we switched the times. Fantastic for us. Yeah, for sure.

And have you always been a morning coach or does it depend on kids' schedules and what's going on? I'd never done it before. And when I went over to Tulane, same reason we had to because of class schedule and I'll never switch back. It's the best way to get started in the morning. We never have anybody missed.

The kids get to bed early. I stay up here and go to the academic people to get help and support in the afternoons. If they don't have class right at 1 o'clock, we eat up here. So it just works out great. It's the best way to do it. You know, it's amazing to me. Our producer, Jonathan, you talk to is a Division I track and field. My daughter now plays Division 1 volleyball, and you have Division 1 athletes and you've been with them a long time.

I'm impressed, and maybe I just never thought about this. These 18-year-olds, when they get to a campus, if they want to play for a coach or want to compete, they got to play by rules, meaning you're not out until 1 o'clock in the morning. On your phone or going to late night movies, you have to behave yourself, don't you? Yeah, you really do. You know, that's one of the big things we recruit guys. I tell my coaches, you know, it needs to be someone that you want to coach, you know, because you're going to be around that young man a bunch.

And then number two, it's someone that you think will fit in with the way I do things. It's got to be both down one or the other. And, you know, that way you just don't have very many problems. We've got a really good young man here. majority of college sports across the country. You've got really good people. But you know, you get two or three bad apples. It spoils a whole bunch, right?

Yeah. I've got to make sure you do a good job on the front end recruiting, getting the right people in there. And we've done an excellent job of that. There's like 500 questions I want to ask you about not only your football team, but the state of college football. But let's focus on the squad itself. You have no idea.

I know. That's the thing is I think if I said, hey, what's going on in your industry? I think Willie you would say, I don't really know at this point. I don't really know at this point. You know, one of the things I try to do is just follow the rules. You know, they seem to change them about every third day or something. But, you know, we'll let the powers of be figure out exactly how we're doing all this stuff.

And I just try to buy by the rules that are out there and go from there. But there's a lot of stuff going on in our game right now. Well, all right. the last time we saw you had a headset on, you were knocking off LSU at the Texas Bowl, 10-win season.

You brought another quarterback in who came in before the start of spring and obviously Connor's had a good camp. It looks like you're running back, core is deep, your offensive linemen are getting a lot of run. I would say if you were to

look at the headlines of Houston Cougar football in this off season, it's been very successful for you. Yeah, we've done a really good job recruiting the last couple of years and a lot of those young kids are starting to give where they're either starting or playing a bunch.

and it's given us a little bit more depth than what we've had in the past. And then I think we've done a really good job in the portal. You know, the thing when you go out in the portal is you try to find guys and give you a immediate help in a position that maybe you need immediate help at. And then also a guy that's going to fit in your culture, and we've done a good job in both those areas. And you know, you talk about the offensive line. We brought in three guys, two guys who are all conference in the Mac,

one at Toledo and the other one, wanted to. Miami, Ohio, and then another young man that played for me at Tulane, Shadre Hurst, you know, and he was an All-American-type guy. So we're able to bring guys in quickly at that position, and then we've got some young guys, you know, that they really needed another year of development, could possibly play quite a bit this year. You know, you don't have to throw them in the fire against a big 12 competition,

kind of let them, you know, develop. and get better each and every week. So we've tried to do that across the board, all positions. Well, now Willie, with his five-for-five, you're not having to worry about red shirts, how many games they play, and that kind of thing. Does that open up some guys to play some, at least maybe in non-conference play to figure out

who was ready to play for you in Big 12? Exactly right. You know, in the past, it was four games, and when you played the fifth, it counted as a season. You know, and you're kind of, you're very mindful of that, and he didn't want to play a guy, you know, four snaps, fifth game, that's all he plays the rest of the season. You know, so now the kids know that one play counts as a season,

zero plays counts in the season. You know, 500 snaps counts as a season. So I think there's a lot more competition in the kicking game. You know, if I was a young man, I'd try to get on the field anyway I could as a true freshman because that's going to allow you to get some experience, It's the only way you're going to be able to play. This year's count as he sees them anyway. So we've had some good competition in the special teams area.

Is that where you would say is your biggest competition going into this first game? Because I would like to ask you, you know, does the receiver room do great? Did the linebackers? Where is it been where you've spent more time going? I'm not sure what I want to do just yet. Well, you know, special teams is so hard to, you know, replicate real plays in the special players. teams in preseason camp because, you know, those are, you know, you're running 60 yards and you're two guys running into each other. You know, football's a collision sport, not a contact sport.

And that's the tough one for game one, you know, punt coverage, punt protection, kickoff coverage, you know, blocking for guys on a kickoff return, you know, understanding how to catch punts in traffic and keeping guys away. So, you know, that'll be the, the first time we've done actual live reps in the kicking game, you know, this fall. You know, we usually just save them for the games and go all the way up until that point of tackling because there's a lot of bodies around, you know. I'm trying to, we still don't have the depth, and I don't know if anybody does. You'd like to have, you know, in college football, it's more difficult now than it used to be,

but, you know, I don't want to get anybody hurting practices because of that depth factor. and the big injuries in football occur, body-to-ground contact, not body-to-body contact when you're tackling and doing all those kind of different things. That's when you have some guys that get on the ground. So we try to eliminate that as much as we can until game day. My Cougar friends, so obviously we all watch Connor really develop as a quarterback and got better and better as the season progressed. You've obviously brought a young man in Kishon who is highly recruited.

And I don't know if you can tell, but I'm assuming there's great. going to be plays for both of them, you know, throughout the course of the year. Is that fair to say? Yeah, we're, you know, I'm just really excited. I've got two, you know, I've never had a five-star quarterback. One year, I think I had five, one-star quarterback. That kind of is a five-star quarterback? No, coach, it does not.

No, it does not. But those two guys are, they're really, really good teammates. They really do a great job of pushing each other and supporting each other. and, you know, Connor, I thought, came on at the end of the year. He played a great game in that Texas Bowl, you know, and that's, you know, allowed him to kind of springboard into this season. He was the MVP of that game. And then Kishon got in here in January, which was really, really important.

You know, football is a very, very complex game. There's a lot going on, you know, post-snap, pre-snap, whatever, meetings during the week. And luckily for us, those two guys are really, really, really, smart. Yeah, but we're excited about both those guys having them, you know, lead our team, lead our offense this year. And last question, you're taking on an Oregon State team. You beat them last year, but it's a completely different squad. As is most of the case, new coach. He comes from Alabama, new quarterback. Do you, when you scout, especially your first

opponent, do you go back to where the previous coach spent time in college in formations? Or how do you do it? Because it is such a new situation. No, exactly right. You look at where the head coach came from, where the coordinators came from. He studied a bunch of that. And then, you know, my coaches got sick of me talking about, you know, what ifs. You know, keep looking at what ifs. You know, you need to have your complete and total package available to offensively, defensively kicking it.

Because they might do something totally different. You know, you weren't prepared for it. You'll always get that in week one. They're going to get that from us. There's going to be some things. we're going to do that they're not prepared for. And they worked on what ifs as well. So that's a big part of game one.

And we feel like we're completely prepared, but it's difficult for week one to be able to do that. Well, he stay hydrated, my friend, on Saturday. Looking forward to catching you in the squad for the first time in person against Oregon State. We'll get some folks out there. We're going to do our best to get everybody there for that 11 o'clock kickoff. It's college football.

We thank you for the early morning visit. all these throughout the course of the year. Thank you, Matt. Go Coogs. You got a thank you. That's Willie Fritz. Head football coach Houston Coogers. Again, 11 a.m.

for the kick time. Houston versus Oregon State. 713.13. Go Coogs. U.H.cugers.com slash tickets. And, of course, I'll have the pregame show Saturday at 10 o'clock on our sister station, 950 KPRC. Hayden West Neske was the hero for the Astros.

And Nelson Velasquez again twice in a week? Hmm. 6.57, it's Matt and Ross, and we are in the morning on Sports Talk 790. This is Matt and Ross in the morning. We should listen to the show. A little banger there for you there, Rossi. Sports Talk 79-toe. Is that AI doing that?

It's got to be right. Yeah. That's fine. It was okay. We'll put in the rotation. Yeah, it's a 6 out of 10. Yeah, we'll still play it. Thank you to Jamie.

I think it's Jamie because it's J-A-Y-M-A-M. It's like one of your... Okay. Because Jaime would be J-A-I-M-E. Yeah, look at this guy. I've been in Texas for years. You know, they do call me. No, they don't.

I mean, as a joke, they do. No, they don't. When I was at the airport and they said, Mr. Texas, please bore it. Yes, they did. Even Dulles. Stop leaving your luggage. You've been in the bathroom for 17 minutes. All right.

That's enough. The Astros win two nothing over the Chicago White Sox, the pale hose. Stop with the pale hose. called that in the Southside. Nobody calls him that. Nobody's walking around town. Ah, the palehose are in town. Tonight at Dyken Park. Shoeless Joe Jackson. No. I took my son, my oldest, when he was pre-team.

We went to Chicago to the Southside. We went over to, because he wanted to see Kamiski or whatever they call it these days. He's like, Dad, this is not a good power of town. Let's get out of here. We were there like 10 minutes. Just raised. Because it was guaranteed. Now they're not guaranteeing. Now just a plain old rate.

He's like, hey, we're going to give you a rate, okay? The rate's the rate. Have you seen the economy? You're going to get what you get and not throw a fill. That's right. Astros 2 and the White Sox. I think the Rangers got their ass beat by the A's. Thank you, Sacramento.

Woo! Astros 2 in front now. The Mariners did win in Boston yesterday. So the Astros lead over the M's as 5 in the American League West. There are some who believe the Mariners are going to surge because of how weak their schedule is. But five games. But you weren't supposed to surge against the Red Sox. Yeah, five games is a whole.

Yeah. Astros play a day game today. This one hurts a little bit because we used to enjoy those day games. Oh, we love some day games. Now, dang, it gets to enjoy the day games. Now I get to watch the all nine innings. I have to wake up and DVR at 4.30 in the morning. Yeah. That's true.

But those game recaps, and by way, shout out to you, Space City. You put those games on over and over and over again. Yeah, we put it on now, unless we want to watch Shams talk about Steve Bomber. Okay. You get a skin peel? Skin's looking good, Sean. We'll get into this story, by the way. We need a next segment.

Okay, okay. Because I do want to get into it. Again, the thing of it is, I don't, I think some of you care. And like we don't always do everything that's top of mind because we're going to move things around. But it's a bigger picture than the Clippers. It's about cheating. Okay. And do sherry that is Jeff Passon.

That's the issue I have more or anything else. I think Shams got a fresh cut for this story. So can I give you a very quick Shams story? Yes. So I'm in Chicago getting food and you get the salad bar first, then you get the entree. and then the very end is the drink station. Okay. And there was this guy that I was, again, I had my plate of food and I want to get my drink.

And there's this guy just tapped on his phone. Mm-hmm. And he was right in front of the drink station. I mean, this is a huge- Oh, he's holding up a line. Huge media area. Oh, come on, Shams. It was Shams.

He was obviously, he couldn't wait to go to an area five feet away from him. Where was this? In Chicago at the United Center? Oh, okay. Or Shmited Center? Yeah. Shmited? So ridiculous.

All right, well, I'm scared. I'm scared to put M-O-B network on because QuickBitch is on. Oh, quick pitch. You quick something with that show. All right. But he's nice. I talked to him a little bit. Okay.

I was like, he's busy. That's any time I've ever seen, like, okay, well. If I'm trying to get to my zero sugar. Can you request Jeff passing at 705? I want to. What do you get into? Oh, real quick. Astros win two nothing.

Josh Hater's ERA is at 0.72. Is that good? Bluebaugh got the win because the Astros didn't provide any offense for Hades. Wings are such a sham. They are. And losses, too, for that matter. Yeah. But yeah, the Astros win only get seven hits.

I mean, they're not crushing to baseball. But Nelson Velasquez has had his moment in the sun the last week or so with two big hits to help the Astros out. Enjoy his fun and he's seasons in the sun. All right. So now, ladies and gentlemen, we present to you why Jeff Pass and is a douche. Okay. So Shams put the tweet out, breaking. the NBA has ruled on the Clippers. I mean, this is a huge. This thing has

33,000 retweets, 121,000 likes, 36 million views. Huge tweet. Basically the ruling about Kauai Leonard having to pay restitution. Five first round pick strip from the Clippers. 30 million dollar fine to Steve Ballmer. He's also suspended for a year. Can't be around the team. Then it gets quote tweeted by Jeff Passon, who has been much maligned. in the Major League Baseball Twitter streets lately because he's been bootlicking so hard for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Yeah, he did a lot of that and then he went silent for a long time. And then he put out this podcast about how the Dodgers have this inherent advantage. So he has been getting absolutely roundly crushed. So then he puts out for context, Major League Baseball stripped the Houston Astros of their first and second round picks in 2020 and 2021 as a part of penalty for the team's signed ceiling scheme during its first World Series winning 2017 season. So out of nowhere, he makes it all about the Astros.

