The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Dana Brown Addresses Plans For 2025 Astros, Do You Understand The College Football Playoff?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Matt Thomas of the "The Matt Thomas Show with Ross" and Chris Gordy review the latest comments from Astros general manager Dana Brown about the future of the team. What is the current situation with Alex Bregman in free agency? What will be the solution for the offensive slump at first base? Matt and Chris also:break down the College Football Playoffpreview the Rockets hosting the Indiana Pacers with head coach Ime Udokareact to rumors about Deion Sanders being the future coach of the Dallas Cowboysdiscuss the Cougars hosting Baylor with head coach Willie Fritztell people to "Shut Yo Bum Ass Up, Ain't Nobody Got time" and more.

Launch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 1002 in H-Town. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ross is serving a company suspension. Be back in a couple of weeks. Actually, I think, at least 7,000 miles away from us. He did text me this morning, which could be like 12 hours later.

I don't even know the time difference. I just get confused about these things. But you know what? We are here in the central time zone, and we are hanging out with you today. Chris Gordy is going to stop by in a few minutes and hang out with us for a couple of hours. Looking forward to hanging out with Gordy. I don't know about you folks, and I don't know how many of you particularly care. I mean, I'm sure the care factor is a little, especially involves one of your schools.

And maybe it's because I'm just a simpleton, and it is what it is on that. But I don't understand this college football playoff thing. I am thoroughly, thoroughly confused. Now, you have 12 teams in it. You have conference champions. You have buys. You have four of the five conference champions automatically get in. Then you have the lowest.

You know, I'm going to stop right there. I'm going to like Gordy figure this out for us because I sure as hell can't figure it out. So if you have been even a wee bit confused about the college football playoff, Chris Cordy is going to help us out coming up in a few minutes here on the show. Plus, we will just generally make fun of his disappointing LSU program and just bag on all things, SEC because of their, no, frankly, supremacy in college football. All right, a lot to get to today. And I know that you're looking for Titans, Texans breakdown.

That will come in due time because I know. nobody else in the marketplace is doing it. I know no one else is talking about the huge rivalry game between the Titans and the Texans. We will get to it over the course of the show and tomorrow and Friday as well. But today is also an interesting day because we get a couple of our regulars to join us. That includes Emaidoka and he'll be with us at 1 o'clock. Rockets and the Indiana and the Indiana will have it for you right here on 7.90. I'll have the call at 7 o'clock. Pregame will start at 6 with the launch pad. We'll have Willie Fritz join us at 130.

He's our regular, and he'll be with us today as the Cougars get ready to take on the Baylor Bears. We'll also have, in between those two gentlemen, at 120 this afternoon, we'll have Robert Ory. That's right. Robert Ory, Championship Robert Ory, 94, 95. Literally lands like at 1215, 1230, and we'll be in town tonight as they celebrate the 30th, anniversary of the 1990, 93, 94 NBA champions. Connor, you weren't even born yet. That's just heartening to me. That you don't know what it's like to see a championship with involving the Houston Rockets.

And that, frankly, a lot of you don't know. And if you were born, you were five or six, or you were three. But I'm going to tell you all something. And I don't mean to get all nostalgic on you. But I was living my best life back then. I was 22 years old. And I just put this on Twitter a few minutes ago. And I was producing the Dan Patrick Sports Show, which was over on 700 when he was doing morning sports.

It was the first morning sports show in Houston. And I was producing it. And I got an opportunity to become the public address announcer for the Rocket to the Summit. And this team was pretty good. Then it got really good. And then you had Choke City. Then you had Clutch City. And then you won the Western Conference.

And then you played the New York Knickerbockers with Mara Albert on NBC. Then you had OJ. And then you won a championship. I was pretty damn lucky. I had the best seat of the house for at that point in my life, the best sports moment of my life as a Houston sports fan. Remember, I was 22. I had gone through years of order frustrations. I had gone through as a teenager losing the 86th playoff to the Mets with the Astros.

I had gone through as a young man, Faislamma Jamma and all their close but no cigars. And obviously that North Carolina game, it still stings. I was fat. No girls liked me. And I needed some joy in my life. So I got some. It was the Houston Rockets. 30 years ago.

Since then, I'm married, three kids. I'm happier. I'm a lot skinnier. This thing's going pretty well. The voice of the Rockets on radio now. I've done okay. Knock on whatever this property is made of. But it is once in a while. I don't know it a lot, but man, just going back to those yesterday years and thinking about all the memories of that.

And we'll do a little bit of that on the radio show today. In matter of fact, I did find me doing the starting lineups for the Rockets and Nix on YouTube. put it on my Twitter account. We'll play a little bit of it here at some point during the show, just for those of you that are nostalgia. So again, I hope that I'm catching some of you 30-year-olds, some of you 32-year-olds, 34-year-olds, that have no idea what I'm talking about,

but basketball did reign supreme in our town when the Rockets were winning championships and filling up the summit. It was such a good time. and I'm going to tell you all something else. And this is going to fall on deaf ears for most of you that never walked in the summit. Now it's Lakewood Church. But I absolutely loved the summit.

It was the arena I grew up. And just like I love the Astrodome. Now, I want the Astrodome to go away. I mean, I've been very blunt about that. I mean, that thing is just an eyesore an embarrassment for our community now. And last week's attempt to try to reinvigorate it was an absolute joke. And thankfully, it fell on deaf ears. But you could pick me up, blindfold me, put me in a time capsule, spin me around, I don't want to get sick, and drop me in the summit in 1985, 84, 87, 88, and I could know exactly where it ends because it had a distinctive smell to it.

It smelled frankly of burnt popcorn and sweat and a little bit of vomit, but it had a scent that I will never, ever forget. And I knew exactly, if you blindfolded me every single day for a week, I would know exactly what arena I was in. First of all, the name was cool. Second of all, the location was cool. Thirdly, you don't guys don't know this. Or a lot of you don't.

They didn't charge for parking. You drove into the parking garage for free. You didn't pay a damn cent. Now, I think it changed down the end, but you didn't pay for it. You got in free parking. and it didn't have luxury boxes. It didn't have club seating. But who needed that?

Nobody cared about that back in the day. You just wanted a good seat in the house. And it was a loud arena. It didn't have a super high roof. Didn't have one of those big Jumbotron scoreboards in the middle. Those scoreboards are on the baselines. They were up high. It had zero bells and whistles like most of those arenas did back in the day.

But if I could just go back in time, and just hang out in that arena one more time and do the arena announcing for the Rockets just one more time in that scenario it would have been absolutely amazing and I would do it in a heartbeat. So a little bit of nostalgia on the radio show today as we have Robert Ory join us at 120 this afternoon.

We've also got shut your bum ass up at 1130 this afternoon. Can we rip on, and I know I fall on deaf ears on this on some of this too, and Connor back me up on this. Can we just rip on every map app that we have on our phone? It's got me going in 40 different directions again today. Hey, save four minutes here. Save five minutes here. So every time I ask me to say, do you want to save five minutes?

Of course I do. I hit the damn button. And I wind up losing five minutes. Seriously, if I can get helicopter service from my house in Kingwood to this office, I would do it in a heartbeat. Or I can just buy a high-rise in downtown. whatever. I'll figure something out. 713-212-5-7-90.

7-1-3-212-5-7-90. A light day for Houston sports headlines. We do have the Rockets against the Pacers coming up tonight. We've got the college football rankings that are out. We have the Texans back on the practice field today as they get ready to start, at least getting ready for Will Levis and the Tennessee Titans. This is a stretch of the games for the Texans where they'll start to feel better about themselves. They're going to be Tennessee this way.

week. They're going to go to Jacksonville and beat the Jaguars next week. They're going to beat the Miami Dolphins after that. And then it gets a little frisky with Kansas City and Baltimore. Kind of how we thought it was going to play out, right, gang? 713-212-570 is how you reach our show today. 713-212-5-790. If you're on Twitter, want to follow me there. It's at SportsMT at Connor D. Montgomery. And we are staying on Twitter. I know it's the new Cleef, fun thing to do to drop because you're mad about the political race. It's still the number one social media platform. And I'm not going to go to the other

stuff because I've got too much social media as it is. So I'm going to stay on Twitter. I'm not letting politics to decide whether I stay with something or I don't stay with something. Y'all can find me there. I tweet about non-political things. I don't want to get mad at me. We talk about fun stuff on Twitter. I promote

the show. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No big whoop. 7-13-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-2-5-790. join us here on a Wednesday edition of the Matt Thomas show. Right now, a word for love volleyball. League one volleyball is something I'm extraordinarily excited about. It's a brand new professional volleyball league all across the country, and it kicks off in early January. In fact, January in the 9th, it would be the first time there is a Houston team event coming up, and it's going to be over in Fort Bend as an epicenter. And if you are a volleyball-officerado or have learned to

become one because your kids play it like I have, you want to go check this out. It's League One volleyball. And the website is very easy. Love L-O-V-B. L-O-V-B. If you love volleyball like I do, go see the best players in the world that have played internationally that have played for college teams, national teams, and now you've got a team that

represents Houston. L-O-V-B.com for ticket information about season tickets, about individual game tickets as well. The schedule is out. And I promise you, you'll enjoy the experience of watching the next major league. And that's League 1 volleyball. L-O-V-B.com, L-O-V-B-com, for love volleyball.

More Matt Thomas. Now. On Sports Talk 790. Our friend Joan, who's been listening to me for 30 years, is asking you, Connor, for me to tell you the story about the after party after the first championship. What happened there?

Oh, God. There's so many layers to it. I mean, my wife gets kind of upset when I bring it up. Um, And you know what? She's in a meeting right now. I guess I could.

Do you, see, I always feel like I tell you all too much about myself to get myself in trouble. But, you know, we always have a different audience here. And Connor, you know what? Because we're friends and you're young and you have to understand that back in the day, sports was a little bit different and relationships were different. All right, I'll do it. it. I wasn't thinking about this doing it, but since Joan asked, everybody grab an extra cup of call.

I'll give you all like, let's sit at the bottom of the hour. And I want you to find, it's going to be Matt's story time. And it will be, it won't be completely, it'll be like PG-13, little R, and I'll have to clean up some of the issues to it. because every time I tell the story and my wife finds out about the story she's like, oh, you had to tell the story again, in you? I'll just tell you this as a little tease at the bottom of the hour. What happened to me after the party was in the paper the next day. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. And I'm very excited. Okay. So if you've never heard my championship party story after the championship, you will be hearing it during Matt's story time coming up at the bottom of the hour. 713-212-5-790 please call us something else before then so I can maybe push it back because I'm deathly afraid that again I'm going to be getting in some trouble again I'm choosing to meet you know I have time until 11 o'clock I think I'm okay 713-212-5-790 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-790 so what was the main crux of the morning show I was listening and they were talking about the college football playoff I mean there's just honestly

they're not a whole lot going on sports-wise. I mean, Pacers Rockets is somewhat interesting. We'll have E. May Adoka coming up. Apparently, the summit logo is on the floor at the TOTA Center tonight. If I'm correct on that, I haven't seen it, but that would be cool. It's a little bit old school there. What else we got going on? Texans again hit the field today.

Will Nico Collins be on a snap count again this week coming up against Titans? I kind of hope so. you know what i'm going to tell you this and this may sound a little weird i hope we get to see uh davis mills quarterback for a quarter not a whole game because if he's doing it for more than a quarter that means he got that that means CJ got hurt i want fourth quarter mop-up duty like i was watching i was in chicago uh over the weekend and the rockets by the bulls so they put the jacksville detroit games on was on the cbs afield i didn't any interest in green

Bay, Chicago. I don't care about either one of those two teams. But I didn't want to see what Jacksonville was doing and how Detroit's playing. Is it Hendon Hooker? That's her backup quarter of there, I think is a name there? He played like 11 minutes left to go in the fourth quarter. Jacksonville lost the game 52 to 6. I'm kind of looking forward to that this week. Now, Grant, Tennessee's defense, I think, is significantly better than Jacksonville's.

But isn't a time the Texans blew somebody out like that? Isn't it time to see lots of John Mechi play, Gumbawale carrying the ball like nine times in the fourth quarter? I think this week needs to be a, and I know that it's a short week, but it wasn't like they traveled at a great distance. They put in Dallas. It took yesterday off, so they had a chance to heal their body.

One less day of practice, or one less day to get ready for Tennessee, should not be that big of a deal. Titans are terrible. But that's what I want. If you were to ask me, and I would think there would be a lot of you Texans fans that feel the exact same way. Don't you want just a good old-fashioned ass weapon? First of all, we hate Amy Kronkstrunk. Secondly, wouldn't it be nice if we got Amy some tickets to see the University of Houston play Baylor?

And the Cougars were in their H-Town blue uniforms? As a double rod's to her. God, I hate her. I don't know why I hate her, but I just do. because once again, another lucky case of being a kid of a really rich person. My greatest regret in life

was my parents weren't worth $6 billion. Actually, they were great parents, but that's another here nor there. But she didn't do anything to earn it. Do you think Amy's crunk-strunk ever worked 40 hours in her life in a week? And now she's taking a franchise, took them to Tennessee.

And granted, she made a lot of money, but the stadium sucks. They have not even sniffed any sort of supremacy. I mean, they've gone to a Super Bowl and almost damn won the thing against St. Louis, but that's not here nor there. But largely, they've gone through one sucky quarterback after the other. They really haven't been good at quarterback.

What, since Steve McNair? What's Zach Mittenberger? Who else in that list of sucky Tennessee Titans quarterbacks? Tannahill. Was Tana Hill? I'm trying to mix these people up. But it feels like that's been a franchise that kind of deserves its own fate. bad ownership, frequent coaching changes, and bad drafts.

Although I remain bullish, I won't love us. I just do. 713-212-5-7-9 if you want to get in on the conversation. So we got that going on. We have the college football playoff going on. We have the NBA in-season tournament. I would like to be able to say I was more energized watching those two games last night. Oh, by the way, the Cleveland Cavaliers, I don't know how many of you paid attention to the NBA.

They lost their first game last night. They're now just 15 and one. NBA, I'm sure you're very happy to see somebody not named Boston on the Eastern Conference, but at the end of the day, Boston's really damn good. Beat them in Boston to the Celtics over the Cavaliers. And when the dust settles, the Cleveland Cavaliers are not going to be the best team in the Eastern Conference. The Boston Celtics are. So when the Rockets and Celtics play for the championship, wink, wink,

we'll be going to Boston for a week as compared to going to Cleveland, Ohio. What else is happening? Oh, there is a little bit of chatter about Dion Sanders and whether or not the Cowboys draft Shador would he go to Dallas.