For no reason. And he put in their context, colon. There's no context. Nobody's asking for this context. Nobody's asking for context. It's an apples and oranges comparison. This is Steve Balmer circumventing collectively bargained rules. The sign stealing rules were not collectively bargained.

Yes. And you know what? That's the worst part is that Jeff Passon knows this. He knows he's been getting crushed. He knows that baseball fans hate him right now because they're seeing his boot-licking hypocrisy. So he's trying to get everybody back on his side and he's doing it at the expense of the Astros. Can do that for you, by the way. Exactly.

You want to hate on the Astros. Oh, man, good stuff, Jeff. Yeah, good context. They didn't punish the Astros at all. Look at the Astros farm system right now and tell me they didn't get punished at all. Look at them looking for a, now their third general manager. since Jeff Luno was let go, one of the greatest, I mean, the greatest general manager in Astros history

and tell me that they didn't get not punished. And they're also going to be looking for after this season, their third manager since A.J. Hinch was let go and tell me they were not punished. Jeff Luno, this is disingenuous, and this is just complete pandering from Jeff Passon. He's trying to get back in the friendly world because, again, the Astros are still to this day. We're now in 2026, and I understand why.

They're still the most hated team in baseball, them and the Yankees and the Dodgers, basically. It's a three-headed list. So when I tell you that I feel like, and I know you're going to laugh about this, I think I'm a very good judge of character. I didn't ask you to cough. No, I'm sorry.

But when I tell you when I have interactions with national people, which happens more so in basketball because than it is in baseball. But I feel like I can come to you and honestly tell you, you when I think people are good and genuine, hardworking people. Like, for instance, I hated Florio from the moment I first had him. We used to have him on the show. And I just, there was something

weasily about him. Well, his negotiations. In his negotiations, further the cause. Basically, he's like... Just say it. So he calls up, uh, how many, it's been so long. We were paying him like 200 a week. He wanted 300 a week. And he said, he said Lance Zerline.

at the other station was going to pay him 300 a week. And Lance is working for us. And we had hired Lance. Yeah. So he was lying. He's a smarmy, and I'm going to say this. Mike Floreo is a smarming a hole. He just is.

I've had limited dealings with Jeff Passon. But the dealings I've had, smarming a hole. I'm with you, yeah, you can get a little bit of people. John Heyman, smarming a hole. Coaches, players, you know, we. We're all not going to be perfect. Yeah. Because you talk to people, you're around, because when the lights aren't,

on, that's when you most see people's character. For example, I'll just say it, Joe is spotted Matt, when we've had him on in spring training and all that type of, he's been amazing. He's a great dude, nice, how's it going, polite, like, and there are people who are not like that. Let me give you

some national people that I do like that or not. We always talk about Iron Eagle and Kevin Harland and Mike Breen. I hate Tim Bond temps. He's the worst. Man, he's in Atlanta Hawk now, so. I don't care where he is. Point being is that those guys are good people. Buster only I know a lot of Astro fans aren't big fans of his.

Really a decent guy. I mean, I know I've not been a big fan of his coverage of the Astros. We always talk about Boob Nightingale. Yeah, Buster only, by the way. Got a hot dog, he got a put a plate. He had a plate and he put a bunch of chili on it and then tossed a hot dog on it. So like a reverse hot dog? Like deconstructed hot dog.

Okay. Which I thought was odd. Boom Nightingale, good guy. It is what it is. I don't know him, but sure. So, yeah. So point being is that some people are good people and some people are right. Just like regular people.

Yeah. Yeah, this could have been a one-off for Passant. He knew exactly what he was doing because he's a smarming a hole. He's a smarming a hole. This is what happened. He's a nerd that got led into the inner circle of media. And he knows what happens when a nerd is trying to act cool. They try too hard.

And that's what Jeff Passon does. He tries too hard to be cool. I mean, it is what it is. Some people are nerds and some people aren't. I mean, it's fine. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but he just tries too hard. He built an actual following. Yes.

with all the agents. Yes. He has no player relationships to speak up because that's not going to happen. He wears the suit of an eight-year-old ring bearer. Yeah. Yeah. And he tried to get a haircut and look cool and be handsome and like, you're just a nerd. Just be a nerd.

It's okay. He doesn't even speak like a regular person. Tim Kirchard just acts like a baseball nerd. And we love him for it. And Tim Kirchard is a salt of the earth guy. He's himself. Yes. Jeff Passon tries to be something he's not.

He tries to be cool. He tries to drop bombs atomically and all this type of stuff. No, Jeff Passon. Get your pocket protector out there and be a nerd. Just be yourself. The point was this. And I mentioned this yesterday, last hour of the show. I really wanted to quote tweet him and get back on him.

And I thought, you know what? I got to be better because, as I said, the best tweets are the ones you don't send. I thought, why do I, he wants me to engage with him or he doesn't want me per se. He wants people to engage with him. And I wasn't going to do it. He knows that he is not doing so well in the court of public opinion. And so in a desperate attempt to get some attention and some likes and some favor, he's crushing the Astros. And it was making this about the Astros.

It was absolutely nothing to do with you. I don't even care if the stories are aligned. Stay out of it. No, that's what makes it worse. Because if it was a stupid person and a person we know is not intelligent, they're like, well, this is just like the Astros. You can be like, okay, that person's, you know, I'm mad at them, but they're just dumb. This is intentionally sneaky. This is intentional.

This is a smart person. person pretending to be dumb to look cool. And that's where I have a problem. Because he has been, he knows it's different. He bootlicks the Dodgers. The Dodgers are, their finances are under some serious looks right now. And he's trying to get back in the good favor. And he did.

What he did yesterday won. Now, you and Houston crushed him. He's getting ratioed pretty hard, but yeah. Good for him. All right. So what is going on in Los Angeles with the Clippers? We're going to try to give it a simplistic view and think of it more for a sports perspective, not about Clipper Talk.

Okay. The point being is this, the Clippers are in massive trouble and Kauai Leonard is not. 714. Matt and Ross in the morning on Sports Talk 790. All right. So there's a lot of layers to this

Clippers thing. And I know there's some of you out there. I don't like basketball. Just stay with us here. This is a big picture. Forget about the sport, okay? And by what, you do like basketball. You just want the win 60.

games and I can get that. So the Clippers have circumvented and it's coming out the salary cap by funneling some money to Kauai Leonard's people, his unc, right? Yes, Uncle Dennis.

Ask people in San Antonio about him. They don't like him there. No, they don't have a fan. So basically what the NBA found out was that Steve Bomer was involved, that the president of business operations was involved, and the president of basketball operations was involved. And they have all been suspended for a year.

Balmer, the owner of the clippers, cannot go into the arena at all. It can't be involved in the organization, one year suspension. They've lost five draft picks starting, I believe, what, in 2029. Is that correct on that, start on that? Yes. They're forfeiting first round draft picks in 29, 30, 31, 32, and 333. They've also been fined $30 million. And Steve Balmer, you'll find out on today's edition of a believe or not is a Uber billionaire.

So, I mean, say what you will, $30 million to him is $100 to us. Oh, well, it's jump change. Yeah, it is. It just is. I mean, it's a lot of money still. It's a lot of money. And they're all like, we did, we, we searched this out and we noticed that you guys did this. And we got uncle, we got unc on this, Uncle Dennis involved.

Kauai also carries some responsibility. He was fined $700,000. Eh, which is for him, that's seems extremely like. $20 for him. Yeah. And ultimately, he will still be able to play. He has not been suspended. And the thought is they're going to officially announce this trade between Toronto and the Clippers to send Kauai back to Canada.

Mm-hmm. So there have been multiple layers to this story. First and foremost, Pablo Tori, who's a weird dude. I mean, he ain't a regular Joe Schmo. What do you mean? What's weird about him? Just, how do I explain this to him? I mean, investigative reporters are going to be a little different.

They're just going to go to their own drum. So he has been, he was like go by... His podcast, Pablo Tori finds out. It's about him doing investigations. Yes. So a lot of people are like, are you just searching to get... He's the new breed of it. He's not Woodward and Bernstein, but he hit on this one.

Yeah. He's Harvard educated. Like, he's smart. Yeah, he's smart. But he's part of today's generation of let's embellish everything. Let's go on our social medias and do all these things. which I guess you have to do that. I don't feel like he's that type of guy at all. I feel like he's...

I just know people. Okay. Just trust me in this. It's a little different. But it doesn't matter. He wins. ESPN, about a what, a month ago, Rossi? Or maybe less than that, basically said that their reporting showed that there was nothing that was done by the clippers on the side in that Steve Ballmer and friends were going to be...

That's another thing, by the way. We're going to be, what do you call it? Not held accountable, basically, for... anything wrongdoing. It was Romona Shelburne. Shams was on the report. He took his name off. Shams wasn't on that report. That's what they said, but they said his name was at the end of the report. It wasn't on the beginning, but it was on the end, apparently. But there were three respected. They were, I guess, respected reporters for ESPN that were basically saying the opposite of what the NBA said. The NBA, as soon as it came out, remember, Jonathan, we were talking about this.

The NBA came out and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not only do you shouldn't be putting this story out, but we're not done. and clearly we're not done. Yeah. So that's a layer in itself. That is another layer, honestly, because people reporting, like, sources say they had nothing to do with this. Like, you need to put, if all the Clippers sources say Clippers didn't have anything to do with this, you need to put that in your reporting.

And that's something that people omit to try to change in shape narratives. The reporters do in 2026. And all the top guys are guilty of it. We mentioned Jeff Passon, Ramonah Shelbur, Shams, As Shefter, Ian Rapport, all these guys. They're just, they're just there to, they're, they're, they're to shape narratives. But this is, I don't think ESPN, really. I don't think ESPN has

ever messed up this bad. Like, to me, personally, I don't trust anything they say now. Yeah, I feel like there's some things that Shepter is done and he was like, what was it? Like, the player had died and he was talking about him being a bust and stuff like that. And that was weird. And he's covered up for some people too. I'll just say this.

Before. And to. Ramona Shelburne, Don Van Natta, Baxter Holmes. These are all In sham shirani. In time NBA reporters. Champs Sharani was part of the report as well. The NBA, they wrote, quote, the NBA found no evidence of showing the LA Clippers owners, Steve Ballmer funneled money through team sponsors to pay Kauai Leonard in order

to circumvent the salary cap. NBA says it completely wrong. Right. Of taking five first round picks in a $30 million fine. That's just erroneous reporting. And by the way, the punishment for the Clippers yesterday was collectively bargained between the Players Association and the league. So the Players Association understood what was going on.

So there's, again, there's so much to this. There's one, the Clippers were found guilty. The NBA tried to lay the hammer down as best they could. This is a big hammer. Five first rounders? Big hammer. Number three, you had ESPN, who was a massive television partner for them, carries their games, carries their finals, carries all sorts of programming,

had three of their reporters and maybe even a fourth put their name on something and the NBA shot them down and then basically completely said the story you put out was erroneous and then another layer to this folks is that Steve Ballmer could have been like okay you got us

we need to take our medicine I'll sit a year out we'll fix this we're going to rebuild our organization he comes out with this super long statement saying way way Wait, way, way, wait. You told us we were in the free and clear.

You don't, you're making stuff up. You are, you didn't do your due diligence. I have been, I being the Clippers, have been very forthcoming with everything. Yeah, we vehemently reject the NBA's findings, which are the result of a heavily biased investigation seeking to justify a predetermined narrative rather than facts and evidence, said the Clippers.

NBA. He's calling it a witch hunt. Uh-oh, it's a witch hunt. I know. And before that, the NBA, said, not only are we doing this, but we may find out more things that are going on. There may be more funneling of money to Kauai through backdoor channels that would circumvent the salary cap. So there may not be done.

Oh, there will be lawyers. There's already his lawyer retroactively punishing the Clippers for violating a rule that never existed is hardly consistent with due process. I don't know what kind of legal avenues Steve Ballmer and the Clippers have, but he got a lot of money. ask you this. If you behave yourself and take this penalty, the M-Bang come back and give you those first round picks back. They could.

They did with Joe Smith many, many years ago. They mentioned, what was the deal with that? The Timberwolves lost five picks. And they got a couple of them back. Yeah. Good behavior, basically. Yes. I don't know the particulars of it, but I think there may have been some communication between the wolves

and the clip. Tampering. Yeah, this is like 25 years ago. So, but point being is that just like in life, you know, you get people get sentenced to prison terms. And if you have good behavior, you get some of the years taken off. For an under the table contract agreement with Joe Smith. Yeah, those were the number one overall pick for the wolves back then. So Steve Bomer is taking this risk of maybe the NBA not playing nice with him. And adhering to all those picks gone and all the, I mean, and maybe they're like, maybe Adam Silver is like, if you don't leave us alone, I'm going to keep going on this. I'm going to find some more stuff.

Yeah, they said they reserved the right to strip more from them. Never in my life, ladies and gentlemen, what I've ever thought that we would have had so much legalities and so much crazy-ass minutia in our sports. We have the start of the college football season. I know there were games last weekend. What has been the only thing we've talked about in the last, well, three or four days is Lane Kiff and Trenner? trying to get professional players to play on his football team. Yeah. He's hitting the Waiver.