Now, Michael Irvin was on, I want to say, was he on somebody's radio show? Was it Colin Coward's show? Do we have the sound bite of that? We do not. Okay. I think he was on Colin Coward and he was basically asked

would Dion think of taking the job in Dallas if Shradour Sanders and in typical Michael Irvin fashion because I don't know if he knows if he really has, if he's just trying to be in a bit but he wouldn't say yes, that's a done deal.

No, it wouldn't be a done deal. But he basically was like, I have it on good authority. And he's basically just ripping off of what Adam Schefter says. It gave off the impression that Deion would go there. Now, Jerry Jones has never had,

at least since Bill Parcells was coaching the Cowboys, a real headstrong, it's me or, it's my way or the highway philosophy about running their coaches. I can't imagine Deion Sanders acquiescing to anything that Jerry Jones would do as a general manager except to say, this is my team, you can be the general manager on paper, but I'm going to crap this team for myself.

It feels very oil and waterish, but if you're the Dallas Cowboys and you're a Dallas Cowboy fan, don't you need something to kind of ruffle the feathers of that organization, which has been largely dormant since the championship years? We're going on, you know, speaking of 30 years, that's 30 years for them too. Wouldn't that be the smart thing to do is for Jerry to say,

you know what, maybe my time has passed, and maybe I need to get some fresh blood of fresh philosophy in? If you're the Cowboys, why wouldn't you try that? Because say what you will, and look, I've never been a huge fan of Dionne Sanders. The player, yes, the coach, and the boister's coach, no. But facts are facts. He took a program in Colorado that no one, I mean, no one cared about college football. And they've got a legitimate chance to play for the Big 12 championship

and a legitimate chance to be in the college football playoff. And no one two years ago would have possibly said that when he took the job away from Jackson State. All right, so that's kind of the headlines today. Also, Dana Brown spoke on Astroline last night, and I'm wondering if we're going to get any fresh material from that, meaning did he really give us a little glimpse into how things are with Alex Bregman, except the generic, we're talking him every day. We'll let you figure that out.

But yes, when we'd return, it'll be Matt's story time. And I'm going to have to clean some of it up just for the sake of history. but if you've never heard my post-night championship story for the 1994 championship, I will pass it along. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. It is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross Ross. He's out this week, and Chris Cordy's going to stop by in a few minutes,

but right now I want to tell you at 1028 about uptown appliance repair. Wonderful people. Really good folks that want to fix your refrigerator, that want to fix your outdoor grill, that want to fix anything in your, in terms of appliances in your home, because they are the premier appliance professionals here in Houston. Their phone number is 281-758-9978.

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That's 281-7589978. Their website, easy to remember too. It's Uptown Appliance Repair.com. 1034. It is the Matt Thomas Show at Ross. Ross out today. Gordy is doing God knows what. He's doing programming stuff.

That's fine. He'll join us. eventually. Because you know, he's always thirsted for more airtime, but he's always got, I'm very busy doing something. So I give him a chance for some airtime. We can't hang out with us. But he'll eventually be along. E. Mae Doka's with us. Shut your ball mask up. Today is at 1130. And nobody got time

for that. It's also at the same time. We have a believe it or not, and guess what I have just decided? Tonight, the rockets take on the Indiana Pacers. And today's edition of Believe or not will be focusing on that 93-94 team. The first

person that wins, believe it or not today are going to get my tickets for tonight's game. Those are good seats. Connor's going to find out about it too. Connor actually asked for a pair of my tickets before and he didn't ask for like a game against you know, the Kings or

the Wizards. He went right for the jugular. You went right for the Los Angeles Lakers. I asked far enough in advance. I thought. You did. I'm just going to tell you that your fellow St. Thomas alum, Cameron Thomas, not particularly happy with you right now.

Well, that's my first time asking for the tickets. You did, you do, good. So, if you want to win my tickets tonight for the Rockets and the Pacers, we'll have that for you. First person that wins, I'm believing or not today, is going to get that. 713-212, but you can be able to go. So don't, don't take my tickets and then not be able to go. 7-1-3-2-5-7-19.

Do you find some good story-time music? Yeah, do you want some classical background music, or do you want a little breezing? something close. Are you going to go Breezen or you're just going to go something close to it? You know, we can just do Breezen. That's a classic. That's good.

That's good. All right. This is, and again, I don't think I'll ever mention the story again because I think after a while you stop celebrating anniversaries, unless you're married. But since the Rockets are celebrating the 30th anniversary, we'll do it here too. The year was 1994. It was in June. and the Rockets were playing game seven of the NBA finals

against the New York Knicks. And a young 22-year-old Matt Thomas was the arena announcer for the Houston Rockets. And the Rockets, of course, beat the Knicks. John Stark had a terrible game number seven. And it was time to celebrate said championship. Word traveled that I was invited to go to a

post-game party with the Rockets at a place called Little Papadot, which is now, I think, just an empty facility. It's over on Kirby

and Richmond. Papacitos is still there, but Papa Doe is not. Well, the night before, I was hanging out with some people. Guy used to work at Channel 13, and he had a friend of his,

and his friend was a female, her name was Rhonda. So I got to know John, it was the sportscaster, and Rhonda, and they were going to go to the game seven. I don't know if he was working in or just got tickets, whatever the case. And Rhonda was there and two. And then Rhonda said, hey, what are you doing after the game? I said, well, I got invited to the Rockets Championship party. Do you want to come with me?

She says, of course I do. So the Rockets win the championship, celebrate. And it's probably got to be 1030, 11 o'clock, 11.30 at night. And the time, I was working as a morning producer on the Dan Patrick radio show, not the national Dan Patrick, the local one. That's now our lieutenant governor. I thought, man, I'm not going to get much sleep. But you know what? It's a party.

It's a championship night. The Rockets invited me to this party at Little Papadot. I have to go for a little ball, right? So, Ron and I get there. I parked my car in the parking lot between Little Papadot and Papacitos, which is that parking space is still there after all these years. we get inside a little popadough and the Papa's family is pouring they were pouring drinks but by the time we got there

they were no more they ran out of alcohol because there were so many people there so all they had left was bottles of champagne so they handed Rhonda a bottle of champagne and they handed me a bottle of champagne no glass just the bottle so I proceeded to chug

basically an entire bottle of champagne in a very short period of time And throughout this, we were partying the trophy was there. Most of the players were there. Not all of them, but some of them were. I don't even think Akeem was there. And during this time, I kept looking at my watch going, God, it's 12.15 in the morning. It's 12.30.

It's 12.40. It's 1 o'clock, 1.30. And I'm like, you know what? I can still get into my car, go back to my apartment, and sleep three or four hours, get up, take a shower, and go to the radio station, and produce the show the next morning. Dan, well, when you've finished off a bottle of champagne in about 15 minutes, an entire bottle, decisions, the time got off kilter a little bit. And I was enjoying myself. And so was Rhonda.

So after a while, I'm still in my Rockets Tie. I wore a Rockets Tie of blue shirt and khakis. And it was to a point where I was really blankie. faced. I mean, out of my mind drunk. And it's like 2.15, 2.30 in the morning. So, Ron and I finally leave Papadot after the party was kind of wrapping up. And I get to my car. And Ron and I express our affection for each other. She leaves the car. And then I, immediately after she left, I start to vomit over and over and over again because I had had too much to drink. in fact I had vomited so much that I vomited on my left side of my shirt on my sleeve

not the whole thing but enough to clearly tell it was vomit then I was in the in the driver's seat of my car and I passed out little did I know until I woke up the next few hours later that the right side car door was still was open and you could hear the ding ding ding ding of your car door being open this is in the middle of the night in essentially central Houston, Texas on the night of the championship party. And I then realized that in my mix of trying to get clothes on, close off, you can fill all the details, that I took my wallet out of my pants and my wallet and my paycheck.

There was not direct deposit back then, was in the passenger seat of the vehicle. So somebody could not only have robbed me, taking my car, throw me out of my car, but taking my wallet and in my paycheck. None of that happened because we were the safest place on earth in 1994 after a rocket championship. So I'm passed out, I got vomit on my left sleeve, I just had a special moment with

Rhonda. Then I wake up at 6 o'clock in the morning and the radio show starts at 6.30. And I'm like, what am I supposed to do? I'm in the same clothes that I was in the night before. Sweat, vomit, other things.

So I said, you know what? I'm going to go to work. So, and again, it was, I would not advise this for any of you to do this. But I basically drove drunk from Kirby and 610 to, or Kirby and 59 to I10 in Derry Ashford, where I walk in and Dan says, what the hell happened to you? And I tried to explain it, but I was still really drunk. I said, look, I cannot go on there and produce your show today. He goes, that's fine. you got to stay around for one segment.

So they brought me in the studio and started asking me questions about the game. I had no idea what the hell happened during the game. I knew that we won. I knew about the party. And I brought up Rhonda's name. And they noticed the vomit on my shirt. They noticed I was wearing the exact same stuff. And they just kept laughing over and over and over again.

And I'm blank-faced. What was it supposed to do? So they let me go after being on their show for one segment. my roommate at the time was a co-worker of mine. We get in the car at Dary Ashford and I-10. All we got to do is go to Wart Road, boss. I dry heave three times between Dary Ashford and Word. We have to literally get off the freeway.

I'm so incredibly sick. He picks me up out of the car. We go back to our apartment, and we all had an apartment with me, two other guys. I fall asleep. I get up about 11, 30, 12 o'clock. the radio on, which was 700 at the time, and they're replaying the interview over and over again, and they're laughing their ass off. Apparently, they're playing in like every 75 to 90 minutes,

because people kept hearing about me going on the radio, blank-faced, with bodily fluids and sweat and vomit all over my clothes. The next day, the Houston Post, which was around at the time, they put a story out about the Rockets Championship Party at Little Papadot. And they said, Matt Thomas, a re-announcer for the Rockets, was definitely there. He can chronicle the story on the Dan Patrick Radio show the next day. So needless to say, now fast-forwarding really quick, later that year, I meet my, I have a girlfriend who wants to be my fiance, who now have been married 27 years to.

We go to Vegas for a long weekend. I'm in the line at the airport. This is for Continental Airlines. Let's show you how far back this is. And a listener sees me and says, are you Matt Thomas? And I said, yes, I am. And I said, they was like, how's Vegas a good time? How's this?

And this girl says back to me, is this Rhonda right in front of Kim? It was highly embarrassing. And that was really the last time I've ever brought up Rhonda's story in great detail on the public airways. Because every time Kim hears about Rhonda, she's like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And what? So that's my 30th anniversary story. That's unbelievable. And every time I drive by Kirby and eat at Little Poppacitos and look at that building that used to be Little Papadou, I think of the championship night, being handled a bottle of champagne, meeting Rhonda, vomiting all over myself, driving to work and doing one segment of radio.

And that's my 1994 championship story. All the good old days. I think if the Rockets went on championship again, I might do it again. But I'm much wiser than I was, say, when I was 22 years old. And that is Matt Storytime. All right, Gordy is in. We're going to quiz him about how the hell this college football playoff thing works. Rockets' conversation certainly up for grabs.

We have shut your bum ass up at 1130 today. Come on and join us. 713212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. If you want to visit with us on Twitter, you may do that as well. At SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Chris Gordy. It is 1046 and at Sports Talk 790. More Matt Thomas.

Now on Sports Talk 790. All right, time is 1050. The Matt Tom's show. Oh, no. All right, I'm here to save the show. That's an honor to have you in here, Gordy. Guys, programming stations all across the same. state now. Doing this

locked on SEC. You got like probably 14 radio appearances coming up in the next couple of hours too. None today. What? How is Montgomery Alabama going to live without the Chris Gordy talk? I know. Got a lot to talk about. Yeah. All right. We're going to have you give the audience

in the 11 o'clock hour a college football playoff tutorial because I think I'm not the only one that's confused about this. Okay. All right. And I want you to do it. You know how it goes there's book. There's like those books for dummies. Yeah. I want you to absolutely, really slowly say how it works.

Because I have tried to do a little bit of due diligence on it. I think I know what it is. But then I'm still wrong when I figure out who's going to be in, who's going to be out. It's so. It's a lot like the NBA Cup. When you have to explain it to the fans, it's not the best. I know. All right. So Gordon's going to be in for hanging out with us for a while. We've got to shut your

ball ass up. Now, this will be your first time in on this. Do you guys tell me to shut their bombasses out? Oh, I got a whole laundry list. Okay, you just keep thinking about that list right now. We'll have that for you coming up. I've got a couple of folks that want to say hi. We'll talk some rockets. We've got the Texans back on the field this week against the Titans, college football, Dion Sanders and Dallas rumors, and a whole lot of more.

Plus, Dana Brown spoke yesterday on the special edition of Astrolown. We'll play some of those sound bites as well. Right now to the phones we go. Roger on 790 and 1052. Roger, good morning. Good morning, Matt. I have one request. Can you put a password on that bad voice?

that you said that if it was any kind of value you would put a password on it so I would definitely do that following that category anyway man that story was awesome ironically I'll work off of I-10 and work now oh really do you dry heaved on your way to work sometimes or no only when they talk about things like Yankees and you know Dodgers yeah I guess so so

So under Rockets, man, do you have that? Did you have that recorded? You know what? It's funny. People have asked me about that audio, and it's nowhere to be found. And honestly, I wouldn't have cared if they would have kept it. Frankly, it would have been funny because, again, it was Dan Patrick, who was our lieutenant governor, was hosting the show.

John O'Reilly was the co-host that day, May he rest. And those two guys were just throwing things at me, like, what was? the final score of the game and I couldn't tell them. All I could tell them was who's at the party, how long I was there for, how much I drank, and then I brought up the girl's name. And that's when everything, and they just made fun of the fact that I had so much vomit on the left side of my shirt. They're like, the shirt could walk on its own. It had a combination of a variety of very bad fluids on it. Man, that's not radio gold. That's radio platinum. I mean, anybody that listened to me back then as a very young sportscaster, still to this day will say,

hey, I was listening in the car the day that that happened. So it's in people's memories as far as I know. I don't think there's any audio of that to be found anywhere. Man, yeah, I miss the old son that and you didn't have that distinct smell to it. I think the, I think the fondest memory I have is still Gino's thing, stop the effing, clock during the playoffs. Against Utah. Absolutely. Yeah. It was crazy.

All right, guy. Have a good, great day. Just all I wanted to say. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yeah, we will go back and play the lineups I had. You can listen. I don't think my voice changed a whole lot. Because I was 22 and I was always trying to deepen my voice as much as I could.