He's hitting the NFL waiver wire, literally. We're not excited about the upcoming NBA season because we're trying to figure out the clippers are sending Kaua Lerner Money under the table. It is crazy how cheating, reinventing rules, and going to find circuit court judges that will rule in your favor have dominated our sports world. And that's why I do believe in some respects, Ross. There have people that have tuned out of sports. Not a lot, but some have.

I think so, some. But when the games are on, the games are on. They're on, but sometimes you forget about the games. Why do you forget about the games? Because they're on channels that you don't pay for anymore. I'm all fired up for college football this weekend. Yeah. I fell in a week after that.

Yeah. Baseball playoffs coming up. I'm feeling good. We need games. You know, we've survived this summer, but we kind of need games, don't we? It's been a long summer. 729. Matt and Ross, and we are in the morning.

And your first place, Astros. Yes. going to give you a September Rossi. How many games about 500? They're a couple. Two. Wow. And that's almost a high watermark for the season. And a couple above the Rangers in the West. Not, hey, not breathing room because Joe Spada would tell me otherwise. Suck it. Rangers. By the way, I issued a Friday apology from

bringing up the breathing room thing. He did. The breathing room. Yeah, you were here, when you were here during the week. I was like, oh, would you say that's breathing room? And you know, that was, not nice. That was not nice. Yeah. That's why I apologized. And I already have one went down for Friday, Vanna White. You need to apologize to Vanna. By the way, who's had more facelifts? Seacrest or Vana?

Seacrest, by far. I think so. Absolutely. I think it's close. By the way, people are... I think it's like a Sosa-Maguire. Would you all stop sending me photos of Barry Manolo? I know how bad he looks.

He looks like a showbiz animatronic animal. He's moving like a tin man. Go to break. worried about him. He's stroking out on stage. It's a miracle that I don't still like you. 731, Matt and Ross in the morning. If you want to chime in on the Astros win, you want to chime in on this Clippers investigation, you want to chime in on the fact that C.J. Stroud apparently is turning down a $50 million a year contract with the Texans to bet on

himself. These are things we're talking about. It's Matt and Ross in the morning. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. We are Matt and Ross in the morning. We would love to have you guys a part of our radio show today if you so choose. Three ways you can get a hold of us. One is the phones because it is a radio show that involves callers. Other shows in the market hate callers. We like you guys.

713-212-5-790. 713-1-2-1-2-5-790. Rossi, I got to let you know I'm only four away from another magical number on the Instagram account. Oh, nice. Will you folks please follow SportsMT on Instagram? He's been posting Sweet. photos of he and his daughter who was doing well at

Rhode Island. Had a great weekend. In our videos are doing quite well too. Our little short little videos. It's very wholesome and yeah we got one of our videos got like 19,000 views. Yeah, Matt and the Ross in the morning so take a look if you would like to be, here's the rule. If you follow me on Instagram at SportsCente. I'm going to write down these false promises. Astros win again

today. Okay. And they'll still be in first place. Okay. If you follow him today and they don't win, you have to unfollow. No, no, no. It's a follow because it's really gift. No, it's you're making false promises. No, just follow me. Just do it. And you can also follow us on Twitter as well. At SportsMT, at SportsRV on both of our accounts.

I'm two away from 1700 on my Instagram at SportsRV. Where you can see pictures of your great trip to Pacific Northwest. Yeah, Mount Rainier. It's the skyline loop hike. I'm going to post a little bit more of Mount Rainier. Okay. And also the whale watching I did in San Juan Island. So, coming up here. Were you scared at all on that?

Scared and wouldn't know. I've been on one whale watching trip in my life and it made me nervous and And then I thought to myself, wait a minute, this guy's not going to put us in danger. Yeah, first of all, there's life vests everywhere. There's a million boats everywhere. They can call a, yeah, we're not, you're not out in the middle of, you're navigating a few islands. So, I mean, you're not that far away. I was worried about the whale coming over and eatness.

Oh, okay. No, Orca don't eat people generally. But yeah, it was beautiful out there. The San Juan Islands, Pacific Northwest, Mount Rainier. I love the Pacific Northwest. I just do. Here's the only problem of Pacific Northwest, back to the Chicago. It just rains too much.

Oh, okay. I was going to say the cocktails were $28. That was kind of a problem. That's West Coast. That's not just Pacific Northwest. I was like, excuse me? It's what? Oh, okay.

You got to go to the Central K. Yeah, I know. All right, yeah, I'm not going to go to the Circle K and drink 40s in the Pacific Northwest. You would be cheaper. I'll actually, I will pay for a good cocktail. Jonathan, I'm sorry, Ginzi's not drinking because beers are like $9. It's like $9 for a Mick Ultra. You go out for a pint.

Tell me about it. And the cocktails, your cocktails are like $18 and it's like maybe a sprits of tequila in your or rum or something in your mohito. So I get that. But like an actual good, well-crafted cocktail with a bunch of different ingredients I've never heard of. I love cocktails. Like a cocktail, nice cocktail bar. I'm a sucker for sure.

Even if it's $28. Yeah, it was once a year. I can do that every week. Well, you're on vacation. Yeah, you should. I'm not going to do that every week. I'm not going to go to the high-end cocktail bar three times a week. Because it's going to run you about 150 bucks a pop.

But I love a good, well-mixed cocktail, for sure. All right. 713-212-5-790. Matt and Ross, we are in the morning. Astru is with the win. C.J. Stratt apparently was, has been offered north of 50, which is, to me, not crazy, but surprising. Is that, can you be surprised and not crazed? I guess?

Surprised and not shocked? Because, let's say he has a crappy year. Okay. The deal doesn't go down to 36 months. It just doesn't. These NFL quarterbacks want 50 plus as the kind of the low, the floor, if you will. If you're in that starting group. Now, if you are, if you are, who's a rando?

Deshawn Watson's making 46. Yeah. Totally guaranteed. Woo! He's doing okay. Who's just a mid? Give me a below mid quarterback. CJ Stroud. No.

Oh, I'm sorry. Keep it out of the local. That's not nice. Well, the Buccaneers think Baker Mayfield might be mid. Jared Goff? Who's the Jets starting quarterback this year? Oh, God, Gino Smith? Yeah, they're back there.

He's not, he's below mid. He's not asking for $50 million. No, he's not. You know, Sam Donald was making like 30-something from the Seahawks, right? So if you're a CJ, you're turning down 50 going, that's what I'm going to make base. Sam Darnold got three years 100 from the Seahawks. And they won the Super Bowl. Yeah.

I mean, you're not Kyler Murray. You're not struggling to look for a deal. These are the players, Jalen Hertz is at 51. Some people think he's mid. Jalen Hertz, $51 million. Mark Jackson, 52. Herbert. Brock Purdy's at 53.

I would call Brock Purdy like, I mean, not mid. That's why. Because so many quarterbacks are good. But if we're going to listen to quarterback, Brock parties like 15th. He really is. Yeah. He's not a guy that I'm closing eyes. Like, I'm going to go in a drive for me.

I think he's a good quarterback, but by definition, that's mid. That's just the great quarterback. play. The quarterback play level is insane right now. Yeah. All right, more on that coming up as the show progresses. Let's go to Steve on 790 and 741. Steve, good morning to you. Good morning, gentlemen. You know, you don't

realize how bad you miss Blummer until you listen three nights of Jeff Bagwell. My God. It's like listening and watching paint dry at the same time. It is horrible. Is Blummer coming back? Yeah, he's back today.

He missed the game. All these broadcasters, because baseball is a ridiculously rigorous schedule. They get some time off. Some have more games than others. Like, I think Steve Sparks missed us 20. I think, I don't think Robert misses, but maybe a series of two years. See, Sparks is like on the Johnny Carson schedule.

Yeah, but he's also, he's really good. But yeah, I think he's so, I think he works 140. I think Miami Blum and Ted Collins in the same situation. Each individual broadcaster has their own schedule. Well, I understand, and he deserves a day, you know, a couple days off, but they ought to

let the public know because the first game, the first game I, we listened to the whole game after the second game about fourth inning. We turned on the radio and we just the game. I mean, you you've got to tell me that they can find somebody out

there better to sit next to Calus. I mean, they've got to. Thanks guys. Have well. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Steve. This continues to be something and I apologize for bringing up almost on the daily, but we have different audiences.

The hate for Jeffrey Bagwell is intense. Very intense. He is, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not giving any breaking news here. He's a Hall of Famer. A hall and he wore your uniform and didn't wear anybody else's uniform at any point. He was amazing. But it's almost like from the day he took the jersey off for the last time to where it is now. It's almost like people are like, can we get him away? I mean, people were asking about,

I didn't see the interview between him and Jim Crane on the TV side yesterday because they were doing their big charity event for Space City. So I'm going to assume there was not a lot of deep conversations about the general manager search during that thing. But Jeff used to be, I mean, honest with you, if you went back and listened to old shows, people were calling this show, our shows, and we're saying, yeah, this Jeff is a breath of fresh. Is a breath of fresh air. I wouldn't want him 140 games, but he's such a smart baseball player that there is insights that he has not given, he gives that other people have not given before. Yeah, there's some storytelling and talking about and like he was, you know, guessing pitch sequencing and stuff

like that. When he's talking baseball, it's good. Now, his monotone delivery is not for broadcasting. He's not a broadcaster. He's not a broadcaster. That's okay. But I would say, at least the little bit I've listened to this series he's got the pom-poms out basically for every single player I think that I think there he's showing some of his biases I don't know how heavily involved he's been involved

in the acquisition of any of these players but he's like talking about guys who are hitting one in 87 and how they're turning the corner and stuff like that it's like dude it's well September I think frankly part of the hate is because of the baseball operations absolutely there's some negative bias because of that but i do think he's been a little heavy on the

palm palms and also i say a little extreme on the self-deprecating like i was just a guy type of stuff he would he didn't say i watched it last night he didn't do that he's like todd was like well you're pretty good here and todd throws a softball to firm to hit it so okay yeah he was a little less of that yesterday that's good but i do believe most of the hate when it talks about gift jeff off my TV is because of the fact that you folks have associated with Jeff with some of the questionable baseball decisions in the last five years. And he doesn't give big, energetic delivery. No, he doesn't do that. If you were to monitor his audio level, it's pretty monotonous. Yes. 745, it's Matt and Ross. We are not monotonous. Maybe to our detriment. No, sir. Unmonotonous in the

morning? No, you can't be. Polynotenous? No, don't get into big words. I'm just asking. I don't know. What's the opposite of mono would be poly right monogamy polygamy by is the binogamy by are you by not are you by notteness are you by nonness jonathan no i'll just help him you don't know how long you've been by poly notness oh that's horrible yeah yeah go save the line jonathan say it no no you got it Coming up in a little over an hour from now, Brian McTagger's going to talk some Astros baseball with us. He's going to join us every Thursday at 9. Love it. Hopefully till like November.

Okay. I mean, basically as long as the Astros go, McTagher will go with us. So hopefully that'll be for a while. 713-212-5-79. If you want to jump in and say hello, Astros win to nothing. The Rangers got beaten badly by the age yesterday. to two, and the Mariners beat the Red Sox in Boston. So Houston's leadover, Texas is two and Seattle five games in front.

Rangers at 69 and 71 in second place, but they're still in the chase for the American League wallet card. Texans news, they're basically just having some private practices, nothing in terms of media availability for a while. It was reported, not necessarily reported, but more of asked and answered about to Ian before. What's going on with CJ Strauss contract? And they're like, yeah, they're talking, but

sounds like that CJ wants to bet on himself. I get the reasoning that, hey, this type of deal that's on the table now will be on the table if I have a regular CJ Stroud season, and I'm betting I can do better than that. If you're a CJ Stroud and your quarterback of the Texans, no matter who you are,

if you're Geneo Smith, if you're, I don't even know who would be the number 32 out of 32 starting quarterbacks, you have to believe that you can go. Oh, come on now. You know I'm right. Apparently Malik Willis been looking good in camp. Better watch out, Maddie. I don't know who he's going to throw to. I'll be Devon A. Chan like 10 times a game. But until he's traded. Yeah. Yeah, until he's traded away. But, uh, okay, even if you're Malik Willis, who just signed a pretty nice deal with the, uh, with the Miami Dolphins, three years, $67 million.

Yeah, you're like, I got something to prove. I can do better than I've done. I'm going to be better. You need to believe that. You have to believe that. You know that. A lot of these athletes are irrationally confident, and that's what you have to be to get to this level.

So let's dumb it down. Let's say the Texans offered 50. He wants 60. So what's the percentage difference on that? He might even want more than that, depending. But yeah, say again? So $50 million. If you want 60, what percentage bonus is it?

That's 20% bonus. 20% more than... 120%. Okay. So if your boss offers you 80, and you're like, I'm worth 96, that's a pretty significant jump. Yeah, but you can also say,

I am going to be worth more than this, and the salary cap is going to go up, and the quarterbacks get the best percentage of the salary cap. So I, this and this deal, or this type of deal is going to be on the table next year if I just have a regular, regular season, but if I can have the best season of my career with the better offensive line, with a better run game,

and while the weapons were supposed to be better with Jaden Higgins, but we'll see. Oh no, Kays Sean Boutte is going to figure this out for him. Okay. Booty for life? Mm-hmm. Who's finishing second on the Texans and receiving yards? Booty?

Well, I... Well, I... Well, the problem is the Schultz, he may not be the primary... I think he'll be the primary tight-in. But they're going to... But they're going to use other tight-ins. Marlon Klein. Marlon Klein season?

Until he drops a bunch of passes. Did Marlon Klein have the dropsies? That was his criticism coming out of college. Oh. I thought it was just that didn't get enough playing time. And dropsies. Oh, I don't remember that. You think I'm making that up?

I would have to ask Texans insider at Wexler. I would trust Wex. Your draft evaluation has been spotting. Speaking of which, we didn't mention Will Levis getting let go. We didn't have to. Thomas Sports Enterprises. You know, we had the Thomas Sports Enterprises crushed on deck. Prescott. It's been mid after that.

John Ross didn't do much. Three drops on 41 targets. It's not bad. It's not good. Last year for Michigan. Only 41 targets. Second round pick, too. What? Of the NFL draft?

By your team. Okay. He only has four career drops. And the ringer's profile says they're unfairly mischaracterizes drops. you know what? I will say Marlon Klein, I'm sorry. I have unfairly mischaracterized your drops.

His one true drop came when it was snowing, according to the ringer. It's a draft profile. What is? Is it the ringer on the Michigan payroll here or what? This is written, this profile is written by Marlon Klein. It's written by, I'm just kidding. It's written by Texans Terry. There you go. Ringer draft tracker says he's only had one drop and it was in the snow.

So, Marlon Klein's all right. I'm sorry, Marlon. You should. Write that down Friday. Martin Klein Friday 1130. I'm apologize. I'm apologizing to Vana White for getting her face carved up. That's not carved up. You, if Van der Wight walked into our studio right now, you would not say nice face. I'm sure it's been carved up.

I wouldn't say that. No, why would I say that to her face? A guy walks in with a big moor. You used a microphone. A guy walks in with a big mole on his face. You don't say, hey, how's it going? Mole face? No, you just say, hey, how's it going? You just use.

I'm not going to point it out. You use the 790 frequency in a microphone to do it instead. We're talking about it. way, way less. No, we're just chatting about a person. Go to break. Vana, I'm sending this to you. Because I'm going to be the new announcer for the Wheel of Fortune.

No, you're not. You're right. I've been searching that, by the way. I don't have time for that. What do you mean? The Rockets are not going to say, oh, man, we can miss 40 games. Go ahead. You do those Wheel of Fortune tapings.

You're so ridiculous. Go to break, as Jonathan said. All right. Did the Astros lean on Hayden Wisnowski yesterday? You'll find out next 7.59 on Matt and Ross in the morning. This is Matt and Ross in the morning. They won two out of three in this four game set so far. Two to nothing.

Victors tonight. Astros now have a two-game lead over the Rangers for first in the AOL. The Astros lean on Hayden Wisniewski. Josh Hader and Nelson Velasquez. Not on the bingo card here, Rossi.

You can fire the man, but not the idea. Dana Brown's legacy lives on. Nelson Velasquez. MVP charge has begun. MVP of September? I don't know. What? I was going to say the first week of the month.

Player of the week. He's got my vote. And I know every year when you look at a baseball team and you go back and say, who are that going to be the key Cogs to a 2006 successful Astro season? If you were in March, you're like, okay, Cam Smith's got to take the next step. Looking forward to seeing Mike Burles. What he does is an Astro starter. How much will you miss Mauricio Dubon?

Will any of the starting pitching to Dana Brown come in and brought to town to help out? Nelson Velazquez, Lamont Wade, Jr., not on the radar. Taylor Tremel? Well, Taylor was here, but you didn't think he'd be an impactful player. No. And he had a good series in San Francisco, but really since then, it's not been much. It's a marathon. It just is.

And if you're starting rotation for the playoffs, if the playoffs started the day, Hunter Brown being a number one starter, would not be an issue. Peter Lambert, you're like, who? Peter Lambert sounds like he's a 1978 soap opera star On One Life to Live Oh Peter Lambert, that's not bad Yeah This got like a shirt Coirley Fro and a big thick stash

Yes Like three buttons undone with a chain and a hairy chest And confused about a sexuality Because they were all confused in the 70s And number three Hayden was Neske Thank you for not pausing that long Good God

First of all anybody named Hayden wasn't alive in 1978. That name was created in the last 10 years, or not the last 10, obviously, 25. Okay. But, yeah, Hayden was Neskees your third starter. There's a game. Folks, if there's a game three of a playoff series next week.

Rankin order of names, Braden, Kaden, Hayden. No, no, and no. Oh, okay. Tweet to at SportsMT, if that's the name of your child. Look, I'm sorry. They're bro names. That's funny. Two-nothing win by the Astros.

Two games up on the Texas Rangers, five games up on the Seattle Mariners. Who do have a... I mean, they've got a dog schedule coming up. They just did take two out of three against Boston. It was supposed to be good. Four with the A's. Three with the Rangers.

Three more with the A's. Three with the Angels. Three with the Rock. Oh, God, we're in trouble. We, of course, because on the backup catcher. Two with the Astros and then four with the Angels. Did you just hear that? A's, Rangers, A's, Angels,

Rockies, two with the Astros and then the Angels. So if you're a Seattle Mariner fan, which I'm assuming there's none listening to the show right now, you are really kicking yourself. You've got so much to climb. You're going to be really pissed off once they go 500 over this man. Well, I mean, you get that schedule of the Astros, and they would not like it because they don't do well.

They don't do well against sub-500 teams. Oh, we're all scared. Oh, the A's. The A's just too good. Oh, we can't beat the A's. It's terrible. Going to have to beat the A's. It's embarrassing.

You've got four in Sacramento and close off the year, right? Yeah, I got a great idea. Beat the A's. Isn't that difficult? They've been waving a white flag for two months. I would actually fly to Sacramento to support my team, but we are, we do morning drive now. It's too late for us. We could just stay up.

You mean go to Sacramento. watch a 640 Pacific time first pitch. I'm sure the Sacramento after our scene is banging. It's not. Oh. It's the Capitol. Back at the hotel by 11. You know those politicians like get crazy.

In Sacramento? Probably. Okay. No, we're not, no, I promise you, in the future of this show, there will be not a single night that I will stay up in, like if I have a West Coast Rockets game, I'm going to go to sleep. Why don't you just stay up? What if you're really wired?

What if it's like a triple? What if you get like West Coast double overtime, triple overtime? Then you're going to be pushing for my rule that I've been proposing, the Elam ending. Just play to 15. No double overtime. No double overtime for regular season. No double overtime, no triple overtime. Play to 15. Let's get out of here. How many double overtime game so I call a year?

Also, make it take it. Make it take it. All right, I'm kidding about that. But no, play to 15 in overtime. Boom, done. We're out of here in 15 minutes. You're going to win by two or no? No.

And call your own fouls. Okay, I'm just kidding. James Harden would never do that. Write that down for Friday. You're making a rule for your sport. It was terrible. The Ilam ending. They did it in the Ulsaar break and it was great.

Because the Ulcer game is a gimmick. You played a 15. I don't want to be gimmicky during the season. It's the regular season. You don't mind the Manford man now, do you? Not gimmicking. It gets everybody home. Do you want to be there?

No. Players, coaches, the workers, the ushers, everybody at the concession stands, let's go home. Nobody needs triple overtime in a regular... Triple overtime Nuggets Kings. How many A? On a Wednesday night, nobody needs that. How many triple overtime games that I called last year? I don't know. I called a bunch of overtime.

How many doubles? You did double overtimes for sure. You did double overtime the first night of the year. I don't know. I was a great game, though. Get you that extra cup of coffee. You're going to be begging for that Eelam ending after a double overtime night. You've got to get up.

Let me tell you something. When I call you at 5 o'clock in the morning in Sacramento, I'll be like, Ross. I remember that show in September we talked about? Hi, Elam Thomas here. That's what you're going to call yourself. All right. 713, 2.1, 2.5.7.9. If you want to come in and say hello to us this morning, as the Astros win, the Clippers

did not win yesterday. So those have been caught again. The Clippers were fined. Five first round picks. $30 million. Steve Balmer, their president of business ops and their president of basketball ops, that would be for those of you here in town, Gretchen Shearer does the business side, basketball president would be, there's not technically one, but it would be a Rafael Stone.

So those three people, if Timor, to put the equate to the rockets, those three would be all gone for a year. That's crazy. I mean, they drop the hammer on them. And they say it could be more. Now, is that a threat to say, don't come appealing this,

or I'm going to find more stuff? Or do you think they're like, here's what we have to do to start the year, and when we can do some more digging, we'll get back to you. Sounds like bombers wanting to fight. Now we'll see. I mean, Lance Armstrong sued his accusers.

Let me ask you this. If you're a hundred, if you're, I'm going to give you a free, believe it or not today. Okay. Today, he is worth. Steve Bomer, they do this every day for the billionaires. His estimated value, uh, personal worth. Can I guess? Please. You'll never get it.

Oh, really? You'll never get it. 110 billion. That's not horrible, but it's 154. Okay. $154 billion is net worth today. Ross, I always, I've always told you. that I think billionaires run differently in life for obvious reasons.

Yeah. Okay. So you want to be a one billionaire. That's one thing. If you give it a $10 billion club, you're really cool. The guy's worth $154 billion. You're, yes. You think that you're going to let Adam Silver tell you,

what your punishment is? That's, he's going to fight this until he dies, I would think. He doesn't want this on his card. everything he's done in his life from a business perspective has turned to gold. Literally everything. You're going to tell him to stay away from his beloved team and his beloved arena for an entire... He built that thing. He's second cousins with Gilda Radner?

Or is he? You got that one? No, I'm going to put it down. You know, right that one down. It's true. Is it really true? You know why? They're from Detroit.

Okay. That's not a question. I'm going to put in there. Steve, do you think people know who Gilder Radner is? Jonathan has no clue. John, the annoyed is. a zero chance he knows. I don't know what I said.

Can't even think of a face. Can you name, real quick, this is a good case of Kim. Can you name three S&L actors? Of all time? SNL actors? Of all time. Saturday Night Live. Oh God, please.

He can do it. He can do it. Three. Yes, I believe it. Pass or present? Can you name one present one? No. Come on, man.

We did S&L, we did literally, didn't we do best S&L players? I was a SNL movie, but like, you know how they started. I don't know. Yeah, there was a movie. It was a movie documentary. It was like a documentary or like a live action? It's a biopic. It was a Lauren Michael. Was it Lauren Michaels?

Can you name three S&L actors period? Ever? Ever? No. Yes, you can. You can. Kenan Thompson, Eddie Murphy, correct? One.

Will Ferrell? My God. They were guest stars. They weren't like, you know. No, no. They were the cast. Oh, I didn't know that. Folks, all right.

All right. He's young. Call the show and rip on Johnson. The next segment of the show is. call rip on Jonathan. He's young, but he should have known Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray. The show has been around for 51 years, Will Ferrell, Amy Pollard, Tina Faye. I didn't know they were on. Oh, my God. Please, somebody called Rip on him.

Well, see, he didn't spend his summers watching all the reruns on E Network or Comedy Central. Channel 44, shout out of everything else. Yeah, that's crazy. All right. You know what? I'm, my stomachs. I don't feel good. This is a suck. He can't name three people in the history of the show. It's often a punch in the stomach when he makes me feel old, but now I feel like this one's on him. No, no, no, this is not old. This is on him.

This is not our fault. Keenan Thompson, come on. Made it in my top five SNL actors. Shut your bum ass up. That was a lost. That was terrible. What up with that? 814, it's Matt and Ross, swear in the morning.

Please call and rip on Jonathan for at least not knowing three S&L actors. Ever! Fifty one year history of the show. It's still on. I mean, I get it. You don't know the characters. from the Brady bunch. Annie Murphy's probably number one most famous, right?

Yeah, I would say so. Especially in the 90s. He got caught up. Who's number two? Bill Murray? I don't know. John Belushi? Tim Chase? No, I know Will Ferrell. Will Ferrell's number two. Bill Murray. Oh, look at him. Look at him how

innocent he sounds now. I almost said, I almost said hang up on this guy. But he's got a microphone. Oh, Bill Murray. All right. 713212-5-790. My producer, who we love. Adam Sandler's got a...

Adam Sadler ahead of Will Ferley. Chris Farley? In front of Adam Sandler behind me. All right. More famous. One, two, three. Adam Sandler. One, two, three. Will Ferrell. No, no, no, Adam Sandler. Adam Sandler. I guess it's the movie career. It's close. It's close.

But Will Ferrell was more impactful as a S&L character. You don't know three characters. Oh, my God. I just don't get it. up in about 10 minutes from now. If you just listen to our last conversation, that'll be one of the topics of I just don't get it coming up at nine minutes. Sports Talk 7.90.