So it's been 30 years but I think I sound pretty much the same. We'll play the lineups a little bit later on on the show. Let's go to Cougar Chris at 1054. a good word. I am one of those people that listened to you in the car that morning, and that's my first memory of you, Matt Thomas.

I know. And I remember you going, look at my shirt. That's not a good first impression. I apologize for that, Chris. Thankfully, I have matured since then. You're great. I've been listening to you the whole time you've been in the city of Houston and stuff, but that was a Malkoni moment for sure if that stuff was still on, on, on

tape. It went many, many, many awards for you. That was a great morning. I'm glad I did it. You know, it's one of those radio memories that when I eventually called a career, I will always have that day. And I don't regret a thing about it because it was obviously in a celebratory fashion. Obviously, it was about something great sports Houston-wise. And I would be happy to recreate that memory again if we ever get it with the Rockets. I know. I was going to say one thing about the Houston Cougars blue uniforms this week. You know, they are absolutely gorgeous. And I was against it last year. year because I'm just bleep red and white completely.

Yeah. But when I heard it made Amy Matt, I said we got to do it every year. There's anything to tick her off of taking the oilers up there. And especially when she wore the oily uniforms against the Texans, I go, yeah, this girl, this girl, we need to just rub this into her as much as we can. So, but love you, Matt. We really enjoyed that morning. That was one of the best radio mornings of all time.

Thank you, Chris. Have a great day. Good to hear voice again, my friend. I appreciate it. I appreciate this in all these years. And honestly, I wish we did audio. I wish we used to use reel-to-reels and tape recorders. We didn't, nothing was digital.

These people loving on you today. What is this all about? Oh, we're celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Rockets tonight. Yeah. So, I mean, people hate me, too. Don't worry, Chris. You get the emails. Ross leaves and suddenly it's a kiss massive.

No, it's not. It's just, what else you want to get into? What are you looking at the headlines? You got the news at noon coming up. What's the number one headline in the news at noon? Uh, college football playoff. All right. That's a big story.

All right. So when we come back, we're going to let Chris give us a tutorial about this because I need the definitive run down of how the hell we figure out this damn college football playoff. And if anybody at this point is getting screwed. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. And first person today during, believe it or not, that wins on believe it or not, will be getting my tickets for tonight's game as the Rockets take on the N-D-N. Anno Pacers. Now, you are vested in the Rockets. You are invested in college football like Gordia's or pro football like all of us are. And you want to be able to take the numbers that Underdog Fantasy gives you and says, you know what? I think I can do better than that. You should. Underdog fantasy is going to challenge you. They're going to give you some player numbers and you're going to go higher or lower on these bad boys. And if you continue to show them how much you know about sports, you're going to continue to make some serious cash, all with Underdog Fantasy.

What I want you to do is I want you to go and find out all the different little things they can do to help you win some serious cash. It's the place to play if you're a sports fan looking to win money while watching sports. What you're going to do is you're going to go to Underdog Fantasy or the app and the website is Underdog Fantasy.com. And I want to use a promo code sports empty. They're going to ask that for you right off the top. And when you do that, you can deposit now to get up to $1,000 in bonus cash instantly. plus you'll get a free pick. That's right.

All new users get a free pick. You'll also get adjusted projections on certain player stats to give you a better chance to win. And they'll pump up your winnings, which is a tap of when you apply the boost to eligible entries. So many different options from rushing yards, passing yards, rebounds, points, three-pointers. You mix the sports up, the more you get involved in it, the more chances you have to win a bigger payout. All with Underdog Fantasy. That's Underdog Fantasy or Underdog Fantasy. com with a promo code sports mt must be 18 plus in present state where our underdog fantasy operates terms of apply and serve with their play call 1800 gambler or visit www. ncpgambling.org. You're watching sports tonight. Why don't you win while you do it with underdog fantasy promo code sports.mptu. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 1102 on sports talk 790. Ross is out and our buddy Chris Gordy is in. Going to hang out with us today and tomorrow.

We are with you today until 2 o'clock. We got shut your bum ass up in a half an hour. We're Gorda gets on leash on all of his Alabama buddies because he loves Alabama more than life itself. They're fine. You get an leash on your own LSU school. You should tell you LSU to shut the bum. Brian Keller to shut his bum ass up.

I mean, why? Because they lose games and lose badly. Play a tough schedule. And all the players hate him. No, they don't. Yeah, they do. They're fighting with him during the game. Yeah.

Be in the... Say they want the ball more. There you go. Okay, whatever. about the fact that I was in Detroit last week and they were talking about this kid that's from Detroit, like the number one quarterback in the country, whatever, and LSU's offering him 10.5 in NIL money?

Well, that's Michigan is offering him. Oh, what is LSU offering? A little bit less than that, but he's been firmly committed to LSU. He's the top recruit in the country. He's been firmly committed to LSU for like the last year plus. And here comes Michigan in the late hour and Dave Portnoy from Barstools saying, we were on to write you a bigger check.

And it's like, no. Michigan doesn't develop quarterbacks. LSU does. We've got two Heisman trophy winners. We got Joe Burrow and J. Daniels tearing it up. Where's J.J. McCarthy? Oh, that's right. His bum asses hurt. So shut up Michigan.

Are you bothered by Joe Burroughs continued frosted hair? No, it's great. He's putting up insanely good numbers, yet his team can't win games. It's not his fault. Okay. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to get a pen and a paper out right now. Because you're going to get the ultimate tutorial on this college football. playoff. So let me tell you what I think it is.

And you tell me how close I am without being, and then when I'm wrong, you stop me. Okay. All right. Twelve teams in the tournament, right? Twelve teams make the college football playoff, yes. One through four are buys. So five plays 12. The top four seeds, yes. Six plays 11, seven, plays 10, eight, plays nine. And those will be played at college, on the home teams, higher seeds stadium. Yes. Okay, I'm right so far. All right. Five conference champions get automatically put in.

Yes. What is the power? Well, it's the power four now because the PAC 12 is no more. Right. And then the highest ranked non-power four conference champions. So in this case, I believe it's Boise from the Mountain West. Now you've got to stop me here for a second. Are we, I don't think we, I don't think it's exactly, is it automatically power four gets in?

It's the highest ranked of the big conferences. So, like, if, so we will have a big 10 champ. We'll have an SEC champ. For sure, for sure. We will have an ACC champ. We will have a big 12 champ. Then you get into the American, the Mount West, all that. Right.

They only get one big dog, the highest ranked of those champs will be in. Okay, so let's say that boys, let's say the Mount West and the Mac, have higher rankings than one of the other four powerful. Yes, the Natsy would go, in this case, Boise is 9 and 1 right now, leading the Mountain West. They are ranked ahead of, I don't know, whoever you want to say, let's say the Army. Let's say ACC champ is Miami,

and they end up with two losses. If Boise is ranked ahead of them, Boise would get into that top four, and Miami is the ACC champ would be outside of the top four. But are you telling me that every power four conference champion gets in automatically? Yes. The conference champ is in. They're not necessarily a top four seed.

Okay. I'm okay with that. Yeah. So you're telling me that even though... It's stupid, right? Like, we shouldn't do this. This is stupid. Like if, let's say Colorado won the conference and Mr. Zonans out there.

When's the Big 12? It makes Big 12. They need four losses. Yeah. They would be in, but they're not going to be a top four seat. They're going to be in a large team. Okay. So before the four, the four,

Power 4s get automatics no matter what their record is. Now, they don't get automatic seating. They just get an automatic invite. Right. The four highest ranked conference champions get one, two, three, four. Okay. Four highest rank. So if you are awesome.

The odds are, if you win in the Big Ten, you're ranked high. If you're winning the SEC, you're ranked high. So if you are a one lost team in one of these power conferences. Like Ohio State, who is currently the number two team in the country in nine and one, they're the five seed in the bracket. Because they didn't win the conference. Because while they're projecting Oregon will win the Big Ten, and Oregon will be in as the one seat undefeated. So you could have a Sucky ACC champion get a buy over a far superior second team in another conference. Two Wallace SEC teams, yeah.

This is what I hate about it. Well, I said this from the get-go, and he started this bullcrap. It's all trying to be fairness. To get the conference chairs and ADs to agree to this school presidents, they had to do this to be quote-unquote fair. But to me, it's very simple. If the conversation is the college football playoff, we want the 12 best teams. It should just be the playoff committee, Matt, every week does ranks, give you their rankings, right? 1 through 25.

At the end of the season, they give you their final 1 through 25. Shouldn't 1 through 12 be the 12 best teams? Ah, but no, this team's 50, but they're the highest ranked non-power 4 conference champ. So they get in. And it's like, what are we doing here? This is absolutely assonide. This is all to appease Liberty. because Liberty went undefeated last year.

Hey, give me liberty. Tulane. Yeah, take care of those screenways. I know they're ranked 18th. They should get it. It's like, this is just, take one through 12. It's not that hard. And if it ends up being, see, here's a problem, though.

Well, that might be six SEC teams. So what? It's how it's ranked. It's the best teams. You ever notice, Connor, how emotionally gets about college football? It's just assinine when you have to sit here and explain it. I'm confused. I am.

They're like, well, Tennessee. Tennessee is 11 in the rankings, but right now they would be out. Why are they out? They're the 11th best team. Well, because other teams jump them. So why are they out? If we're talking about one other team jumping, wouldn't they be 12? No. Tennessee is out because BYU, who's ranked 14th, would get in as a, they're 9 and 1 currently.

They're projecting them not to win the big 12, but to be a, to be an at-large team that we get in. Or maybe they are projected in. win the Big 12 because I don't see another Big 12 team in here. So, BYU would be the 12 seed as the Big 12th champ. So it's stupid. It doesn't make any sense. It's all this stupid stuff in fairness.

Okay, so you've got the four? So wait a minute. I thought you told me the big conference champions were guaranteed a top four spot. No, they're not guaranteed. The top four highest ranked conference champions are guaranteed. So you're telling me that Boise, if he's ranked higher, is going to be in the top four over BYU. So in the on three sports, put this out last night.

The projected playoff bracket based off of last night's college football playoff rankings. Yes. They are projecting BYU wins the big 12th. They're the 14th ranked team, but they get the 12th seed because they're the lowest. They're a conference champion that's in. Okay. They project Oregon in as the one seat as the Big Ten champ. They project Texas in as the two seats as the SEC champ.

Miami in as the three seat as the ACC champ. And Boise State in a. at four as the Mountain West champ, who's currently 9 and 1, if they went out. So those non-power-fives, all they have to do is hope, non-power 5, non-power 4 has to hope that their record, they're ranked higher, and they're going to get a massive bump up. Yes. Where Boise would probably be a 12 or 11 seed, they're going to go all the way up to 4 because they are the conference champion and they have a higher ranking than the big 12 champion.

But it's so stupid. Think about this. would be the acidine way of describing this. In the NCAA tournament, I don't know, would, U of H plays in the Big 12 now? Yes.

Let's say, I don't know, West Virginia is in the Big 12th store. Let's say they go on a heater in the conference championship and they win it. Right now the rule dictates, West Virginia gets a spot in the field of 64. That's right.

But by this, thinking, we would go, no, we make you a one seed. We automatically bring you to the front of the line because you won your conference. That's stupid. In no world does that make sense in the world of college basketball.

Why does it make sense? Well, Boise State runs the table and BYUu runs a table. Boisey State's going to be ranked higher than Colorado or higher than BYU. Maybe, right? As of right now, Boise 12, BYU is 14. I don't know who BYU plays these next two weeks, but do they have, is there a chance for them to put up a better resume win these next two weeks? Well, we got Houston in two weeks.

So the answer, of course, is do yes. Oh, they play out Arizona State this week. And Arizona State's face. favor. Okay, so since you are our college officianto, yes. You want to say just the big 12 that, excuse me, just the 12 best teams. Yes, that's very simple. And are you guaranteeing a conference champion a spot in the top 12? No, it's subjective because

like, I don't know, like we didn't say that there were years Alabama got into the 14th playoff without winning, even playing for an SEC championship. Yeah. But what was their Well, we think Bam was one of the four best teams. Well, then it's just subjective then. Why are we doing this whole conference champion automatic against it? If it's all just a subjective, roll the dice, who do we think of the four best teams? And now who do we think of the 12 best teams?

Why are we rewarding conference champions? Is Boise State one of the 12 best teams in college football? Probably. But they shouldn't move up to the four seed or the fourth overall seed. Like, that's silly. So how about this? What if I give you a, what if I give you all the conference champions, the four conference title winners and the next highest

get in but they don't get guaranteed a buy. Would you be okay with that? I just think like you have a year like this year where you have a bunch, you're going to have the SEC is likely they have five, ten, and two teams telling me only one of those teams deserves to get in. I mean it's by the year where

they're just, you have five or six really good teams from a conference. We're just going to leave them out because all right. I think I figured it out and for that I thank you. So again, if you are Boise State, you run the table unless the BYU win against Arizona

State moves them up big, let's be really honest, BYU beating Houston's going to do nothing for them. And would BYU playing Colorado on the Big 12 championship game help them get a little higher? I would. Colorado's ranked 16th right now. Okay. BYU's remaining two games at Wyoming and

Oregon State. Don't reward that. You mean Boise State's games, yeah. Yeah. Boise State. I mean, don't reward that. Ding them for that. let them come play but then have a guaranteed spot by week is ridiculous

and then don't even get me started on the second or the first round playing on home campuses is awesome the next round going to play a neutral site like we figured this out before the season but there's a world Matt where Ole Miss fans if Ole Miss gets in an at large team

there's a world where Ole Miss would have to play the first round on the road at Penn State so all their fans have to pack up and travel up to State College then the next week would play the second round in Dallas, Texas, in the Cotton Bowl. Then the next week play in Miami, or Miami in the final four round. Yeah. And then in the championship in Atlanta.

Now, at least Oxford is somewhat proximity to Atlanta and maybe not far from Miami. It's kind of far to go to Dallas. Do you really think... No fans are going to make all four of those trips? Do you think America cares about 8,000 fans going to those games? You get way more than 8,000. Ole Miss has never been in a playoff before. So they're going to all move.

Ole Miss can't fill 15,000 seats at Penn State. They're not going to, Penn State's going to give them those opportunities. That's true. But I just, well, it's a big stadium. But I just, again, I just think it's silly that we're like asking these fans to travel all over the country because of corporate sponsors. You know what we do? You can do. You can sit home and watch it on TV.

You know what we do? We tell the Cotton Bowl, screw yourselves. We're going to take their sponsors. Who's their sponsor, Goodyear? And we're going to say, we're going to play this game in Oxford. Ole Miss hosts Boise State and it's presented by Goodyear. So we get the corporate sponsorship out. Just play with college campuses.