We got Brian McTagger coming up at 9 o'clock. Oh, Brian McTaggart. Here's a fine Irish and Scotsman. Yeah, if you miss our visit this morning with Willie Fritz, which is 645 now, the early riser like you and I are. We'll be replaying some of that at 9.30 today. Willie Fritz ready to go.

He was ready to go. Ready to rock. You know why? Because we're going to go to the Big 12 championship game, bro. You can buy in some tickets? No, we're going to be there. About the time of show with Ross. Oh, you're here in a credential.

And the Matt and Ross the morning show. Both shows will be there. Where's the game? Is it in Dallas? It's in 18. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. We should do the show from inside the stadium. I think they let us end at 5 o'clock in morning? I'm wishing the cougar is the best. You should be.

And they're not going to let us end at 5 in the morning, no. Well, Jerry Jones probably up about then. He's in his 80s. It's an early riser. Speaking of Jerry Jones, there's a few people that want to equate Jim Crane to Jerry Jones. That's a bridge too far. I think that's too much.

But he's on the bridge. Well, because Jerry has always been the general manager. Jim has just been more active in the baseball. Jim is not the GM. He's kind of the de facto GM. And every owner has to approve, has to sign off on trade. Anybody make a 30 out of 30 owners would have to sign off on a Zach Grinky trade or of Justin Verlander trade. Would 30 out of 30 owners have to sign off on a alleged Trevor Larnick for Brian a Brady trade?

I don't know about that. To me, it's more about he didn't trust Dana. I think, I agree. I think this year with all the acquisitions that probably Jim wasn't involved with, Dana, you need to keep your job. You want to be a general manager beyond this year in this lame duck. Go get us some additional pitch. I mean, what was Dana's worst trade?

Because the Willier Brayout of the Red Sox of Christian Vasquez, that was James Click. Yeah. The Dalton Varshow has not worked out. Now, a lot of those, maybe he's one hand behind his back. Okay, what's Mr. Arrogati doing? I mean... But I don't care about what he does in Toronto.

Did the team get massively better with the trade? No. I think the thing that sealed Dana's fate was all the pitchers that came in and didn't do the thing. Trading way Dubon, but I mean, Nick Allen's been comparable, and that was for, that was not necessarily his fault. They saved $5 million. Yeah. I think the Burroughs deal didn't help.

The Royce. The Emi, how much he was involved. I'm talking about deadline deals. Oh, no, there's been nothing that's been crushing. I mean, Varsha hasn't helped out. I mean, Hazer-Sanchez deal last year was kind of bleh. I don't even remember what you gave up. Circuitous routes?

It was that pitcher with the big neck. What was his name? What? Ryan, uh, Big neck, Astro pitcher. Go ahead and put the Google that and see where that goes,

takes you. Astro pitcher with big neck. Go ahead and see where that's going to end up. I'm trying to find it. Ryan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something Gecko, not Beath and Peckle. Well, it was his name.

I can't find it because I'm putting trade in. It's like the recent trade. But don't put Big neck in there either. That doesn't help. Big neck. But Hayeson Sanchez traded to Astros. Yeah, because he was traded for Joey Lopez. So that trade's coming up.

Oof. Damn it. Okay. I'll find the big. You'll find it. I'll find Big Neck in a second here. Spencer on 790. Good morning.

I'll listen to your talk. Matt, I agree with you. I think that he just made a lot of bad mistakes with the two Asian pitchers. Well, what? Kauway Tong has been mid, but there was no huge investment in him. What do you laugh about? Emi, how much of that was him? Mike Burroughs is not Asian?

No, he's talking about. tongue. I'm not talking about him. No, Ryan Weiss came from Korea, but he's not Asian, Spencer. No, don't listen. Spencer, don't listen, Ross. Just talk to me. Korea Korea is Asia. No, but Ryan Weiss, no, he's from America, though.

He's, no, no, again, don't listen to him. He's talking about Tong and Emi. Oh, okay. They're Asian. Okay. Yes. Yeah, that's what we're talking about. You're adding names of the list. Go get a cup, cup of coffee. I must have to spend you for a segment. I'm doing great.

I'm doing believe it. offered you and this is what you're getting back yeah Ryan Gusto by the way yeah well Matt Matt I also want to ask you what's going on with the CJ turning down a 50 million dollar a year deal you answered your own question he turned it down apparently if the reports are accurate he's going to he's going to do so well this year he's going to make 55 that's what he believes no he's going to make like 70 yeah I think he's no that's too much I think he's thinking 60 probably Spencer to be honest with you well they they beefed up the offensive line right uh new new people in there i wouldn't say beefed up kieland rilidge is going to be in there i'm feeling good about the offensive line

and they got and they got a new running back yes david montgomery so so they've taken a lot of pressure off of him that's good so he better shine or he's going to look like an idiot that's that's how the game is played yeah and the thing is Thank you, Spencer, for the phone call. He, again, I think the floor is 50. I mean, he's in a good spot. He really is. For a guy that threw four interceptions in a very important game, he's in a great spot.

I mean, unless he has an absolute disaster, like 10 touchdowns, 20-pick season. Or massively hurt. Yeah, right. Which could happen. He's got a concussion history, too. That's just under reported storyline, I feel like, with C.J. Shrell's career. Any tough turf places this year? How's it turf in London, by the way?

It's probably pristine. They actually care about their pitches in that in London. Houston Stadium turf is okay? I don't know. They rip out the grass in the out of the cup? They did. Hannah won't pay for that. No chance. Pony pinchers. These people are all billionaires and they can't field grass. Just about every homeowner listening right now has got grass. Okay, so where are they going this year? Cleveland's grass could be terrible. It's a road game.

Probably. Right. Where else is they going to be in? Oh, my God. We're on concussion watch. We're on grass watch. Well, it would be on turf. The MetLife turf is bad, and then people say it's like, it's not padded enough. So that's why you do have concussions and a lot of soft tissue injuries. So where could he potentially get hurt?

That's what we're worried about. Everywhere. It's the NFL! There's 11 guys trying to rip his head off on the other side of every play. And you're trotting out Ariante Ursery and 30-year-old Evan Brown. You've got double browns out there. Two of them. Trent Brown.

Also, a 33-year-year-old Trent Brown. So, by the way, we got to talk about your tweet. What tweet? The one that got a million views. Two million views. The most innocuous tweet that I could possibly have put out. I just don't get that. It's at 1.9 million views.

I don't understand that. You get any new followers out of it? Yeah, a lot, actually. Did you really? Follow me at Sports RV. Also, by the way, I got over 1,700 on Instagram. Shout out to you guys. I got to check and see how my Instagram.

I asked for four people to follow me. Let's see where we are here. Yeah, please follow Matt. I mean, it's going to help us. Oh, I got six new ones. Thank God. I'll give a shout out. I'll get the shoutouts eventually.

Listen how happy it's made him. So thank you to Cody, J. Watts, and that's Cam for the follows. Oh, and Scott Hunter followed as well. Scott, good people. I'm over 1,700, so appreciate you guys. Shout out to Lisa, Trey, Adam, Garrett, all you bros. Love y'all. Cody, Mike?

Good. What don't you get in life? A lot. Not me. I'm like other things in life. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7. It is Matt and Ross, and we are in the morning.

If there's something in life you just don't get, we want to hear from you next. 713-212-5-790. All right, I'm bringing back, and I just don't get it from when you were on vacation. We were doing the midday show, so now in the mornings, and it's a new one. And it means something to us today because our fantasy football draft here at the IHeart Football League is tonight. And here is my, I just don't get it. And I don't know what reaction was, Jonathan, when I said. I think we got just mixed reaction on it.

I don't get punishing the last place finisher in your league was doing something embarrassing. I remember this. We've never done that before in all the years. We've done fantasy football. No. Largely, it's really stupid stuff that can either get you in trouble or get you in trouble with your spouse or the place of business. It's you and about six other bros that think. it's really funny.

I don't really find them funny. Like walking on the street, wearing just underwear, saying I'm a dumb fantasy football player. We had a listener send us his. He had to go to on a dinner date with a stuffed animal. With a stuffed animal. Yeah. I mean, and I appreciate the listener doing that. And teach his own, but I will just say, ladies and gentlemen, I speak to you as someone that has been in fantasy football for most of my life.

Having the last place finisher doing something embarrassing. I'll just say guys and gals listening to us, I just don't get it. Some of them are kind of funny. I mean, I get it. Some of them are for attention and to go viral because they're going to film them and stuff like that. Right. I don't even know. The first one I remember was the guy going to have to go to Waffle House for 24 hours,

and every waffle he eats takes an hour off. So you want the guy to get sick? There was a recently, there was a guy who had to go to a bar at 7 a.m. And it closed at 2 a.m. He had to stay there the entire time the bar was open. But every beer was 30 minutes and every shot was an hour taking off or something. Yeah, I don't need that. So if you slam 10 shots, you know, you can be out of there.

and a few hours. You could leave the bar and go right to the emergency room. Yeah. Well, we had a listener make a good point. It just makes sure that everybody doesn't quit mid-season. See, but in our league, we just make low points every week pays. So you can't quit in the middle and you can't. Yes, I think it's great.

Financial implications are huge. Yes. I'm with you and that I think it's gone too far. And also, just a little thing to tell you as commish. You can like bad players. You don't want to embarrass bad players. I don't want the worst play in our league who have to go out somewhere and be publicly humiliated.

No, I want to be like, man, bad injuries this year. Yeah, I mean, I'm a tell a little secret. Hey, I let your draft, man. I don't know what happened. We keep Clanton the league for a reason. Yeah. Just saying. Clanton two-time champion.

Matt Thomas is a zero-time champion. Yeah, two-time lucky champion. But normally he beat you. But normally he... Clint is the key of the king of the injuries this guy. No, you just drafted a bad team. No, see, now I'm not saying Clint. I'm just saying whoever was not good in our league.

I'm like, oh, dude, I liked your draft, man. I don't know what went wrong. But you used to do draft grades and people got mad at you. That's true. Well, I gave Dan an F because he got three tight-ins in like the first eight rounds. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to stop doing draft grades. Do you want you to do brutal draft grades again this year?

Yeah, I absolutely do. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. But what if I do over the top? Like why your team sucks. And I just crush every team.

Everybody gets a bad grade. That would take creativity. But it would take away from our show, so don't do it. I'm off at 10 a.m. Okay. Got a lot of free time these days. I know you do. All right.

So I will say, generally speaking, the paying for the low point total. We also pay for high point, which means if your team sucks, you know, high wins, low points loses every week. Yeah. I like that's what to do it. Making someone where a bib at church is not where I would. go. Yeah, you get two, three of those. We pay 20 bucks a week for, 20 Diet Coke's a week for high points. I mean, you rack up three or four of those. You're doing good.

Ross, what don't you get? Obviously, the NBA did their due diligence with this Clippers thing. They wrote a 36-page report on all the wrongdoings by Steve Ballmer and the Clippers. They are threatening them with another investigation. why is at this moment maybe he's going to he's going to drop all this but why are steve balmer and the clipper still trying to act like they did nothing wrong they have smoking guns have you seen screenshots of this page of this stuff i have not that that aspiration company that went down

that was like a whole legal case so in terms of like discovery and stuff they have text messages they have text messages from like clippers people and aspiration people like they are there are smoking guns in this report and still Steve Balmer's still trying to act like he didn't do anything, and the Clippers are trying to plead innocent. But let me ask you this. If you have $156 million in your... Billion.

Billion, excuse me. Let me make sure I get this right. Because I got it. Why do you care? It's $154 billion worth. You can exhaust any attorney you want. You can. Any attorney.

Shut your bum ass up. I'm going to spend my summer in Fiji. I'm going to spend my winner in the Amalfi Coast. And then I'm going to come back to the Clippers next year. There are text messages from... It's a 36-page report. And they haven't even started the Dactronic. investigation. There is more

coming if you want, Steve Bomber. You want some more smoke. You won't get it. So what's the next rule? Why is he fighting this so hard? Is it just ego? Is that why Lance Armstrong? It's ego. Sue to everybody that accused him and took him to court. Raphael Pamero went in front of court. Remember once, period.

Literally like a week later, he's testing positive? Yeah. Yeah. Look yourself in the mirror. Self-onesty is a huge trait that is missing in this country. Be honest with yourself. Let me ask you this. This is much more serious. There are people that will go in front of a judge or a jury and say,

I did not shoot that person. But if you did, you did. They don't want to go to jail. Steve Ballmer's not going to jail. Steve Ballman wants to be going to Clipper Games. I mean, I don't lie, but he wants to go. Take a year off, all right. We'll get you on the wall next year.

Yeah. Steve Balmer. All right, if you don't get something, we're here. I'd be lying in court, too. I totally get it. I think his mind works in strange ways. I've never fired a gun in my life. Yeah, I think I totally get while he's doing this,

because he doesn't want this on his resume. He doesn't want his Wikipedia, But he did it. In his mind, he didn't do anything wrong, though. Okay. If you went to a lot detector test. Let's get the Dactronics on here, too. His heartbeat rate would be so, he believes he did nothing wrong.