Why are we going to do these stupid NFL stadiums? Hmm. You know, I'll have to think about here. 1114 on Sports Talk 790. I got Gordy fired up here. That's why I was, that's why Matt's story time was much more calming and soothing. I got a little Gordial fired up. I like it.

1114, Sports Talk 790. More Matt Thomas. Now. On Sports Talk 790. Time is 1119. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Our buddy Chris Gordy is going to hang out with us for a better part of the show.

We got to shut your bum ass up. I think you wanted to tell the college football player to shut their bum ass up. Do you got to have something else going? I want people to see a side of you, Gordy, that we don't normally hear. That's college football 24-7. You're insatiable thirst for going to

plays and concerts and spaceships and stuff. I mean, it's not a level playing field at all. And that's what's so hard about this. The NFL, pretty level. playing field. Some people get a little bit easier schedule. Some get a little bit tougher. But you play your division. You play, you know, so you play a lot of the same teams. And the NFL's got the most parity, right? You finish dead last in one year. The next year you can be a playoff team.

We're seeing it right now with the Washington commanders. We saw it last year with the Houston Texans. It's like very easy to do. In college, it is not a level playing field. You have Indiana sitting there undefeated having played zero top 25 teams. You have Georgia with two losses, but they've played five top 25 teams. I think three of them in the top 10. Tell me when Ohio State wins by three touchdowns on Saturday, this Indiana nice storyline is going to go away. Yes, it has to.

Now, if they win, what the hell do you do? Because then you go, great, great win, but it still is just one win against a ranked opponent. Well, I think we know they answer that because they're so highly regarded that it's only going to significantly boost them up the ladder. And on the flip side, Ohio State now has two losses, but they're going, well, they're both to top

number one Oregon and top 10 Indiana. Is there wrong? We should still be in. How about this? One more thing before he gets the phones. What about the conference championship games? You're going to get a team that's going to lose, and if it's a big old combo to mess between who gets in and who gets out,

the one extra game might actually hurt somebody. That's the biggest discussion in the SEC. It's because the SEC has a world where you could have five, ten, and two teams. So you're going to have a team that's going to have a team that's going to go to Atlanta, lose to say Texas or Georgia, and have a hand of a third loss, do we

look at it and go, well, you have a third loss, one of these other 10 and 2 SEC teams that didn't play for a championship jumps you, or do they say, you know what, hands down, you were the second best team in the SEC, regardless of outcome, you were the second best team you're in. If you have five, 10, and two teams,

and you win that batch of the tiebreaker, because it's a convoluted tiebreaker. It's a really convoluted tiebreaker. That should give you the indication that you should not be penalized for losing that third game. I agree. But they just did it to Georgia last year. Georgia was undefeated going into the SEC championship game.

Lost by seven to Alabama, dropped them out of the top four. So, and Bama had a loss. Georgia didn't coming into the game. But doesn't, that's not even computer talking. That's human beings in a room that didn't make any sense.

They all contradict each other. And this is the crap we get into. Like, every year they all contradict each other. They contradicted themselves last night. He said, he talked about what a great, that they think Texas is awesome because Texas, you know, they've beat everybody except for Georgia. And they were like, well, what about Georgia? Georgia beat Texas by 15 in Austin. They're like, yeah, but Georgia lost Ole Miss.

It's like, okay, so like we're going to overlook a loss here. But then in this other one, eh, that loss was really a sticking point for us. It's just they pick and choose where they want to put their whatever. I still think, get rid of this damn committee. take 12 Joes off their couches. I think just average Joe fan would be a better, would have a better thought process here than he's morons sitting in the rocks.

Yeah, but you'd have such bias towards schools. They have bias. Ward Manuel is fighting for the Big Ten. He's the head of the committee. Mike and Tomball on 790, 1123. Mike, good morning. Hey, good morning, guys. I appreciate you taking my call. Sure. Gordy was just hitting on the one thing I wanted to talk about the most, and that is, you know, I'm an A&M grad. I'm going to the game on the 30th,

and it's going to be 110,000 people, and those tickets are going for $3,000 a pop. If A&M beats UT, we are in the SEC title game with two losses, if we go to that game and lose to Georgia, we have three losses, and we're out of the playoffs. Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah.

And then they would bump an SMU or a BYU ahead of us, when you look at the ESPN matrix, the equation of strength of resume, that's the only thing that should count. They should completely take out the subjective opinions of people and put a mathematical equation on this thing. And that's how you get in because it is very, very clear. And then when you look at teams like that, come on now. There you go. There's the dump button. I got to hit that.

Hold on. I don't work in this chair usually here. Oh, you got it. Okay. I will tell you I'm on the game time app. Just a nice app to buy tickets on. To get in the door for Texas at Texas A&M currently, 1391, 1391.

Would you pay $1,300 to go see a regular season college football game? My son, two days ago, waited four hours for a student ticket. Did he get it? He got it. Which I don't think is, I mean, honestly, I've heard worse stories, right? Can he sell it? That I don't know. But he's a senior

And this is his, this will be his last game as a student. I can't imagine him giving it up. But if they lose the longhorns, you'll burn that ticket. You don't want to remember that game. So let me ask you this. Because we got Aggies listening. What if the Aggies sneak in and win these next two games? What happens at that point?

Well, everybody's putting them on Upset alert this weekend at Auburn. Because Auburn's played, Auburn, finally got themselves together this past week. And it's a night game at Jerton here. and everybody's up in arms about that because they're like, come on, really. Like, weird things happen at night at Auburn. And so there's a chance A&M could lose this one. But if they don't, if they win this one and then they beat Texas,

they're going to go to Atlanta and play possibly either an Alabama or Georgia, maybe Tennessee based on how the tiebreakers were. So the Aggies have two losses, correct? In league. No, one in conference, one out of conference. They lost a Notre Dame in the open, and they lost at South Carolina. So the Aggies would go to the SEC championship games. That's for the first time in their history in the SEC, 12 years.

To likely play whom? That's what I'm saying. Either Georgia or Alabama. I think the tiebreakers right now set up for Alabama. One of those two teams is going to get an automatic spot. The other one is the best two-loss team in that group, right? because of tiebreakers. Well, they go should get in.

It goes head-to-head first, but here's the problem with head-to-head. Alabama beat Georgia, Tennessee beat Alabama, Georgia beat Tennessee. So you got this weird kind of circle. This is exactly what we're going to have for the rest of our lives following this because of these mega conferences. When you put together 18 team leagues or 16 team leagues, everybody should, no one should be surprised that we've got five-way ties. Period. Unless somebody goes undefeated. And look, and the SEC was not built to go undefeated. There's too many good teams.

You got to be a mega team with no flaws to go undefeated in the Southeastern Conference. Same thing can be set for the Big Ten, for that matter. So get ready for every year of convoluted five-way ties. Yeah, I just think it's the SEC, there needs to be more push to go to a nine-game conference schedule. So at least you're playing a little bit more in the league. Right now with 16 teams and you're playing eight games, you're literally only playing half the league. And look at the schedule differential from what

Oklahoma got and what Texas got. Texas got all the slapies and Georgia. Oklahoma got all the Oklahoma got LSU, Bama, Missouri, I mean, they got like Tennessee. They got all the tough teams. And Texas got nobody. Now, here's the

other part of the tiebreaker. If there's like a three or four way tie, the next tiebreaker after you go head to head in conference, all this, is conference win percentage by your opponents? In that case, Texas would be dead last because they've played the weakest of the SEC teams. So Texas would get left out. Which is, that seems about fair.

Because at some point, you've got to equate, you have to say that playing every SEC opponent isn't the same. But Texas's argument is, well, we didn't make our conference schedule. The league decided that. We scheduled top 10 Michigan on the road, the reigning national champs that went and beat them. Not our fault Michigan turned out. But you also scheduled, what, U.L. Monroe or something like that. I mean, U.T. What you got to do, you know what you got to do?

If you feel like you have a weak non-con, and this is hard because you don't know what your schedule is that much advance, you got to bolster up your, you've got to, if you have a weak conference schedule, you got to bolster your non-conference. They didn't know what the schedule was going to be, though. But I'd make the case. They went scheduled Michigan who turned out to be the reigning national champ. On paper coming into the season, that was one of the marquee non-conference games.

And now Michigan's hot garbage. Hey, let's do this. Let's tell us to people to shut their bum asses. up. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. On Twitter, at SportsMT, at Chris Gordy, at Connerty, McGovern. If you're new to the show, which you shouldn't be, because we've been here for a long time, you're mad about something? You're mad at an in-law. You're mad at your wife. You're mad at your boss. You're mad at the guy down the street. Tell them to shut their bum-asses up. Or if you've got somebody at the office who just will not shut up and talk to you over and over again

about stuff you don't care about. How about telling them, ain't nobody got time for that? 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. It is the Matt Thomas show right here on Sports Talk 7-9, where I'm here to tell you about Two Creeks Crossing Resort. I want you to get out there and have a weekend or a couple of nights with your buddies or, you know, playing cards in the hot tub, just relaxing by the lake, Lake Livingston, then do it at Two Creeks Crossing Resort. Bring your bride for a little getaway weekend with her. Bring the kids in the family because they've got so many amenities from a catch-release pond to picklepole courts,

to a big pool, to a huge barbecue area. They've got a movie theater. They've got a ice house they use up on the weekends. They've got great fitness facilities. You can get your clothes clean. You can get the high-speed Wi-Fi. It's very comfortable. All the amenities you want of a resort, but still enjoying outdoors.

If you own an RV and looking for a place to plant that, 20% off. If you want a cabin, it's 40% off right now by going to 2Creekscrossingresort.com. That's 2TWO Creek's Crossing Resort.com. Ain't nobody getting time? Ain't nobody getting time for day? Ain't nobody getting time for day? Ain't nobody getting time for day? Ladies and gentlemen, this is your opportunity to just be mad at the world.

713-212-5-790. 7-13-21-2-5-7-90. You're upset? Let it all out. 7-13-212-5-7-90. By the way, a lot of you sending me tweets about the McRib coming back to December the 3rd. I'll be taking a vacation day on that day.

What do you mean? Taking a vacation day, you're just going to eat McRib for every meal that day? For those of you who rip on my love of McRib, shut your bum ass up. I don't food watch you. shit your bum ass up, man. I don't make fun on the fact that Gordy goes to Lafayette and gets cracklings every time it goes to a gross to a gas station. Pass.

Come on, people. Stop making fun of my McRibb love. It's delicious sauce. It's a beautiful pork patty. It's got onions. It's on a toasted bun. It's got pickles. It's America's treat.

The McRibb. And if you don't like it, I say, shut your bum ass up. Leave me alone. Let me be my B. Shit your bum ass up, man. Connor, what do you got this week? Anybody got time for last week Everybody went in those Justin Timberlake tickets

If nobody won, I would have got him So anybody got time for that Hey nobody got time for me! I want to go to the show Do you want my rocket tickets tonight? No, I'm busy. Okay, fair enough. I'm going to give away a pair ticket my rocket tickets tonight for the first winner, and believe it or not.

All things about the 93-94 championship team. Nice. And by the way, people are calling off air asking for those tickets right now, aren't you? Listen to the damn show, 150, let's go. Anybody got time for you trying to prize horse horror at 1135 in the morning. Ain't nobody got time for this? Exactly. I second that.

713-212-5-7-90. Chris, what's the matter with you? The Pro Football Hall of Fame announced their 25 modern era semifinalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2025 today. Sure, yes. Sixth first year eligible candidates

have made the cut. I'm sorry, but if Eli Freaking Manning ends up a first ballot Hall of Famer, there's a problem with the Hall of Fame. He's very good. Good player. Two Super Bowl wins, awesome. But he is not a whole. He's definitely not a first ballot

Hall of Famer. I don't know if he's a Hall of Famer, period. Everybody touting Eli out there, stupid Giants fans, Alex Middleton on the bus. I see you. Shut your bum ass up. Shut your bum ass up, man. A cross-station violence over here. What's up? What's the matter with you on that? Would you put him in the Hall of Fame? No. He's in the Hall of Fame. very good.

Stupid. By the way, Manningcast. I'm sure it's lovely. It's been this with a third year of this. Why don't you all stay in one studio so it's not the, what did you say? Couldn't hear you. What was that? Delay.

Ain't anybody got time for delays like that. Ain't nobody got time for that. Oh, and throw in the guest Jim Gaffigan the other night. Good Lord, was that awful. I was waiting around for J.J. Watt. He didn't come until the fourth quarter. Yeah. They had Jim Gaffigan the entire.

or third quarter with jokes that just fell flat every time. Stupid. I don't think I've seen Jim Gaffer going to concert before. Or have you ever seen him on a Netflix special or anything like that? Yeah, he's fine. He had a whole thing on bean burritos a couple years ago. Oh, is that right? Yeah, his whole stick was Taco Bell.

Every item was meat, cheese. That's right. Tortilla. Five ingredients basically create the entire menu at Taco Bell. Yeah. But he was not good. People all over social media were like, this is bad. And then you do, and this comes on the heels of Belichick, who's fine but brings no energy at all.

Like, JJ Watt was the star of the bandycast the other night. He was actually bringing good stories and intel on the Texans and all that. All right. I need a ruling on this. I was, I got to Chicago late Saturday night. And I got out of my Uber and there was a Belman waiting there. And I just had a small bag in my briefcase. I didn't need any help getting to the elevator to go up to the main lobby floor.

The bellman insisted on taking my bags. I said, sir, I got it, okay? He takes my bags to the elevator. Is there anything else I can help you with? I said, no, I remember I told you I had it from here. He puts his hand out. Oh, no. So let me tell you, Bellman, if I say I got it,

that probably means either I don't want your help or I don't have a five-spot. to give you because if I would have said to you, hey, I need your help but had no cash for him to give him. And I do usually carry cash. He's going to think I'm a jerk. I was trying to save him a few extra calories and energy by not by taking my own bag so I don't embarrass myself or embarrass the guy for him taking my bag and getting nothing in return. So ain't nobody got time for Bellman to take my bag's elevator knowing that I wasn't going to tip you from the jump. ain't nobody got time for that You pull the home alone

You give them a stick of gum I'm not doing that It's ridiculous Yeah I'm very anti I'm bringing my own luggage Get out of here I don't need your help If I sometimes need your help

Which I'm all about that I just Normally I carry cash Because I'm not Adam Clinton But I didn't have any And I was like This is not going to end well

Yeah Do you go What's your Venmo I'll Venmo No I don't do that Or I used to back in the day say, I got you next time and they're like, uh-huh, whatever you ask, you know.

My wife tips at like, she tips at pickup, like picking up food. She has like the 15, she tip 20% the other night on takeout. I'm like, what did they do? They just handed you the food. They didn't do you any service? How about the walk-up counter? Do you tip on the walk-up counter? That's what I'm saying.

It was like a walk-up. It was, yeah, I don't think you do. You just hand me the food. How about this? When you drop your car off, do you tip the valet guy when you drop it off? pick them up? I only tip on the pickup. Always on pickup. Yeah. You haven't done the job yet.

I'm not tipping you for anything. Yeah. I mean, there is, you do get a salary, a wage for doing something. You don't just, you're not just sitting there on tips alone. I will say, too, there are some restaurants in this town that do the almost mandatory valet. Right. And it's so unnecessary. I experienced that last week in the mandatory valet and then you parked right in front of, like I saw the spot was right there.

I could have pulled in. Schmuckers. Shepard? You're a good man, Charlie Brown. There's a parking lot right there. I will park and walk the 10 feet. I do not need to valet. It's a wing bar. I don't need valet. Should you charge, how about this, for restaurants that charge you to park in their parking lot? Or am I, if I'm going to a said restaurant, like Mel Miempo, they're not giving me an option to park for free. I'm going to your restaurant to spend a boatload of money.

You're going to, you're going to get me some extra dollar, charge me for extra just to park in your restaurant. anybody got time for that. That's what I was talking about earlier. I loved when I was a kid, Chris, going to the summit. You parked for free. You paid your ticket prices for concerts or for Rockets game or for the circus. They said, you know what?

We understand you've got to get there. Parking our lot. You got to park everywhere downtown. You've got to park anywhere in the stadium you've got to park. Whoever walks to NRG Stadium for a game. I mean, without potentially seriously injuring yourself. I've seen people do it for the rodeo. They park on the other side of 6-10.

Oh, well, then you've got serious damage of your vehicle. Carry a knife with you while you make that walk. Oh, I know, by the way, going back to that last week. Astrodome Conservatory, shut your bum-ass up. Nobody wants a damn refurbish Astrodome. Team tear it down. Shut your bum-ass up, man. Brick by brick.

Let's chisel. You know what we ought to do, we ought to all volunteer shifts. Put a hard hat on and go knock it, get a crane in, just do whatever we have to do. If Jerry Jones's place has things falling from the ceiling, what do you think is going to happen in the Astrodome? Got that whole thing. That whole thing's going to fall apart on people. It's absolutely terrible.

Speaking of Jerry Jones, put him in here. His comments after the game the other night saying, Jerry, has Mike McCarthy lost the locker room? He has not lost the locker room. I don't know where that's coming from. That's ridiculous. Jerry, you're three and seven. You've lost five in a row.

The Cowboys suck. Mike McCarthy's lost the locker room. Micah Parsons just basically said he's lost the locker room. Well, that's nonsense. Jerry Jones, shut your bum ass up. Yeah. And by the way, another one for you. Shut your bum ass up, man.

America, for insisting that you like the Dallas Cowboys still, their television ratings are astronomical. America, shut your bum ass up about that. Shit your bum ass up, man. Stop watching the Cowboys. Every damn week, the Cowboys are on the Big Game Week, because you watch them. For what?

You want to see Donald carry the ball ten times for 39 yards? Is that what you want? Can I throw a one? more in here? We got a whole half hour. Let's go. Did you see a former Astros player on social media yesterday post? To all the fake friends that feel the need to watch my post and report back to my ex, please unfollow me and get a life. Talk to me like a man or keep your mouth shut. From a one, Mike Fires. Shut your bum ass up, Mike Fires. Why are you bitching and complaining on social media? Shut your bum ass up, man. All I would say to Mike Fires is please date women at Lisa.

legal age. Is that too soon? Goodness. Sorry. 7.1. 3212-570. You got something that's bothering you. Let's go.

Let's hear from you next. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Gordy's got the news at noon. We have a busy 1 o'clock hour featuring EMA Adoka. We'll hear from Robert Ory. We will hear from Willie Fritz.

And believe it or not, today is about the 93-94 Rockets. 1144 on 790. More Matt Thomas. Now. On Sports Talk 790. The news at noon coming up in about 10 minutes. At 1220, we're going to let you hear some comments from Dana Brown on last line's astroline and let you chew on those. Right now, we're asking some people to shut their bum asses up.

713-212-5-790. Mark on 790. Mark, what's the matter with you? Uh, I hate the HLA. All right. You got to tell me, tell me why. Why? They want to ask,

why didn't ask permission to change my mailbox or get a permit? Hmm. That I had to notify them. And it was, I made it an upgrade. It looks nicer than it was before. Yeah. So they sent me a letter and said,

yeah. They sent me a letter and said that next time to ask for me. or get a permit. You sound very emotional about this. Well, they kind of wanted me to take it back down. I was like, I made it better. So mailbox, HOAs, you want to tell them to shut their bumasses up? Exactly.

Shut your bum ass up, man. I need a ruling from you two guys. Our Homeowner Association wants trash cans on the side of our house. And every time I put it by my extra, I have a three-car garage. I put it on the far left of my third car garage. I get letters in them all the time. Is it really bothering? I'm in a cul-de-sac.

I'm in the back part of the cul-de-sac. Is the neighborhood going to the blanks with my garage, with my two garbage cans on the far left side of my third-car garage? Tell me yes or no. No. I hate that, too. We have, you know, you put your trash out, gets picked up. I forgot to bring in the trash can that day the next morning at an inbox email. Violation.

Your trash can is still out by the curb. You know what? You're absolutely right. It just got picked up. To every HOA, shut your bum ass up. You're a bunch of 78-year-old bitties that have nothing better to do than just go around the neighborhood while the rest of us are putting in our work hours. And we pay them. Yeah.

We write them a check. That's why, Connor, don't ever go get a house. Just a little bit of high-rise. My parents, when I was younger, we had a basketball hoop in the driveway, and we got a letter from the HOA because there wasn't a net on it. What? Yeah. Yeah, you know what you do, HOAs? Why don't you stop sending letters to us and emails and giving us warnings and go get in a better blunder so they can chew out.

You can get your food chewed up properly. So you can actually digest your meals. I hate HOAs. Now I'm all mad about them. If you're an HOA runner, sorry, we hate you. I mean nothing personal. Oh, look who's online too. It's our buddy James.

New York. James, what's the matter with you? Well, thank you, Governor Thomas, for taking my call. And listen, I enjoyed your story, man, immensely. I beg you remember that myself because I was a happy fan of ESPN or all those old guys. And I think I remember them talking about that. But I was a young kid myself. I was just finding my way in the work world.

But let me get down to what this take I got for you guys. Look, Chris Gordy, you're an LSU grad and all that, and a loyalist at that, that's cool. And, you know, some of those players from that university is top-notch, like Joe Borer and that guy, Jabara Chase. But look, you guys, I don't care if you're from Louisiana, from Houston, you're from Dallas, whatever. Stop trying to rip on Eli Manning because, number one, they called him a punk when he was young and he was inexperienced. But when he finally brought down everybody and he brought down Tom Brady, not once, twice. So to help secure a championship for the Giants as a representative of the Giants. He may be not a Hall of Fame quarterback, but he's still damn good.

And if you want two championships, I guess that criteria is enough for him to be elected to the Hall of Fame over there and Canton. So please, Chris Gordy, shut your bomb ass up and get your statements right, okay? Yeah, get your standards. You get your statement right. You just said he's not a... He may not be a Hall of Famer in your words. Yeah, he was good. He's not a Hall of Famer.

It's not a Hall of Fame. Eli Manning's not a Hall of Famer. And by the way, I think Oseum and Yorah and Michael Strayhan had a little something to do about taking down Tom Brady. Thank you very much, James, for joining us here on Sports Talk 790. New York. You know, he didn't bring up the Yankees for the first time.

So is it going to bring up like the Rangers slash Devils slash Islander talk next time he comes in? Uh-oh, I think I made somebody mad. Jonathan and Katie, what's the matter with you? Oh, man. So I'm sitting here listening to you, and then I heard that guy. I actually work for an HOA management company, and I'm citing people right now for broken, fascia, and trash cans. But it's really the board members.

These board members hound us all the time. my neighbor across the street, they don't put their trash cans up. I need them to be cited. And so here I am having to cite people for their trash cans. I wish all my board members would shut their bum ass up. Hallelujah! That's what I'm talking about, Jonathan. Thank you very much.

My God, thank God. I thought this call was going to turn terrible. Because I basically made... Oh, I love you guys, man. Y'all keep it up. Thank you very much. I was nervous, sir, Gordy. I was afraid I was going to get every 75-year-old mad at me.

I thought he was going to yell at us about keeping our trash cans out. Seriously, you know what? I spend lots of money on my yard. I just had new flowers put in a couple of days ago. I take care of the trees, thanks to affordable tree service. I make sure everything is good. If I take the cans and put them on the side of my house, my grass dies, and then the water gets in there and it becomes muddy, just let me have my third car area. That's all I'm asking for.

Everything else I'll follow the rules. But I don't want to get any more messages about my can't. Pets your cans on the side of the house. You're 80-year-old bitty. Go back and watch Matlock and the Golden Girls and get oatmeal for dinner. Look, if I'm going to bed at 4.30. If I'm setting up a lawn chair in my yard and sunbathing in my yard, like, yeah. Well, if you're hot.

HOA should, well, agree. But HOA, you should shut that kind of stuff down. Not complaining about where trash cans go. Thank you, Gordy. So it's got a problem apparently with that too, huh? Oh, yeah. What I should have asked, Jonathan, is what kind of money is the HOA enforcement guy making? Is that good, is that a good job?

Would you want to be that guy? Because you're just doing bad news. I just saw what they, they already sent me the invoice for 2025. I'm like, please pay this by the end of the year. I know what I'm paying them. I don't know what I'm getting in return. Yeah, what are you getting in return? You know what my neighborhood doesn't have?

We have a splash pad. We don't even have a pool. We have both, but the pool is only, open from what's that memorial do what's the one in may Memorial Day yeah till is it Labor Day in September we don't have any crawfish bowls we don't have barbecues we don't have flags that are put on in front of our house on a more on various holidays

HOA's what do you do except take my money for no reason bitch and complain that's what I'm doing or them doing I think it's them all right the news at noon is up next 1157 on Sports Talk 791 I'm very happy to tell you about big city wings. Delicious wings all the time.

Burgers on a Wednesday is perfect. $8 burger with a side at any of the 13 big city wing locations. After 5 o'clock tonight, $5.00 whiskeys. So you want to watch the rockets?

You want to watch some hockey? Some college basketball. $8 burger with your choice of toppings. Side. $5 whiskey. What a night with big screen TVs galore at all. 13 locations. To find out more about the great folks at Big City Wings, check out the website,

big citywings.com. They open early on Saturdays for college football. They're open all day on Saturday and Sunday to watch it with all your games on all the big screen TVs. It's the place to go to eat, drink, be merry, and watch your sports. Big City Wings and an $8 burger Wednesday. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. We are about 18 minutes away from hearing some of the highlights of the Dana Brown conversation on Astraline from last night. You are one hour away from hearing from Rocket's head coach Eme Adoka. You are about 90 minutes away, 80 minutes away,

from Hearing from Rockets legend, Robert Ory, 90 minutes from Coach Willie Fritz. And believe it or not, today at 150, we'll have Rockets, a pair of rocket tickets to give away and U of H. Baylor tickets. So a lot going on in the next two hours. We thank you for listening to Sports Talk 7.90. I'm Matt Thomas. Ross is off today. Chris Gordy is in, and it's time for the news at noon. The main headlines and some offbeat stuff coming from our good friend, program director,

Phil and extraordinaire, locked on SEC, locked on cracklins, locked on hating Alabama. It's Chris Gordy. Well, I thank you, Matt. Bringing you the headlines here at noon. I feel like I'm on KTRH. You know what? You're the third person's on the news at noon as we've started doing it, and every one of you just changes your voice.

You change your voice when you're on KTRH. Hi, it's Matt Thomas. We are here on KTRH. That is actually true. I'm taking your calls. This is me talking right now. This is me on Cambridge. Hurricane barrel coverage.

Use radio 740. KTRH. The latest 11 o'clock cordons coming up after we check, traffic and weather together. You know what? Going into DJ voice. I'm a total fraud. You're absolutely right. Continue on.

News and noon, Matt, your Houston Rockets. We'll debut their 24, 25 City Edition uniforms tonight and the court as well. celebrating the 30th anniversary season of their back-to-back championship teams, which inspired the designs. Hometown Heroes Night tonight over at Toyota Center taking on the Indiana Pacers. Bottom of the hour, I will play in the lineups that I did when I was 22 years old. Nice. You didn't even know me when I was 22.

What were you doing 30 years ago at this point? 30 years in 94, I was 11. So you're a kid. Learning, writing, and arithmetic. You could have idolized me from a distance. I was going to terrible Saints games. Who was your... Unless you sucked.

Let me think. Who your quarterback was in the Saints 30 years ago? It wasn't Brooks. That would be after that, right? Probably Bobby Abear. Yeah. It wasn't Archie. Wasn't Wade Wilson.

And they went through a time with Jim Everett. They went through a time with Billy Joe Tolver and Billy Joe Hobert. They had two Billy Joe's. We had a Billy Joe Tolliver here for a lot. And then eventually they had Jeff Blake and then Aaron Brooks. and that got him to the playoffs. I liked Blake, especially as a bingo. Saint, not so much.

Yeah. All right, continue on. Joe Espada finished fourth in the voting for American League manager of the year, announced yesterday. Stephen Vote of the Guardians won AL Manager of the Year. A.J. Hinch of the Tigers finished third in the voting. I mentioned this on the show yesterday. I'll get your thought on this. We're worried about Bregman, and we don't have an update for him.

But give me your top four teams of teams that will piss you off if he goes. with Bregman goes there. To me, it's Dodgers, Yankees, Rangers would be awful. I stumped the Tigers in at number four. Yeah, but I kind of, I don't know, I kind of would like, like, on the side, kind of root for them secretly. I kind of be like, you're a secret fan of something? Well, like, when AJ won, it sucked. It sucked for the Astros.

What party was kind of like, good for you, AJ? No? Oh, I have such an affinity for AJ. Right. But I wouldn't open. Like, I'm not all of a sudden buying Tiger Gear if Bregman went up signing me. No, I wouldn't do that. But I almost wish they were in the NL, right?