And if you believe it, you can pass a lie detector. He'd go do it. Easy. 713, 212-790. 7-1-2-1-2-5-790. If you don't get something, let us know. Jonathan, what don't you get? All right.

I don't want to beat a dead horse. Oh, here we go. Here we go. No, no. Come for him. NCWRWA? No, it's the Dejohn Love, man. Oh, more Dejohn.

Because I was just cruelly. I'm like, you know, I had something else. Dejohn Love Show was amazing. But now they're showing DMs of people that obviously had interacted with him before he got caught. And I don't get why people just give, just because they're athletes, free stuff. He's in the DMs asking, yo, I was recently cut from the 49ers looking for a, my next team. I'm going to be in Foxborough for the Patriots. My bank account

is frozen right now. Obviously, I can get you back on the travel costs when I get back. He's selling this to girls? And do it like, Pian dudes. Bank accounts are frozen? And it's companies. There's like burger places and joints that gave them free food. I don't get why we're treating athletes like there's

some godsend on earth. I don't. It's not just athletes, Jonathan. Especially his college track athletes. It's our buddy at the World Cup. I'm just kidding. Get everything free on this whole life's trips. Oh, you're talking about Matt's still pissed about Freddie. Yeah, I'm mad on Matt. I can kind of see Matt's point now.

I'm kind of on Matt's side. He's grifting, yeah. Like, why are we giving people this free stuff? Yeah, that's what people were all mad. So there's this Manchester City player. His name is Phil Foden. And he went to like this viral like a baked potato stand. And he got his for free.

And everybody's like, oh, why did he get this for free? And they're all mad at the baked potato stand and like sending them hate messages and stuff like that. They're starving children out there. They're like, we've given out 10,000 free baked potatoes. last year or something like that. Because honestly, here's what you do. If you start asking for free stuff or getting it and bragging about how free it is, you're going to piss off the people that paid for it.

That's true. Like if Freddie gets Diamond Club tickets, which he did. Yeah, but hold on. Let's all not be frauds here, Matthew, myself and you included. If it's free, give me three. But I don't brag about it. Oh, yeah, that's right. You're not DMing people for free stuff.

Yeah, I'm not saying. Oh, hold on. Yeah, maybe you have. Nah, but people do that to Matt and you guys ask it for tickets. We're like, oh, can I get some free tickets? true. We're all grifters, but just got to be a little key about it. Matt's always got both hands out.

Wait a minute. My hands are behind my pants. What? On your knees? No. In your pants? No, sometimes. But it's, it's...

Sometimes what? What? What? What? What? Go move on. Let me get that checked out. It's been spreading, I think.

I think you'll see my dermatology yesterday. I'm good. Thank you very much for asking. By way, if you have moles, check on them. Just make sure everything is okay. Oh, is your mole okay? Yeah, it was good. I just wanted to get...

hand her check. People could be eating their breakfast right now, guys. Oh, come on. Mold prevention is good. Yeah, that was a good message. That was a public service announcement. It's not like normal. I didn't say it wasn't the good thing. You don't know three people that ever been on SNL. I just don't get that. What's wrong with you? How do you not know that? It's born and 0, too, man.

Okay, the show's been on ever since? 76 or whatever. 75. I was watching cartoons. So, what, 13. I'm sorry. Every year you've been born. Every year you've been born. Every year you've been born. There's been the show. Every Saturday night, you've been out for your entire life.

If the show got canceled in 1986, I might be on board with you. The show is running, Jonathan. It's on. What channel is it? That's not a whole. Oh, my God. Man, shut your bum ass up. I'm sorry.

That's terrible. It's a genuine question. It's not genuine. Shut up. I don't get it. I don't get it. Terrible. Terrible.

All right. We've gotten off on our. Chess, you get something you don't get. Let us know. 713212.5, 790. Brian McTaggart in 15 minutes on 790. All right, I got one more. I just don't get it. I know everybody's pissed off at LSU and this should be. But a Georgia's, is it a Georgia senator or a congressman that's pushing for

if Lane Kiffin uses pro players trying to kick LSU out of the league? Look, I know everybody's mad. But I just said this one, I mentioned this before when Texas Tech was, They were threatening to kick tech tech out of the big 12. LSU needs the SEC. The SEC needs LSU. Just stop with this. It's not going to have it.

And Lane Kiffin has said if it's against the rules, we're not going to do it. Yeah. So it's kind of a, there's a little bit more fire than needs to be at this point, I think. Just slightly. What I think I'm seeing is I think we're seeing administrators and government officials using this as a tactic to go, I'm going to be out of the forefront on this. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's politicians getting involved in sports to try to win favor with their. They're populace.

We've never seen this before. Yeah. So I would say I just don't get anybody complaining about either side of this. I mean, I know you're mad. I know there shouldn't be in it. I know LSU's in the wrong. But come on. LSU is not going to go, you know what?

Screw you, SEC. We're better off on the new Pact 12. Mm-hmm. Because LSU's got a brand. It's a national brand to it. I get it. It doesn't carry as much as, in my mind, Alabama or some other folks. But it's got just as much cashé as Georgia does, except Georgia won national

championships. Yeah, I would say Georgia might be recently have tipped the scales. A long term to LSU for sure. But LSU is more relevant on the national stage in Florida. Right now? Right now, yes. But yeah, I just, it's just a little weird to me that we're trying to

get all on top of our pedestal and going, you know, well, I want to be the leader of getting ESU out of the league. Come on. It's not happening. No. Do you think we're due for one more super big expansion. Like we're going to kick some people

to the curb and welcome some new people in. What do you mean? Like a 32 team. Oh, like a Big 12. I mean, sorry, Big 10. Of course, Big 12. Not even saying. Like Big 10 and SEC merger?

Yeah. And you throw Florida State in the mix probably and you maybe throw Miami. 32 teams like the NFL? Yeah. Conferences? Yeah. Maybe. I can't, I don't know.

And then do divisions where you have some rivalries. I don't even care how you do it. Texas, Arkansas. all LSU, Oklahoma are all in the same division or something like that? Because honestly, if you're going to do the mega deal 32, you don't need Vanderbilt. I'm sorry you don't. And

you don't need to TCU. That is something I wonder. I have thought about that long term like you're saying. First, you need slapies. You can't have like blue bloods every single week on the schedule, but Vanderbilt's been up. Kentucky can be up? No, no, I disagree.

If you do, if you're going to split the Super Pie 32 ways, you don't want to pay off. schools and having them being part of it. No, I'm not saying, first of all, I'm not necessarily making a stance. I'm saying you want weaker teams in theory in a college football. You don't want the murderers row every single week. I would give up the murderers role if I'm, if I'm equally paying out. I don't want, no. I don't want Purdue to get to get a big piece of the pie when they're not going to do anything except just be beat up. I'm talking about as a practical matter on the field, you don't want that.

If you're the conference committee, they don't care about that. They want money. And what's going to get you more money? Pushing out Vanderbilt and adding in Florida State. That would add money. And that's all these commissioners and all these presidents. So if I'm sloppy free. Care about.

Using your term, if I'm sloppy free, but I get more money, I can look at that. You're out of slap. The coaches aren't going to be happy about it, but they don't care. Maybe they're going to get, oh, I'm sorry. You're getting $16 million a year. Shut your bum ass up. There you go. We're going to add all these tough opponents and you're just, and we're going to get more money, money, money, money, money, money, money,

money, money, money, money and more money. Yeah. So yeah, but sorry, Sloppies, you're out. Sorry, Purdue. It could happen. I mean, why is Northwestern in the Big Ten? Because they were grandfathered. Yeah, exactly. They've been since the 60s. That's why at some point they might ask you, well, what if we added somebody else took them out? Yep. Mack in Pearland on 79854. Matt, good morning to you. Hi, Jans. Balmer's fighting because losing five number ones is going to cut his team for years. That's why. He doesn't want that on his resume. as an owner. But whatever. How is he going to win the fight? He's not, but he's got to try.

I can try to get in the ring with Prime Mike Tyson. I just don't know how well it's going to go. I agree. I absolutely agree. What a cop there, my friend. That's probably what his motivation is. So switching to baseball. Sure. I agree with people that the Astros are a tremendously flawed team. Well, whatever.

Well, Mac, you had the pom-poms out last week. Come on, man. Huh? I said you had the pom-poms out for the a show's last week. Come on, man. I'm... So even though I know they kind of suck, I'm still rooting for them. There you go.

Of course. Everybody's rooting for them. They don't kind of. They're above 500. They don't kind of suck. They're just mid. They're just mediocre. It's mid.

Mediocre. So if they can win 12 or 13. in games, they probably take the division, they get in the playoffs. If we get real lucky, Chicago will go on a losing streak, and we can actually get the buy. And all I'm hoping for is that we get in and upset somebody in one series. My hope is, I mean, do you think the Yankees are anxious to play us, for instance? They're all afraid of us. Thank you very much for the phone call, Mac.

Everybody's afraid. They should be. All we do is beat the Yankees. We, because, of course, I'm the backup to the backup to the backup catcher. Yeah, we'll see. We'll find out more from Brian McTaggart. Okay, good. He'll puts up on 9 o'clock hour next here on Sports Talk 790.

713-212-5-790. This is Matt and Ross in the morning. Cougars travel well together. And we brought a cougar with us to the morning show. Matt and Ross in the morning? Proud University of Houston graduate. By the way, he was such a star apparently last week at the... We had the cougar coach this morning, too.

Yeah, Willie Fritz on this morning. play some of that coming up in the bottom of the hour. And McTaggart's hosting alumni parties in New York City for Cougars. Is that right? How crazy was that get together, Brian? He picked up the check too, right? Yeah, big money there, McTaggart, right? I was a late arrival

to this city field. There was a group of U.H. alumni, so I decided, you know, Mike Padae told me about it. So one point in the middle of the game, I said, I'm going to go out there in the outfield and, you know, say hello. So as soon as I go out there, the TV cameras put everyone on the whole group on TV and unexpectedly I was on TV so bad timing on my part but yeah it was a fun group out

there yeah and you didn't you didn't have a suit on did you so you kind of underdress for the entire situation correct oh oh I was wearing my unusual jeans and a collared shirt and you know what you see is what you get but uh it was pretty warm day so there were I didn't I didn't see any suits out there but I blended in okay I got you. Hey, why does this team play well so well against 500 teams and above? Well, I don't know. That's a good question. And, I mean, it seems like they did this for years and years.

I mean, we saw it last year at the end of the year. They had the A's and they had the Angels at the end of the season to try to get in the playoffs and they couldn't get it done. But maybe if they can make the playoffs, maybe this will be a good omen for them because, you know, they'll be playing nothing to 500 and above teams. But it's a head scratcher just like any time. they say pitcher who's struggling like they did the last couple of days against Burnett and Davis Martin, they get on track. Both of those guys go five and two-thirds scoreless, and both of them have been really scuffling.

So these are questions that I think we'll be answering for eternity. Last night, Hayden Wisniewski not only got you deep in the game, the pitch count was economical, and that's the one thing, even despite the fact the team has been its head above water and still holding on the first place, is that even in victories, Brian, this bullpen has been taxed. It has been taxed really almost since the jump. I guess the question is, with these last couple of days, with Hunter Brown doing it, is there any relief in sight? Can you, you have to trust these guys that hopefully go longer you can,

but you can't throw ochre out there every single day. You didn't get blue ball out there. What is the state of the bullpen, if you were to go to each individual guy, how are they feeling as we approach this month of September coming up? Yeah, I think they're all probably pretty tired. You know, O'Kritz pitched a huge workload. He's among the innings' leaders.

No one's pitched more innings in relief than Bluebaugh. He's up to what, I think, mid-80s, 86-87 innings, something like that. Hayter's throwing a lot of innings since the All-Star Break as well. I mean, he'd be fresher because he missed the first couple of months. But, you know, this is the time you've got to dig down. And, you know, now we see Blue Ball pitching a little more in a high leverage pitch one last night. He's kind of in that high leverage mix now, but that's why Joe did what he did on Tuesday.

He sort of, it seemed like he almost like punted that game. I mean, you could tell like by the fourth or fifth inning that it was not happening. The offense was not going to score. He put Tang out there and then it was, I think it was by the time Emi got out there, it was five to one or three to one, I can't remember. But just eat some innings and let's save a couple of these arms for the next. a couple of games and it worked last night. And now you're going to have

a couple of those guys available today as well. And if you can pull it off, you win three out of four. So yeah, I definitely got the sense on Tuesday through a couple of less effective relievers for multiple innings. Just to give those guys some rest. And

if you come back, great if you don't. Oh, well, we'll try to win the next two. If this team is going to round into a late season, surge. Starting pitching, obviously, going to have to be a part of that. How encouraged are you by

the last start from Hunter Brown and Hayden Wesnowski, or how much are we going to use the phrase of the year? We need to see it more consistently. Well, you'd like to see it more consistently, but, you know, they both have a pretty good little run going on here. West Nesky, every start gets a little bit better. I mean, just a strike throw.

We worked at a great face last, and that was so great to see after the previous two nights where you had 10 walks on Monday. You had seven on Tuesday, but yesterday, you know, with Smithske, you only walked a couple of it. He was throwing strikes, got a bunch of quick outs, a bunch of quick innings. So, yeah, I mean, you're going to need him to keep doing that. And, you know, it seems like Hunter Brown has turned a corner as well.