Like, if he had Bregman and Verlander goes back there and pitches for Detroit, it's a fun story. But, like, I don't, now I have to root against you because the Astros play you. Are we going to boo and hiss him when he comes back next year with somebody else? Yeah. It sucks. That whole situation sucks. I mean, what do you do? You have to do, like, a long video tribute.

You can't just give him, like, 30 seconds. It's not like it's, who is the center fielder for the, the Astros that there was with the Guardians. Gold Glove guy. What's his name? That was traded a couple of years back. I'm staring at him right now.

Center Fielder for the Guardians. Astros traded him. Yeah. Fast guy. Straw. Not Brian. Not Brian. Miles Straw. Miles Straw. Yeah. Brian is a former radio host. Miles Straw. Yeah. Even Miles Straw got a video tribute.

It's got to be like five times as long as the Miles Straw tribute, right? Yes. Okay. A couple more here on the Astros. The Astros added left-handed pitcher Colton Gordon to their 40-man roster yesterday. This was to avoid the Rule 5 draft. You would try to protect any guys who'd be eligible. That Colton Gordon, 25 years old, spent all last season in AAA Sugar Land.

All to talk about A.J. Blueball, we didn't really talk about Colton Gordon, went 8 and 2 with a 394 ERA, struck out 124 hitters and 123 innings pitched. He might be an Astro sometime this year. a cup of coffee last year with the team. I think Blue Ball and Colton Gordon both making their Astros debut this year. And that's why, to me, I'd rather

give them a little bit longer of a leash to get those guys up than trying to bring Verlander back. Right. I mean, what's the point? Don't spend the money. It's just, it would just be bad money. Because first of all, it's going to take him two months to get ready. His pitch count's going to be down. He's

60% of what he used to be. If I want Justin Verlander on this team, team. I want 100% Justin Furlander. Here's the tough part. Gordon and Blue Ball may be called up later in the year. Also later in the year, you're going to get Christian Javier back. You think. Possibly Luis Garcia.

Like, who's going to start the season? We need arms to start the season. Lance McCullors, Paging Lance McCullors. Are you ready? He's busy with coffee. One more baseball note here. Juan Soto, Alex Bregman, among others, declining their qualifying offer. Reds-Ridey, Nick Martin.

The only player to agree to the qualifying offer, one year, $21 million. Yeah. By the way, am I pooh-pooing the thought of Bregman trying to come back? I have it at zero percent chance. No, I think people I've talked to in the know have said 20 percent. That it's not off the table. Okay, so you're a percentage dude guy. If you say 20 percent, first of all, it's not either, it's not sort of.

It's either yes, I take the deal or no, I don't take the deal. So when you describe to the audience, which you just did at 20%, how do you describe 20% about him coming back? So there's a bunch of factors here. One is what is the market? One, what is they asking for? We know they want the biggest deal. That's his agent.

That's how Scott Boris operates. The biggest deal. Two, what is the market offering? I think there's a world, Matt, where some people are maybe scared off a little bit with. He had the shoulder kind of or the elbow kind of cleaned up this off season. he's 30 like I think there's some teams that go you know what not interested I know they're trying to start the whole thing like you're seeing the insiders go oh the market is really going to heat up for pregnant they're getting that from

Boris I don't think the market is really going to heat up for Alex Breggman I don't think there's going to be bidding wars all out there for him I think teams don't like him but within reason and that's where I think if the most one team is offering is six years you know whatever it is 26 a year I think Jim Crane could go you know we'll do that. So that's why I say 20%. If anybody knows Jim Crane really, really well, just whisper. Call us off air or call us on air on an alias.

I think they've moved on. Everything they've said this offseason, the moves like the interest in the... See, that's my, I totally agree with you. Now, again, there's the backside where the market dictates that they're not beaten down the door for them. I think they could go, hey, you know what, you can come back. I do, lie, I do have a couple more baseball. Take your time. Hits here.

Pirates rookie pitcher and LSU alum. Paul Skeens wins National League rookie of the year. And he gets the date living done. It's a win-win for him. Did you see the video of him yesterday or two days ago? No reaction. I love that. They interviewed him.

They go, how excited are you? That's pretty cool. Yeah, I'm going to, after this conference call, I'm going to have sex with this girl. Everything's great. Skeens, by the way, with the time that he got called up, gets a full year. year of service time this year. So they didn't, they could have waited longer and called him up. That's significant because he's now

delayed to hit free agency after 2029. He'll only be 27. So where is he pitching in 2029? I guess more importantly, where's he pitching in 2028? Houston, Texas. I'm calling your shot on that? You're not the only one. It's ridiculous. We'd love for that to happen. All right. By the way, he had a

196 R.A. at a 33% strikeout rate this year. The two best dominant pitchers in sports have two weird names. Paul Skeen's and Tarekis. scubal. But I'm having to like a Greg Jones. Yeah. Not many of those anymore. No. The race continue to struggle to find a place to play in Tampa. Tropocata Field

we know was severely damaged by Hurricane Milton. They're going to play games this year at Steinbrenner Field. That was already decided. But now they're saying their new ballpark that they're we're going to start working on. One point three billion dollars is likely not going to be ready for the 2028 season as originally

planned. Because of? Just planning and all that. but like that's like what do you do here? You don't want to spend millions to fix up Tropa can of field like putting lipstick on a pig to get through these couple seats. But now your big field that was going to be ready for 2028 won't be ready until 2029 most likely.

If you're the race, you having only 11,000 people in your stadium is going to hamper your ability to spend money. Yeah. Why would you be a race fan and think if your team is competitive in the first half of the year that they're going to go above and beyond the field, payroll to go get somebody when they don't have the money that an Astros, that a Yankees,

that a Dodger team can get by filling up their field with 40,000 people per night. That's crazy. I mean, like, look, the Vegas one is going to take years to build. That's still several years off before we see Oakland there. All right, I got, we run out of time. I have an NBA nugget and two college football. Which one do you want? What is the funniest of the three?

Not really funny. Most interesting. Shedore Sanders has reportedly accepted. his invite to the East West Shrine Bowl over the Senior Bowl. But he wants a chartered aircraft there. I'm sure he does. Now that is significant. Why? Because the Shrine

Bowl takes place this year at AT&T Stadium with the Dallas Cowboys play. Oh, here we go. And there have been some rumblings that Gerra could make a full shift and hire this offseason Dion Sanders from Colorado to be the Cowboys Head Coach

with plans to possibly draft Shador Sanders. How do you drafts your door when you have got all that money tied up with in DAC? That's the problem. That's why you should have never given him that extension. But didn't they have to do it, basically? They didn't have to. I mean, he was going to be a big cap hit this year and next year regardless,

but I think you could have just wrote it out. There you go. Those are news and noon. Thank you very much, Chris Cordy. Coming up next. Dana Brown was on Astero Line last night. How scintillating. Is that a word, scintillating?

Yeah. How sensilating was the conversation between him and I believe, was it Todd Callis that host the show, I think? How much, how many, how many deeds did we get about the future of the Astros off of an hour of visit with Dana on Astroline? We'll find out next. After I tell you about the University of Houston, our cougars, your cougars, America's cougars, are going to be taking on the hated, and I mean hated Baylor Bears this Saturday at TDCU Stadium. The start time of the game is 6 o'clock, and I want you there because you're going to enjoy the experience of top shelf college football. You're going to be able to be there as the Cougars are going to wear the H-Town Blue uniforms for the first time this year. And you're going to want to be there because the price is right, the game is awesome, and the atmosphere is going to be second to none.

Ticket starting at just $15. All you're going to do is go to UHcougars.com slash tickets or call 713-go Couges. Very simple. 7-13-go-coogers.com slash tickets. The first 20,000 fans will receive a Houston Blue Rally towel, so I want you to come show your Cougar pride, support your team. It is senior night. It's the Houston Blue game for hard-hitting action,

unforgettable moments, and of course, Houston Blue uniforms. U of H, Baylor, 6 o'clock this Saturday, T-D-E-CU stadium. Tickets. UH-Cougars.com slash tickets are called 7-1-3-go-Cougs. Cougars and Bears this Saturday, B! there. More Matt Thomas now.

On Sports Talk 790. All right, here we go, Gordy. We're going to listen to some of the highlights of the Astroline with Dana Brown last night, which you can hear. Is that a regular thing now during the week? No, they're just doing them kind of randomly throughout the offseason. But a good conversation with Steve Sparks and Todd Callis, taped with Dana Brown, I believe right after the press conference to announce Dyken Park. Is it Diken Field or Dikin Park?

I guess Dikeen Field? It's Minutemade Park. So I think it's Dikin Park. By the way, I'm going to butcher it. I told us the audience a couple days ago. We're going to do a tip jar here at the station. Anytime somebody on air calls it Minuteman is going to be a dollar. There are people still call NRG reliant.

And we'll take all the money and we'll help Clanton buy another Texan's jacket. How long Toyota Center did you call the summit? Zero, different buildings. Now, Toyota Center became, I mean, excuse me, the summit became the Compact Center. Yeah, that's true. That was a little weird. Did you call Toyota Center Compact Center? Nope.

But there are people who still go, yeah, we're going to see the Texans over Reliant. It's NRG. But that's like a sister company, right? It's not too far off. That's rebranding of the name. It's a different name. It's true. And I know this is terrible to say, I don't like going to energy under any circumstance.

Why? I just think it's hard to get in. and out. Nothing. It's just, it's a pain in the ass. Try it off curf. Exit 6.10. It's curbeats right there.

That's not the issue. It's the length of traffic getting in and around the stadium, both leaving. What's everywhere, go? I can get down in Toyota pretty quick. I've sat outside. Minutemate's okay for me, too. I also go there a lot more. Minutemade, you will sit there a while.

You get to leave an eighth inning. Yeah, if it was a walk-off nail bider to the ninth inning, you're going to be waiting a while. All right. Let's get this in these cuts. Here's Dana first. on the this feels like and you tell me this kind of these are very generic these aren't going to be giving away to a lot of company secrets but it's more importantly hearing here's Dana if Bregman determines the rest of the lineup this off season no not really because you know once we knew they became a free agent you know we started to you know look at other you know their basement that may be available other fits I mean you know of course we've talked to uh course constantly to get Alex done. So we'd rather for him to be around.

But we could just keep him here. That would be more exciting for us. But, you know, we have to go into this. You know, just as he's a free agent, we have to look as if he's going to leave. But if he comes back, it's like icing on the cake. Up or down on your emotions after hearing that cut. Or staying level.

Yeah, that's, that feel, again, just the vibes and everything they've put out this off-season. in this. He's going. Hey, you know, if he comes back. Remember when Correa was like, here's the Astros offer from me. You're like, that's all you offered? My feeling is that the offer is going to

be more competitive. It just won't be it will not be close to what he ultimately signs with. That's just my feeling on that. Yeah. It was almost like you have a friend's stand with you. Yeah, look, if you're leaving or not, look, we'll leave the bedroom was open for you. If you need it, it'll be open, you know, but if you're not, no big deal. That's kind of what do you sound

like that yeah Brickman's bad it's great you know but no big loss if he's gone hmm

that's sad it's a big hole at third we're gonna I mean Connor do you have three hours of Astros good sorry songs

to get ready for the day that happens I mean we're gonna every song will be something of negative nature if it happens

before Ross to get back we got that pre-recorded thing too oh we do that's gonna take up some more time on the show

okay you won't even have to show up that day it'll just be me playing stuff I feel like we you know what Gordia, let's you and I after the show today just pre-record the day that he leaves.

A bunch of highlights, talking about what the astronauts are going to do next. All right, back to Dana. He says this team is still really good if our favorite for third baseman takes off. I mean, of course, he's done so many good things here. We'd like to have them back. You know, I think we're still a good club, you know, if he decides to walk. But, you know, ultimately, I think we're a little better club if he's still around. And so hopefully we can get him done through our multiple conversations that we're having more.

See, I like Dana. I think Dana's done a pretty good job. I think Dana's got some tough people he's got to work for. Everybody's got tough bosses in the world. Thankfully, Reggie Jackson is gone. He'll have one less person you have to listen to. But this deal is so important. And I don't think it's an automatic slam dunk.

But there are some Astro fans that feel it should be, which means you've got to get the big boss involved. When C.J. Stroud ultimately figures out what he wants to do long term with his salary and you pay him this ungodly amount of money, it's the owner that gets in here. Well, no, it's Hannah, not Cal. It's got to be more.

I mean, I almost feel like Scott Boris is going to be like, you know, this is cool you and I are Dana talking about, what is Jim thinking? Get Jim on a three-way call here. Yep. And I'm not saying this is a disrespect to day, I'm saying this is as you have a handful of players on every one of your rosters in every sport that you have to ultimately decide I've got to personally be a part of this.

All right, so that's third base. What's going on at first base for the Astros next season? Yeah, if we can get a platoon bat, you know, we really like Singey, Singleton versus right-handed pitching. If we can get a platoon bat that can hit against lefties, it makes it a little bit more difficult, you know, when he's facing a leftie. our lineup is weaker if he's out there and it's a left-hand pitcher. So if there's something by way of trade that we can do to improve at first base,

we will also do that. But ultimately, we know we need to get a little bit better. And there's no secret. You know, the players know it that play first base. The coaching staff knows it. We know it in the front office. We can get better at first base. Okay.

That's the problem. I don't like any. If we've got to send Zach DeZenzo or one of these, Shea Whitcomb out the third base, that sucks within itself. But this team cannot open with John Singleton as the first baseman on opening day.

They just cannot. So yes. If there's a right-handed hit pitcher, they might be. He might be. I don't give a damn if he's paraplegic or left or right-handed. Paraplegic. We need somebody who could hit

at first base. So yes, Dana Brown, whether it's trade, free agent, whatever the hell it is, you need a first baseman. The Jose Obray you think didn't work out. I get it. We're still on the hook to pay him this year. Bygones be bygones. We've got to figure something out. One more.

We were talking about the pitching rotation. How are you thinking things are looking, Dana? Yeah, I feel good. You know, I mentioned earlier about the young guys. You know, we have Gusto coming and we have Gordon coming. You know, we have blue ball coming. And so you have some good young starters that could add to our depth. I feel really good about our rotation, you know, with Framber.

And, you know, you got Brown and you have Blanco, you got Ergeti. You know, I feel really good about the rotation. The rotation is pretty strong. And, you know, we can get Garcia back. That would be a big boost to us. But, you know, ultimately, I think we're in a better position this year. You know, last year going into spring training, we had a few guys hurt. Then guys got hurt in spring training.

and so it kind of snowballed on us early. And we were very fortunate to, you know, turn the corner and get on a row and get back to the postseason. Okay. I don't like he's mentioned all the young guys. It feels like they're not going to do a lot of spending in free agency.