The foreseen fastball command is back. A real chance for him to pitch in a big game today and win a series. But somebody else is going to have to step up. They're going to need whether it's Pecco or Blanco to get it together or somebody else, just to give them a couple of deep starts here down the stretch because you can't just rely on a couple of starters and hope you can stack wins because that usually doesn't work out very well.

Brian McTaggartastroos.com, MLB.com, our weekly guest here on Matt and Ross in the morning. What is the latest on the Mike Burroughs situation? Yeah, after his last AAA outing, he just wasn't really recovering as well as he thought. and, you know, he felt some, felt something in the shoulder. So he went and got an MRI. It showed there was some inflammation in there, no structural damage.

So he's taking some antibiotics. And, you know, he considered that good news because he's not shut down. He's still throwing. And he still hopes that he can get back, you know, by the end of the year. And I talked to him for a while yesterday, and he was really frustrated because he had worked on some things mechanically in AAA. And he was, he says he thought he was throwing the ball as well as he had all year. I mean, he made three rehab starts and pitched pretty well in all three of them. I mean, he had nine scoreless innings in the first two, and I think the second one gave up a run or two.

So he was feeling really good about where he was at. So a little bit frustrating to get injured at that point when he was on the cusp of coming back. I mean, he would have started on Tuesday if he was going to be healthy. But good news in the fact that he's not shut down. They think maybe, you know, after a week or two, he can get back on the mound, and maybe he can be an option. And I know that probably doesn't excite a lot of people because he has a 5-9-90 RA, but a little too early to give up on Mike Burroughs yet. And I guess if he thinks he found something with the way he pitched in AAA,

you know, it's worth a shot to give him a starter to and see where he's at on the big league level. Brian, where is Joe when it comes to lineups? I know this has been a massive stretch of games. Still a few more before they get a next off day. Where is the overall, I need to give Altuvae a day? I got to give Alvarez a day. I need to mix and match my catchers. Where do you see anything in terms of getting arrest in for these guys before the final stretch?

Yeah, I think we'll see it for Alvarez. Definitely Al-Tubei just had a day the other day. And I think that's probably it for him. They have every Monday off. The final three Mondays are going to have off. So once they get through this stretch of 13 in a row, they do have one day a week where they'll be off. But Alvarez looks like a guy who could need some rest. But, man, it's so hard to take him out of that lineup because other teams just respect him and fear him so much.

And even when he's not hitting homers, he's getting walks. He had a couple singles yesterday. He's still a force in the middle of that lineup. And the lineup is so thin to take him out as really tough. But, you know, I think maybe they find a spot to do that one more time. Maybe Penae one more time. But again, I mean, you're talking about, you know, the two best hitters in your lineup. So we're to the point to where, you know, the guys are going to have to play every day.

Once you get to the playoffs, it's pretty rare. You would play three games in a row. You're going to play two and have a day off and then travel and so forth. So they're almost to the finish line. But I certainly think that a guy like Alvarez could use a day and, you know, maybe even Paredes. I mean, he seems like, you know, he plays, you know, every day as well. They added a new pitching set of eyes since the last time you and I spoke on the radio. your thoughts about what kind of adjustments could be made with this pitching staff,

knowing they were about 90% done with the season here? Yeah, I thought it was interesting bringing in Brent Strom. It was sort of an out-of-the-box move, but certainly one I think was worth a shot. And Strom, you know, immediately when we talked to him in New York, identified one thing. He's like, they have to throw first pitch strikes more. Now, you know, on Monday and Tuesday, they walked 17 batters, which is exactly the opposite of what he wanted them to do.

But yesterday was a good example. Hayden Wisniewski threw 19 first pitch strikes to the 25 hitters he faced. It just changed everything. You're getting quick outs. You're getting quick innings. And lo and behold, your start goes seven innings, which is pretty rare, it seems. But there's some guys I think he can really benefit. I think Burroughs is one of those guys.

He had Burroughs. knew him from when they were both in Pittsburgh. But Burroughs seems like a prime guy for some of that straw magic dust. And now that Burroughs is off his rehab assignment and here with the team, I'm sure they'll get a chance to work together. But, you know, Tom's got a great track record. But again, you know, Verlander, Granky, and Garrett Cole aren't walking through that door. He's got his work cut out for him with some of these guys. But hey, man, it's worth a shot to see if he can help at least a couple of these guys get a little bit better.

Speaking of magic dust, how much fire is this there to this Carlos Correa smoke? Because it felt like when it was first talked about there was no chance. but sounds like things are ramping up. And then even if he does make it back, he mentioned he doesn't want to DH. I mean, how does it fit? Well, I think it's very real now. He's going to go to Florida this weekend.

He'll be there a week to 10 days. You know, the Astros are in Tampa next weekend, not this weekend, but next weekend. I could see a scenario to where maybe he crosses the state from West Palm. He goes to St. Pete and plays the last, you know, 12, 13 games or so. But what does he fit? I mean, that's a problem that, will be good to have. I mean, yes, he is going to play third base when he comes back. There is no doubt

about that. He's not going to DH. He's not going to play shortstop. He's going to play third base. So Joe's just going to have to get a little bit creative. We saw Jordan Alvarez play the outfield on consecutive days Saturday and Sunday, New York for the first time. And that wasn't by accident. I think they were giving them a look out there, getting, you know, kind of telling him, hey, this is something you might have to do here in the last month of the season, has played consecutive games in the outfield to open up the DH for Altuvae if you put Paredes at second or Walker if you put Paredes at first. And also, Correa is not going to play every single day coming back. It will probably be, you know, a couple on, one off, and you have to see how he feels.

But it's a good problem to have to get another bat in there. So I'll be interested to see now he's going to ramp up the workloads, game-like situations, side-to-side, running the bases, see how that ankle responds. I mean, I don't think he's completely out of the woods yet. I don't think it's 100% we'll see him back, but he's getting closer and closer and he keeps passing these hurdles, and I think there's a real shot now. We could see him in the lineup in a couple of weeks.

We talked to you again next Thursday. It'll be finishing up a series of Philadelphia to wrap up our visit here today. Do you think we'll get a sense of who this team will really be in terms of, yeah, they're struggling against the subpar teams, but they win against the good ones.

Let's be encouraged about what they might do come playoff time. Or do you think that there's going to be enough people they're going to say, oh, yeah, Philadelphia is good. Tampa Bay is this weekend. They are who they are, and we don't really really care if they make the playoffs or not. I'm just thinking from a fan perspective on this.

I think we'll know a lot more after the Raes series. You know, they go to Philly. They have Arizona at home this weekend. They go to Philly, who is now pushing the Braves in the NL East. I mean, they've totally turned it around under Mattingly. And then they go to the raise, which has, you know, quietly been the best team of the AL all year. So we'll have a lot better idea,

when they leave Florida, what this team is and where it's at. But I know looking in the stands, the crowds have not been really big, so I don't know if the fans are not getting behind this team. I mean, it's not really your traditional first place team. It doesn't look like a first place team. It doesn't feel like one. But at the end of the day, they are, and they have a chance to win a division here. But they're going to really have to here over their next 12 or 13 games,

because their schedule is really tough. The Mariners have a really easy schedule now, but, I mean, they are five games back, so they got a lot of work to do, and they can't get out of their own way. So, you know, I'm not really sold on them, and, you know, the Rangers are on their heels, but they go to Tampa this weekend as well. So Astros just need to do what they've been doing, win series. Get two out of three, three out of four if they can do that today, and then they won't have to worry about what anyone else does. Great stuff, as always, friend. Thanks for joining us in the morning. We'll talk in next Thursday, 9 o'clock.

All right. Sounds good. Thank you. Brian McTaggart. MLB.B.com on the Astros beat 914 is our time. If you missed our visit with Willie Fritz early this morning, shame on you is good. We'll play some of that coming back at 930. 713-212-5-790.

Ian Rappaport chimes in on the Texans contract situation with C.J. Stroud, you'll hear from him next. It's Matt and Ross in the morning on Sports Talk 790. And I'll be rooming at Ross's house on a semi-regular basis on next few months when the rocket season kicks in. Just don't make a lot of ruckus. I'm thinking about sleeping with with headphones in every night. Is that bad for you? Oh, Jonathan's saying yes.

I don't snore. No, not you. Well, I'm getting to bed earlier now and the new next door neighbor has been practicing guitar. It sounds like they're in my room. I mean, they're getting better, actually. I mean, I want to tell them, like, I can hear the progress.

It's been going nice. Wait, are you having headphones with music in or just headphones? No, headphones with like, like light. sleepy sleep sounds or something like that. Like it's just a little babbling brook, perhaps some ocean sounds, or as the streets call the binaural beats.

You know, the kids call it. I don't share walls unless I'm in a hotel. Yeah. So my wife and her roommate, they're up in, it's weird to say that. It is what it is.

The roommate came back from seeing her daughter play in New Orleans on Sunday. And we were like, how was your trip? She was good, but it was, we had one problem. She goes, because the people next to us had sex a lot in the room next to where she was. Maybe it was Dejaun Love.

And I said, well, what does a lot mean? She goes, they were going for like at least two hours. Two hours? I'm going to take a time out. I mean, I'm going to break. Come on now. I mean, I understand stamina. I get that.

But for the love of God, two hours. I mean, that takes. Anybody got time for that? No, that's too much. Maybe it was a shoot. I guess it would be in New Orleans. It would be a possibility. Mm-hmm.

The filming laws are lax over there. Go ahead, John. Salt Lake City, not so much. Yeah, probably not. New Orleans, yeah. Maybe. L.A., Miami. Nacadoches.

Well, Nacadocious, that's the home stuff they're filming. All right. I just was saying that I will be sharing the wall with your apartment friends and maybe. Yeah. I mean, I have a gift. I appreciate you. You're going to see me a lot. Playing the guitar is tough.

And they're learning chords clearly. And chord progressions. At what time of night is this? I mean, one night it was like close to 11. Uh-uh. Not acceptable. But most of the time, they're done by like eight or nine. We're morning radio people.

That's what I'm saying. I can't go and say, hey, don't practice your guitar. You got to be buddy-buddy with him. I know. I can't send him a note. I can't complain to the property manager. Hey, can you tell this person to stop playing the guitar in their home? Well, if it's too loud.

you could. It's not loud. It's acoustic. Oh, okay, okay, okay. They're not like blasting electric. There actually is literally just the acoustic car. Is it melodic? Is it can you make heavy fall asleep? It's actually not bad. Okay. Well, then I will be the judge of this because I'm spending a night with you in like 10 days. No, you won't be able to hear it in the living room. Okay. Oh, it's just in your bedroom? Yeah. I won't be there. Okay. Hell no. All right. Not allowed. Ian Rappaport. Yes, thank you. We're going to segue. We're going to always segue to sports. So we're going to do here. That's what our job is. Ian Rappaport on C.J. Stroud.

It is. Now, the first part of it is, the Houston Texans know they have their franchise quarterback and that C.J. Stroud. They have had discussions about a big-time, long-term deal. And considering where he left off last year, this is good news. This is a great place to be for C.J. Stroud. As far as his decision goes, certainly seems to be this. Now, quarterbacks at his level, and there are several of them, Trevor Lawrence, Jared Gough. and there are a bunch of them who make somewhere between $52 and $55 million based on new money. Jordan Love is in that mix.

Really good young quarterbacks make that kind of money. So his options are essentially this. Get a contract extension of around there, not sure at this point where that would come in or wait. And if C.J. Strouts elects to wait, that's when it gets interesting. You're right. They do have them under contract for two years after the season. Would still have one year left they could do an extension at that point. But the 2026 season when then go into the equation of how you value C.J. Stroud, consider, the Texans have one of the NFL's best defenses.

You have all sorts of weapons on offense. It sounds like Stroud has had an excellent, excellent training camp. He goes out, kills it this season. They go deep into the playoffs. Then he's got even more ammunition to make more than the Texans offered him this year. Obviously, that's a gamble because there is the downside as well. So what Stroud and the Texans have to figure out is, is there a path to any new contract before the season? Or is it, as Casario said, something they table. Until next season. Speaking of contracts, we have breaking news.

How many? I haven't looked. Another one. Contracts. And the highest is five, right? Yes. Two. I'll give it one more because it's a contract.

What sport? Basketball. Fred Van Gogh. Close. Okay. You're on the right team. Kevin Durant? You're on the right team.

Who? Who else could it be? Reed Shepherd? I don't know. You're running on the guest. J.D. Davidson. Nope. Tari Isid.

They've already signed him. Nope. Just say, Emeudoka? Rockets Amen Tompson. Oh. All right. I'm now going to play guests.

How much? Five year deal. Extension? Yep. Five years? $236 million. $208 million. Okay.

The new deal does include a 10% trade kicker, whatever that means. Oh, I guess if you trade you get a 10% bonus, right? It's kind of a, yeah, like a not a finder's fee, but a going away fee. Five years, 208. Good for a man. With no jump shot. Kids, work on your. your defense.