If anybody that's going to spend, it's going to be on Breggman, and that's about it. And I don't know if Kyle Tucker was brought up in any of a conversation yesterday. This already isn't a farm system. It's absolutely loaded with talent. Now, I know they won the, what, the AAA championship. Right.

And some of the guys took exception. And I was like, yeah, where's baseball America now? Where are you got our rankings now? That's great. But look, you almost feel like you, you achieve something last year with, man, Spencer Orgetty ahead of schedule and he was awesome. Hunter Brown, thank God, turned it around. It was awesome.

And those guys who are going to be relied heavily on. Ronald Blanco was awesome. Now that you're older, another year with film on him. We'll see if he can repeat it. but like is this really where we want to go that we just keep bringing up guys who are not highly touted prospects through the system going yeah AJ Blue Ball he's next man up oh gusto yeah your next man up like it feels like it's not going to keep hitting like some of these guys they'll come up and struggle then what then what do you do I'm not saying go out and sign a scy young candidate I'm not saying that but god at least out an arm where's blanks now going to go I'm not that I'm not that

throwing Blake Snell as a astropos. To the highest bidder. He didn't get his money last off season. He's still looking for his big money. Hmm. All right. 713, 212. 5790.

713-212-5-790. Still coming up between now and 2 o'clock. I mede docket at 1. 120, Robert Ory, 130, the one and only. Willie Fritz, 150. Believe it or not, all things about the 93-94 team.

And speaking of that, I have found the lineups that I did back in 930. 1994. This is, and we basically, you know where I've come to find out? We ripped off the Chicago Bulls, Rossi. You're not here, Gordy. We ripped them off. And I'll explain that next here on Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-790. Time is a 12-20, make it 12-30. And I want to tell you about affordable tree service. So happy that many of you have decided, yes, my trees need some TLC. And that's when you've got to come into play with affordable tree service. AFTreeservice.com is a website. They have been in business since 1999, taking care of all of your tree needs. The weather is going to start getting cooler.

It's pleasant now, but we're going to get, before you know it, the trees are going to be potentially fighting, you know, wind, cold, ice, you never know. If your trees aren't ready for that kind of weather for the upcoming winter, they better get a phone call into affordable tree service

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Please write that number down and call Martin. He's crazy, but I love him still. 713-699-2663, affordable tree service. Little nostalgia tonight at the Rockets game. The Summit logos, Rocket Summit logo is going to be on the floor, ketchup and mustard uniforms, the H-Town City Connects, which, by the way, I look really, really good. I love anything that's old school.

I love everything that goes back to yesterday, no matter what sport it is. I love everything about old school uniforms. We spent too much time in the last 20 years trying to create fun, new, interesting logos when the old classics sometimes just head home. a little bit. We're also celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Rockets Championship. And this is the lineup that I was able to find on YouTube prior to Game 6. Now, they're obviously Rockets 1 and 7. Game 6 is the one where Elijah 1 tips the ball away on a three-point try that would have given the Knicks the championship. But it doesn't really matter. It's in the summit. It's game 6. And is there a date on that,

Connor, on that? Is it June 20th, I think, somewhere in that range? 90, 19th, 20th? June 19th, 1994. It was a Sunday night on NBC, and here's how Marv Albert sent it to me.

And right here, we're set for the introduction of the starting lineups. Let's join with Matt Thomas. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the summit for game six of the end. That is not the song that we use, obviously, for the next two seasons.

And I wish I don't have a great memory of why we basically bit stole the Chicago Bulls introductions. I thought, man, I mean, it's a great song. Sirius is still a great song. The Alan Parsons project is a great way to introduce it. But I was like, why did we do that? We couldn't have found something else. But man, that place was rocking.

That was game six, 1994. The NBA finals back in the day, we used to be on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. They would not deviate from that. I knew that game seven was on a Wednesday. So game six had to be on a Sunday. But yeah, that was boom, yesterday. I don't think I sounded too much different than I did that. That's good Clinton living right there.

But great time. And I really wish this next generation of rocket fans can experience that coming up in the not-too-distant future. Whether they do with this group, whether they have to get this megastar, who the hell knows? I, you know, again, I don't want to be a general manager. We can just get to play one on radio once in a while. But it's a good basketball team right now. Hopefully it gets to great. But I'll tell you what, I'm more excited about the squad

that I've been in a long period of time because the last four years have been no playoffs. And I think playoffs, there's an extra buzz and extra energy in the community when you're actually able to talk about something that means something as compared to just a mundane, regular season game. Rockets again against the Pacers.

We'll have it for you on 7-90, beginning at 6 o'clock with the long. Launchpad 630 network pregame showing on all the call at 7 o'clock tonight. Rockets will have Portland on Friday and then Saturday. The Friday game is an in-season tournament game and then back-to-back. So it should be a winning week. I mean, Indiana's not great. Portland's not great.

So let's get fat and happy against some of these second-tier teams. 7-13-212-5-790. And we'll spend some more time talking about the great 93-94 season. and Robert O'Rewe will be with us coming up in just a little bit. 1242. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Chris Gordy filling in today for him. We appreciate him staying out with us.

Busy rest of the show between now and 2 o'clock this afternoon. If you want to jump in, you can do so right now at 713-212-5-790. Not ask Gordy's impressions of the Texans Cowboys game. We'll get a little Texan chatter going up next year in a minute. 1243, Sports Talk, 790. It's Matt, and he's back. Matt Thomas show on 790. Houston's home for Houston teams.

Back at it. On the Matt Thomas show with Ross, Gordy filling in today. We've got EMAID doker coming up in about 15 minutes. I'm at tease it. A thought or two about what you saw Monday night between the Cowboys and Texans. It was a get better game. Feel better about yourself. Cowboys sucked.

You didn't make it a game, honestly, for most of it. And you're about to run through a nice long winning shirt coming up with Jacksonville and with Tennessee this week, and then you got Miami after that, we could be right where you wanted to be, leading into those two really mega important games against Kansas City and Baltimore. Yeah, look, the game was probably closer, longer than we wanted it to be, but you pulled away, you beat down a stinky team,

you won convincingly, that's all you can ask for, in my opinion. That was my gripe earlier in the year, when they were beating the Colts by two and beating the Bears by six, needing a late fourth quarter stop, being the Cowboys starting out to 10, that's what we expected from this Texans team. Take out the trash. And now you got trash these next two weeks. Tennessee Titans suck.

As the Jacksonville Jaguars, suck. You should be both of them getting out by week, start to get healthy, get Will Anderson Jr. back and get ready for that backstretched run. Now, I think the Miami game's going to be tough. Two is flinging it around. Tyree Kills doing his thing. Talking with Wex and the guys yesterday, he puts them in the category of Tennessee and Jacksonville.

He thinks that's a win. He thinks that's an easy win. Who said that? Wex. I don't disagree. And then you're at, and then the two big, the biggest two game test is at Kansas City and home for Baltimore. And I mentioned this yesterday. Just split them.

Just split those games. Yeah. Seizier said the done, but also I brought this up. Kansas City looked human over the weekend against Buffalo. They are the, and this is hard to say this. They were lucky to be pulling out some of those games. But they're the. luckiest one lost team maybe in a long time.

Does that make sense? Yeah. But you know what? When you win as many games as you do, they're not all going to be 27 to seven easy, peasy games. You're going to have to luck some games out. But every time they've gone on the road to play against a top shelf competitor, they come away with the victory.

And I think part of being an excellent championship Super Bowl contending team is winning when you're not at your very, very best. And so as much as it is for us to make fun of the fact that, the chief's win have been less than spectacular, they're still wins. Yep. So, but again,

we get this preconceived notion of teams. The Kansas City Chiefs today of what they are on November 20th may be very different by December 21st. Yeah. Mahomes could be hurt. Kareem Hunt could be hurt. But you can say that about anybody, though.

Yeah, but I'm just saying, like we're just, we're looking at that as a very difficult game. But suddenly if it's the backup quarterback or they don't have a, you know, Kareem Hunt, it changes the, the landscape of that game. But what's crazy, though, Matt, is how this thing's going to shape up, the Steelers who played the Browns tomorrow night are very heavily favored.

They're probably going to win that. The Steelers may win that division over the Ravens. And as dangerous and good as the Ravens are, that may be your opponent that's coming to NRG Stadium, the first round of the playoffs. So, you know, it's almost like you see the Ravens here at NRG on Christmas night, and then you might see them two, three weeks later here again for a playoff game. You'd be taking on the second worst walled card because the worst walled card, actually, that's not true. Two play seven, three play six.

You'd be playing the highest ranked walled card. So it very well could be Baltimore. It would be Baltimore, yeah. Because you would be the four, the Chargers currently the five, and the Broncos currently are the worst wild card team. So the Broncos would go to Los Angeles and the Ravens would come here. Let's go to Biscuit on 7-Honey Biscuit. What do you got today? Hey, Coogh, man.

I was telling you, Connor, man. You brought back memories with that, man. Been with a days, man. I still got a headache from all the boosts we threw down at the sports bar watching those games. You got that right. So that was, how old were you back then? I was in my early 30s. Okay.

So you were... He had just got married. Oh, that's too bad. I mean, congratulations. I just started working full time, basically. You know, so, and I was telling Connor at the time, and, you know, I'm in the Brown Army. I delivered to the summit. That was part of my route.

So I used to be underneath there, talking to the guys and stuff, and all that. Nice. Like me and Merckon eat at the deli around the corner there on a, what's it? Not Kimman. What's that street? Merwin. No, no, it's Edlo. Edlo?

No, no. The one that goes Horizontal. What's the name of it? West Alabama. That's what it was. West Alabama, yeah. Yeah.

So, but yeah, man. Also, Cougarman, you see Old Sansa, man, he got two five-star coming in, man. All we do is get the top recruits, and all we got to do is just pay them once they get here. So cut that check as soon as you can.

Yes, sir. And last point, man, I'm staying the course if I'm the Rockets, man. I just looked at the Power Ranking. They got the Rockets ranked five in the Power Ranking. I'm staying the course, Matt. You didn't went through the bad times. Let these dudes keep yelling together, man.

Stay the course. I wouldn't trade nothing. Yeah. Maybe Whitmore is something else of draft picks. Because Whitmore kind of like duplication of what you got. But now, man, I'm staying the course. Thanks to the phone call. By the other.

There's multiple reports that people I ask him about Amend Thompson and Tar Heeson, and apparently those both guys are untouchable. It should be. A man, if he could become some sort of permanent threat, will be an All-Star. And he's still so young. He has everything else. He defends. He rebounds.

He plays four different positions. And everyone in this league wants Atari-Eason. Every team in this league could use Atari-Eason. No question. No question. Let me get to Joe, Northwest Houston on the Matt Thomas show with Ross Gordy filling in. Hi, Joe. Hey, hi, how's going?

Hey, I wanted to comment about the Texans. I think too often they play too conservatively, and it's like they're playing not to lose. But, you know, they're not trying to win. They're just playing not to lose. Case in point would be the last game we're up in the first half. we're up 14 to 7. I think it was like fourth and three. I'm a Cowboys 49.

And we punt it. I mean, do you think Dan Campbell would have punted there? Hell no. So I just think we need to be a little bit more aggressive and get some confidence in our offense to get things rolling. Well, also part of it is, Joe, is the Cowboys can't move the football. They just couldn't.

I mean, and you do not want to give a subpar team that early in the game a half. of field. So you don't want to build any confidence. Look, the defense is how this team is going. And thank you, Joe, for the phone call. Fourth and three, second corner game, midfield. I don't want Dallas to have any sort of momentum at any point. So I'm not going to kill it.

I mean, I didn't say it per se because I was calling the Rockets game. But I think teams generally speaking, and I would put the Cowboys, the Texans in this mix, too. I think generally speaking, most teams are fairly aggressive on fourth down plays. You just don't want to give any momentum to subpart teams. And the easiest thing you can do is giving them a half field where you're only going to need to get an able to good field good kicker. You didn't want to give them some points in that situation. They didn't. I think to some degree, this team has been less aggressive in the second half.

Put it that way. No doubt about that. But I don't know if they're just. But it's general play calling. I don't think it's just a particular going for it on a fourth down. Yeah, exactly. All right, real quick, before we get to the top of the hour, let's talk to Jacob Northside at 1254. Jacob, go ahead.

You have about 60 seconds. All right. Yeah, hey, Gordy, it don't matter, man. They just win, baby. One point of 10, 20, it don't matter. Hey, and they're going to beat, they're going to beat, they're going to be Baltimore, but they are going to beat them cheese. I believe they're going to beat them cheese.

Hey, Gordy, what about, what about them Colorado, man? How about that Colorado, baby? All right. All right, let me recap that call, Gordy. Hey, about that Colorado, Gordy, Gordy, how about that Colorado? They're looking pretty good. Isn't it funny, though? Like, it kind of coincided with all the showmanship of Dion and Chador and Chador

and throwing his offensive line out of the bus and talking trust and student sections and all this. As soon as they kind of just shut up and play football, and I don't want to make it sound like that. But, like, in other words, they just kind of focus on just the football instead of the showmanship. They're actually a good team. Breaking news. Dion can actually coach. He's actually a really good coach. All the other stuff is fun when you're winning.

but like I think what was happening was all the showmanship and the show and all that was happening they were losing and everybody's like eh we can't get on board with you talking all this trash and not looking good and Dion got surly with the media it was like he got disrespect this and we wanted to take it out on people

and I mean maybe internally maybe they're doing everything the same way I'm just saying externally all the all we've been talking about with Colorado has been the football and hey they're pretty damn good and a good win over Arizona and Cincinnati and Texas Tech and Utah. Yeah, this is exactly what they wanted.

They weren't good in the PAC 12 a year ago. They're pretty damn good in the Big 12. Do you miss the Pac 12? No. It's so weird seeing UCLA playing Rutgers or Oregon playing Nebraska. It just is. Yeah, that I won't get used to seeing Penn State at USC. All that's very strange.

It's really, really, really. But you got SMU and the ACC in the ACC and about. By the SMU could represent the ACC in the championship game. Can we be real too? And I know I'm SEC biased. Yes, you are. Much of the Big Ten sucks. I'm sorry. Matt, Friday night on Fox, it is Purdue at Michigan State.

Do you have any interest in watching that game? Purdue should not be on television. They're one and nine. Michigan State's four and six. That was a Friday night game? That's this coming Friday. Oh, yeah, I'm a hard path. That's the only Friday night game this week.