Kids, work on your athleticism and defensive intelligence. He has zero jump shot and he just made $208 million. I would like to see his,

I will be glass-half-full. I would like to see his jump shot expanded. To what? Six feet? 15. Okay. You're an elbows. He can elbow jumpers.

He can hit him. At what clip, though? Well, you would be, we'll do more of a deep dive on this. Look it up. Yeah. I mean, they have numbers.

10 to 15 feet, he's probably like 25%. And that's, you need to be, obviously, 50 would be nice. Don't even guess. Let's be fair. Let's be fair to this. Okay. Look, he dribbles. He defends.

Yes. He blocks shots for a guy his size. He's everywhere on the floor. He's very, got a very high IQ when it comes to basketball. Yes. Plays hard. Free throw percentage went up over 10% year to year. That can give you hope for the jump shot.

As the free throw goes a lot of times, so does the jump. does the jump shooting, so maybe there is some hope there. I can't find the... You know, we'll do this. We'll come back right now. Okay, go ahead. We're good. 10 to 16 feet last year, 32%.

That's got to get better. 3%. I'm sorry, three pointers. Career. 21.9%. Last year, 21.6. Okay. It's outside of three feet, he's at 486.

Three to 10 feet is just 486. You would like that old well over 15. Yeah, you would. Because you would assume most of that would be layups. Right. Inside the restricted, of course, he's very good. 76%. Okay. Okay. Let me tell you something. You know, I'm never a bad judge of character. Y'all, he's a good dude. Second, we met him. He was a very nice interview. Super good dude. I like him in. He says, he calls me my guy. He doesn't know my name, but he calls me my guy.

My goal is this year for Jabari and a men to know my names. Why don't you wear a name tag? Why don't you wear like a big Price is Right name tag? You like that? We did those before. Didn't we do Price's Right Name Tags for like your first 10,000 follower party? Yeah, we did. We found those on Amazon. Yeah, we went to bought them, yeah. Yeah.

How my name is Matt? Or just Matt? Yeah, just put Matt on there. That's not a bad idea. Big Price's Right Name Tag. That'd be funny. Which is for all the team so they can be like, you know, get to, so I wouldn't be by myself. No, no, it's just you.

That makes it funnier. Okay. All right. Hey, so congrats. Ooh, that's a lot of money. You know what, and this is probably what Raffell and what the Rockets are saying. We need you to, we're banking on you becoming a better perimeter player. Because he's Andre Aguadal is what he is.

Maybe he's younger and better than Andre Aguadala. Finals MVP, Andrea Aguadala? Young Anguadala, by the way, was scoring like 25 points of game. But what happened the last, like, the last half of his career? He got older. Okay, 25 might be a much. Let me go look this up. But like Sixers at Guadala, he was scoring.

But he wasn't much of a shooter either. Okay, I lied. He never scored 20 points per game. He scored 19.9 one year. That's close enough. 18.8. All right. Up next, we hear from Willie Fritz.

Cougars are going to play Oregon State. Congrats again to Men Thompson. Five of 208. Tar Easton's like, what? What was that money for me? You got off for better money, and then he decided to bank on himself. He did. C.J. Stroud's like, that's okay. I got this.

C.J. Straud's betting on himself, too. 932. Let's talk about Calhia real quick. K-A-L-S-H-I. K-A-L-S-H-I. This is where you can go make predictions on the college football slate this weekend. There's like 90 games this weekend, Rossi. And if you have a particular favorite team like Houston or Texas,

or you're a fan of any of the state school. Oregon State? No, I'm going to be a favorite of that. Shout out the beavers. Well, you don't shut out beavers. There's beaver fans. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. He'll be with us.

Most mornings at 6.45 on Thursdays before games. So for those of you that can't catch him there, he is brought to you by our friends, the Joint Chiropractor, the official chiropractor of University of Houston Athletics. And he talked about how things are, have progressed since the Cougars last stepped on the football field when they beat LSU to finish off a 10-win season a year ago. Yeah, we've done a really good job recruiting. the last couple of years, and a lot of those young kids are starting to give where they're

either starting or playing a bunch, and it's given us a little bit more depth than what we've had in the past, and then I think we've done a really good job in the portal. You know, the thing when you go out in the portal is you try to find guys, they can give you an immediate help in a position that maybe you need immediate help at. And then also a guy that's going to fit in your culture, and we've done a good job in both those areas. And you talk about the offensive line. We brought in three guys.

Two guys were all conference in the Mac. I wanted Toledo and the other one. Wanted Miami, Ohio. And then another young man that played for me at Tulane, Shadry Hurst, you know, and he was an All-American-type guy. So we were able to bring guys in quickly at that position. And then we've got some young guys, you know, that they really needed another year of development,

could possibly play quite a bit this year. you know you don't have to throw them in the fire against a big 12 competition kind of let them you know develop and get better each and every week so we've tried to do that across board all positions well now willie with his five for five you're not having to worry about red shirts how many games they play and that kind of thing does that open up some guys to play some at least maybe in non-conference play to figure out who was ready to play for you in big 12 exactly right in the past you could do in the past it was four games

and when you played the fifth it counted as a season you know and you're kind of you're very mindful of that and you know you didn't want to play a guy you know four snaps fifth game and that's all he plays the rest of the season you know so now the kids know one play counts as a season

zero plays counts in the season you know but 500 snaps counts as a season so I think there's a lot more competition in the kicking game. If I was a young man, I'd try to get on the field anywhere I could.

That's a true friend because that's going to allow you to get some experience, and that's the only way you're going to be able to play. This year's count as he sees it anyway. So we've had some good competition in the special teams area. Is that where you would say is your biggest competition going into this first game? Because I would like to ask you, you know, does the receiver room do great? The linebackers? Where has it been where you've spent more time going?

I'm not sure what I want to do just yet. Well, you know, special teams is so hard to, you know, replicate real plays in the special teams in preseason camp because, you know, those are, you know, you're running 60 yards and you're two guys running into each other. You know, football's a collision sport, not a contact sport. And that's the tough one for game one, you know, punt coverage, punt protection, kickoff coverage.

you know, blocking for guys on a kickoff return, you know, understanding how to catch punts in traffic and keeping guys away. So, you know, that'll be the first time we've done actual live reps in the kicking game, you know, this fall. You know, we usually just save them for the games and go all the way up until that point of tackling. Because there's a lot of bodies around, you know. I'm trying to, we still don't have the depth. And I don't know if anybody does. that you'd like to have, you know, in college football, it's more difficult now than it used to be.

But, you know, I don't want to get anybody hurting practices because of that depth factor. And, you know, the big injuries of football occur, body-to-ground contact, not body-to-body contact. When you're tackling and doing all those kind of different things, that's where you have some guys that get on the ground. So we try to eliminate that as much as we can until game day. My Cougar friends, so obviously we all watch Connor really develop as a quarterback back and got better and better as the season progressed. You obviously brought a young man and Kishon who is highly recruited. And I don't know if you can tell, but I'm assuming there's going to be plays for both of them,

you know, throughout the course of the year. Is that fair to say? Yeah, we're, you know, I'm just really excited. I've got two, you know, I've never had a five-star quarterback. One year, I think I had five, one-star quarterback. Does that count as a five-star quarterback? No, coach, it does not. No, it does not.

But those two guys are, they're really, really good teammates. They really do a great job of pushing each other and supporting each other. And, you know, Connor, I thought, came on at the end of the year. He played a great game in that Texas Bowl, you know, and that's, you know, allowed him to kind of springboard into this season. He was the MVP of that game. And then Kishon got in here in January, which was really, really important. You know, football is a very, very comprehensive.

complex game. There's a lot going on. You know, post-nap, pre-snap, whatever meetings during the week. And luckily for us, those two guys are really, really smart. Yeah, but we're excited about both those guys having them, you know, lead our team, lead our offense this year. All right, that again, Willie Fritz, with us most Thursdays before games here on Sports Talk 7.90.

Let's play, believe it or not, Ross. And because it's Thursdays, and it's Matt Ross in the morning, I decided every Thursday I'll pick up the believe it or not. Wow, what a swell guy you are. I don't care what Jonathan says about you. That's not nice guy. Steve Balmer will be with us on today,

not as a guest, but he's the topic of today's edition of Believe it or not. If you'd like to play, 713, 212-5-790, 7-13-212-5-79. We're playing from Motley crew tickets and Cougars versus Oregon State tickets. You want to go to one of those two events, believe it or not, all things, Steve Balmer, 7-13-212-5-79.

Nothing against the coogs and the bevers, but I'm probably being watching that one on my couch, Matt. And you know what I'm going to be doing when I'm watching my couch? You got college football coming. I don't want to know what I'm doing on the couch. No, thank you. First of all, fully clothed. You're thinking of yourself.

Real pale Texas talk continues. What up, what up? Back to Matt and Ross in the morning. Rood. On Sports Talk 790. Rude, rude, rude, rude, rude. What up? Shut up.

Luis Castillo versus Hunter Brown on deck at noon today. Oh, daytime baseball. Well, that's a classic Mariners and Astros. matchup. The pale hose are here. Stop with the pale hose. I can't. I'm done.

Matt, you love pale hose a little too much. Hose. H-O-S-E. Oh, okay. Five minutes left to go on the show. What should we do? We should play America's fastest growing sports radio game show.

We simply call it B. Leaving it on and here's how it works. You call 713-212-5-790. 7-7-1-3-2-1-3-2-1-1. 125790. Today's edition of Believe or Not as all things about Steve Ballmer. I'll read your statement about Steve's. Statements completely and utterly accurate. You'll say this. Belief statement's erroneous photo bunk

and made up you will say this. You get one correct answer, Jonathan. One one, one, one, one, one, one. One correct answer. Get you a pair of tickets and see Motley crew with Tesla or Extreme September the 11th at the Woodlands Pavilion. Or a pair of tickets to the Cougars.

Take on Oregon State. Saturday at TDCU Stadium. 713 go coogs or ticketmaster.com if you want to see Motley Crew, but you got to call 713 Go Coogs and go see the Coogs play unless you win on today's edition of Believe It or Not. Let's go to the phones and talk to Sam on 790 Sam. You ready to play Believe it or not? Steve Ballmer is a Harvard graduate class in 1977.

A classmate of his is one of our listeners, David in Vegas. Believe it or not. Not. I got the question directly from David. I figured that was a believe it because David would send something like that. Yeah, that's exactly right. David to Harvard? Yeah, class 77.

Jose on 790, Jose, you're ready to play Believe it or not? Believe it. Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980. He was hired by Bill Gates. Believe it or not? Not. That's a believe it. Thank you for playing.

Goodbye. On 790, Roy, what was your favorite part of today's 6 to 10 radio show? All the Rhode Island volleyball talk, man. That's what I'm talking about. Steve Ballmer's net worth as of today is $87 billion. Believe it or not? Not. That's correct.

$154. Use $100 bills to wipe your, you know what? Seriously. $154 billion. I've never seen $100 bill. You have to. Sean on 790. Ready to play, believe it or not?

Believe it. Steve Ballmer's start. starting salary at Microsoft was $50,000 and he got 10% of the profits he generated. Believe it or not. Believe it. That's correct. Congratulations. Mike on 790, Mike, you ready to play, believe it or not?

Believe it. Even though Apple was a competitor, Ballmer was a huge fan of the Apple, iPhone, and iPad and was mad that Microsoft did not come up with the technology first. Believe it or not. That is correct. He actually barred employees from using it. Apple products. I was kind of happy with that question. I was pretty pleased.

I'm pretty pleased my work so far today. Ken on 790, Ken, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Steve Balmer's second cousin is former SNL star Tina Faye. Believe it or not. That's a knock. Gilder Radner. Yes, my boy. There it is.

Jonathan has no idea who Tina Faye is or Gildner Radner. That's just... Get out of here. Gilbert on 790 Gilbert, your favorite part of today's 6 to 10 radio show. Everything, everything about it. Good show, good show. Thank you, friend. Before Les Alexander decided on Tillman Fratita,

Alexander mold an initial offer of selling a rocket to see Bomer. Believe it or not. That's correct. I made that one up. That was not one of my best work. Thank you. It's another winner. Congratulations.

I think it was better than some of the other ones. Shut up. Gio on 790, Gio. to play by them or not. Believe it. Because of his wealth, Balmer hired a personal driver in 2005

and currently does not have an active driver's license. Believe it or not. That sounds like the made-up one, Matt. I'm gonna say not. I had a strong start but or lousy finish. It's funny. Mrs. Thomas said the exact same thing.

On that note, tomorrow we got to say, good night to the strippers, 8 o'clock. Did you guys play my audio last week? Yeah, but I mean, probably the strippers are more going to bed at like six. Yeah, but we're not doing it.

We can't startle them at six. For the sake of the sake of them, you're sitting in bed. Yeah, we'll do it eight, just in case. Okay, we'll do whatever you want. Up next, it's Dan Matthews in the midday. If it's Matt and Ross in the morning, it's Dan Matthews in the midday.

Astros baseball, 110, 18, Harley Warkin. Talk to you tomorrow at 6 on 790. We'll go.