Ooh, E. Mae Doakin joins us for some Rockets chatter next. It is The Math Thomas Show with Ross. Gordy filling in the day. 713212.5.7A. Robert Orr in about 25 minutes. But right now, a word for Two Creeks Crossing Resort. I want you to gather your family, pack up for a couple days, and enjoy a cabin rental at Two Creeks Crossing Resort. TWO.Creeks Crossing Resort.com.

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cabin rentals and if you have an RV you get 20% off when you drop it off at 2Creeks Crossing Resort.com launch timers this is the Matt Thomas show. Final hour the Matt Thomas show with Ross Ross on vacation. Let's spend 10 quality minutes

with our pal Emae Odoca is your Houston Rockets coach. Rockets coming off that one-on-one quick trip to the Midwest taking on Chicago, Milwaukee. They got the Indiana Pacers tonight. E. May with us here on the show. Coach, good afternoon. Let me ask you this.

I spend all the time my broadcast hoping that someday you as coaches can just say, please give us more reviews, please give us more challenges. And I know that the NBA doesn't want a three-hour game. But this video of Yana stepping out of bounds that no one saw, I mean, I know mistakes happen, coach, but damn, that hurts. Yeah, obviously, that's a play that, you know, would have changed the game. and we would have got the ball back and they've had to foul, but we don't like to look at one mistake as losing a game or winning a game,

but we looked at a lot of the other things that we didn't do well, especially in the first half guarding the three-point line, and that's what really made a difference in the game. Yeah, I don't think I want to see Gary Trent ever shoot the ball again, and Brooke Lopez, too. I'll say this, and look, the bucks are having a disappointing season, but that's still a team that is a perennial Eastern Conference power. What did your guys learn about going against that kind of squad

and having the type of game that you had against them? Well, we learned that, you know, we can guard the main guys really well and let the others get away and that can change the game. And so when you hold Janus to 20 points on 17 shots and Damila at 18 points on 18 shots, you're doing your job with the main guys. But to your point, Lopez and Trent really made the difference specifically in the first half, both going four for five from three.

and, you know, they went 11 for 23 in the first half from three, and then we held them to 2 for 10 in the second half and adjusted and defended the way we do all year from the three-point line, but really let them get going early, and that's what kind of gave them to lead in the first half. When you say defend the better, the three better, is that not allowing the extra pass? Is that a hand in the face?

Is it a combination of both? Yeah, they're a very high-level one-pass and three team. You know, they draw a lot of attention. it would have to the compo and Lillard and those guys are ready to load up and I think we were helping a little bit too much of times and then our closeouts and contests weren't good at all we were short closeouts instead of running these guys off the line we know they're catching shoot players and basically 10 of the 13 that they made were due to our mistakes I medoka with us here on sports talks it honey it was fun in the fact that despite things

got kind of certainly in the first half Fred took off in the third quarter Jalen did a lot of work and the fourth. I feel like this year, we have seen a lot of that where the hot hand not only gets hot, but it's like, give me the ball, I'll do this by myself if I have to. There's been a lot of that so far this year. Yeah, at times. And obviously, the games where everybody's contributing and we have great balance. Those are the games that we'd like on a regular basis. But when some guys are struggling, I think guys take the onus on themselves to make it happen. And you saw Fred do that the other night and Jalen at times, Alper and Stenner at times. And, you know, that's a great players do. They see others struggling

and try to make something happen. So they've done that, but I'd rather take the Chicago game where everybody's contributing. We've got multiple people in double figures and we have a comfortable win. That was a great night for the game against the Bulls. And that's one of the situations that you

guarded the three. They took a bunch, didn't make them, and it led to a lot of transition baskets, a lot of fast break points. And then it feels like to me, you would know this. a man and tarry are due for at least two mid-court steals and putbacks in one game

and that has been a nice little asset for you to have from a defensive perspective yeah I mean we start the game with some guys that are obviously high level of defenders but to bring those two off the bench and do what they do be as disruptive as they are is a luxury for sure

they're going to play on-ball off-ball pick up the ball pressure and like you said full court, they get a stealer to a game, which turns into a highlight. So we defended the three much better against them than Milwaukee. Got a ton of stops and got out and ran against the team. That's not a great transition, defensive team. So, God do well, and that's our formula. Defense offensive against stops and run, that's where we're at our best.

You've had Alpi have triple doubles. You've had Fred score a bunch of points in a short period of time. Jalen's giving you those types of games as well. Jabari gave you one last week, but I would think probably if you pulled him aside, He's probably not overly happy with this offensive production this year. When you guys talk about his development and maybe nights where the ball isn't dropping, is it bad shot selection? Is it spacing?

Is it just ball rims out? When you guys break that down, what do you see from him offensively? A little bit of everything as far as what you just mentioned, the open shots here, they're going to make him where you're not. You saw that at the end of the Milwaukee game. We had some open looks that we missed that would have obviously extended the lead. And they made a few big shots. And so sometimes it simply comes down to that.

And we keep encouraging him to be aggressive and confident and take the right shots, which he did in the Clipper game and obviously carried over to Chicago. And so that's going to happen or not. But there are other ways you can impact the game and not just rely on jump shots going in or scoring in general. So be disruptive defensively. You know, he's been really good at getting on the offensive glass and then getting out of transition and spacing to your point, whether it's a three-point or, drive for a basket transitions a big thing for him as well as the rest of our guys and so

that's the main message. Continue to be aggressive and confident but find a way to impact it when the shot's not falling. Let's get the tar for a little bit. I mean just a glue guy. We were just talking about this before you joined us. Every NBA team wants a guy like that. It doesn't necessarily look at the

scorecard and says I need as many shots but I want to be there when necessary and the defensive intensity and the offensive rebound. And you and I've talked about this a lot about the time away frustrated him to no end. But even going back to his first year, which was a very nice rookie campaign to where he is right now,

where has the jump in his development come from? I think just as all around comfort offensively. You know, he does the things that he does naturally, which you mentioned defensively and offensively rebound. He has a knack for those things that you can't really teach. But offensively, the shot has become much better, much smoother. I think, you know, him getting out of transition and handling and starting to create for himself and others is a big area of growth for him as well.

So I think it's just all around the progression of playing consistent minutes. You know, that was halted last year at a time with the injuries, but he's a guy that's going to continue to take leaps every time he plays and obviously impacts the game in a crazy way. So him being healthy is the biggest part, but you see the jump shot. And I think his recognition offensively of running for running, getting the spacing, being a screener handling a little bit more, all those things are really growing as well.

Tonight you got the Pacers coach. I'm just looking at their roster. They're beat up a little bit, aren't they? Yeah, they've had some tweaks here and there. Guys have been in the lineup, but we anticipate a lot of those guys being back tonight. And when they're back there, a really good team, obviously. And, you know, Headless Snake is Halliburton,

but Seacum and Turner and Mathrim is playing extremely well for them. So they got a lot of guys, McConnell off the bench, topping off the bench, and a lot of guys that can contribute. They still want to play at the fast face. that they did last year and, you know, they got to, went deep in the playoffs last year with that style. And so although they're struggling a little bit now with guys in the out lineup, we know when they're a full strength, they're a formidable opponent. Yeah, their pacing was up significantly over the year before.

When you say that, for the audience that's just kind of just catching a little bit of basketball here and there. What does Indiana do beyond the obvious of just pushing that makes them such a high-paced basketball team? Well, a lot of people who only push off a makes and turn, or misses and turnovers. play with an extremely fast pace off of makes. They like to inbound quick, and I think Halliburne's one of the best at the kick ahead passes. He takes one dribble, and he finds guys streaking up toward, turn her down the middle. And so he's kind of the engine behind that.

And then the half court, they really play with a ton of pace. And so it's not just full court transition. It's them in the half court. They slip most of the majority of their screens are slipping out to cause confusion so a guy can get ahead of steam or they can find a shooter slipping out. So they play really fast in the half court as well. And so that makes them as equally as dangerous, not just transition-wise. Lastly, we're celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the Rockets Championship tonight.

Were you a big connoisseur of mid-90s rockets or NBA in general, or did you just kind of just pick and choose your games? I was when Clyde came over. No, wait a minute. That's a year after. What are you talking about? That's not nice. Mid-90s.

You know, I was watching Portland, obviously, watching Clyde Drexler in Portland. And then I always watched them due to my Nigerian background with Akeem being here. And so I watched them quite a bit when Clyde came over, watched them a ton. And yeah, the jerseys are sweet. You remember those older ones with the gold trim on them? And so it would be a good thing to have back tonight. And I heard we got a bunch of the guys that wore those jerseys in attendance tonight. So got to put on the show and get a win for them.

I know. I got Robert Ory coming on the show in the next segment. So I'm going to say get some rest. I'll see you at the arena tonight. And good luck against the Pacers. Tell him, hello. That's my old teammate from San Antonio. Oh, I'm going to make sure and say, you wanted to interview with me. You can hang out if you want to. I got other things.

Fair enough. All right. We'll see you tonight. Thanks, Coach. Appreciate it. You may ad hoc with us here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. And one of EMA's former teammates is up next. 113 is a time. Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show. Bottom of the hour, we'll talk to Willie Fritz. We got, believe it or not today, all things about the 2000, excuse me, the 1993, 94 NBA champion. 3212-5-790. Game Day men's health has locations popping up all over the place throughout the Houston area.

Why? Because they have been successful nationally, and now they want to be successful here in the Houston market. Because what they want to do is they want to get your T-levels fixed up. They want to get you feeling your best. If you've got a rectal dysfunction issues, they want to help you with that. If you have weight loss problems, that can be something that Game Day men's health can help you with as well. In fact, if you book an appointment for TRT, you can get a friend. free vitamin shot from any of the locations around town. In fact, six are open. Paralland, Seabrook,

Willowbrook, Katie, North Point, and the Woodlands. Edo and spring, you're getting a location next month and more coming up in 2025. I'm so proud to speak for these folks because they have done something that other places do. Don't do. They build relationships with you. They want to make sure that your testosterone levels are right for the long term so you can feel better about yourself, and get good sleep. Your libido in the bedroom is a lot better. And you're working out. and feeling your very, very best. Go to Game Day, men'shealth.com slash Houston to book an appointment and get that free vitamin shot

with a TRT treatment. That's gameday, men's health.com slash Houston, gameday, men's health.com slash Houston. Matt Thomas returns on Sports Talk 790. Joining us in a couple of minutes will be Robert Ory from the Houston Rockets fame. This new time slot of ours is, I mean, it's great.

I get off an hour earlier. I'm going to nap little in before the night's game. But I try to eat sometimes because I'm so hungry in the middle of the day. Connor, it's not a good idea. It's a terrible idea. I'm trying to eat during the show because you eat hiccups and you try to eat it fast. First world problems. First world problems.

All right, 713212-570. 713-1-2-5-7-9. Robert always going to join us in just a couple minutes here on the show. Texas back on the practice field, back to a normal week's schedule. They've got nothing in terms of the standalone network stuff, at least until the Kansas City, Baltimore games. That's going to be weird. It's a Saturday? I've got to look at the schedule.

It's like Christmas this year. Let me look. It's on a Wednesday. So they think they play a Friday game and then a Wednesday game. Something crazy like that. But yeah, we got a bunch of regular start, noon start times because, frankly, the competition sucks. You think they're going to put Tennessee. versus Houston on national television?

Oh, hell no. There's no interest in Jacksonville versus Houston. So, yeah, it's going to be some noontime games after all these primetime games, and then we'll get back to some stranger times around the holidays. But that's okay. That's okay. By the way, I was looking at my social media. Beyonce is going to sing in halftime of the game on Christmas,

and a lot of fans were like, nah, we're good. Part of me goes, I don't care what has. happens at halftime. Really, the Super Bowl halftime is only the only half time we ever talk about. But part of I think probably was a little bit of the political backlash. But everybody's got it their own ways and means of communicating things. So I mean, Beyonce is very attractive. And I know some of her songs, but I'm probably going to have some lunch or something.

I'll have a second round of thanks of our Christmas dinner during halftime. But that's coming up to them. So first things, first Tennessee. And we'll get an injury report coming up after the show today. and that'll be probably around 3.30, 4 o'clock or so. And hopefully, Nico Collins is not taking rest days. Hopefully you get to some of the members that, you know, Kamari Lasseter back out there and that everybody is healthy and feeling good

because what you need to do is you need to secure that number four spot, win this division, and then try to figure out a way to, you know, pull off an upset against either Kansas City or Baltimore or both to try to avoid taking on the best Walcott. We were talking about this earlier with Gordy. The number four seed in the A.S. F.C. right now looks to be the Houston Texans because, look, Casey's one. Pittsburgh is going to probably be number two.

And then you've got Buffalo being three. You don't want to take on the best wild card because it very well could be Baltimore. Imagine having to play Baltimore two times in the final like three or four games left of the season. Not exactly the way you want to get yourself ready for a deep postseason run by having to take on Lamar Jackson in the first round. 713-212-5-790, 7-1-3-212-5-7-9-0. We've also got, coming up in a few minutes, Willie Fris is going to join us to talk some Cougar football. Robert, you better call quick because I don't want to be back-to-back on my guest here so fast,

but we're still waiting to hear from one number 25. He's doing some TV, I think, for the Los Angeles Lakers. I'm going to ask him about that, what he's been doing on that, but he's been doing that for quite some time. I think he's always been very well-spoken. and look obviously he went to other cities and did well and got the name Big Shot Bob from all the different places he played but there's never been nothing ever as good as your first spot

and so it'll be good to bring up some memories and the one thing is crazy about it is he was a part of a trade and that never went through and I've never really asked him about that what his emotions were with that and what it was like to eventually go somewhere and then have to come back because a player failed the physical. So we'll get to some more information about that. Other headlines of the day, the college football playoff,

if you didn't catch Gordy's rant earlier, all the shows on podcast, where he, you ever notice when Gordy comes on, his voice elevates to like umpteen levels when there's something controversial? Like, I try to keep even keel, no matter what we're talking about. But, man, you bring up college football to him.

And it's like we've got to turn his volume down a little bit. That's how crazy he's been when it comes to college football affinity. But I appreciate his passion for it. And frankly, in a community like Houston is so pro-sports driven to have somebody on our staff like Gordy that is able to help us out and run through the college football playoff complexities, I feel like I know stuff about it more than I did say before he came on the show. So we've got that to get to. And hopefully the Cougars can ruin some memories here. because the Cougars have still got two games left. They got Baylor this week, and then next week they'll go at BYU.

And BYU is going to need that game in the worst way to secure a spot in the Big 12 championship game. All right, let's do this. We need to get a timeout in. Willie Fritz is supposed to join us. And Robert Orrin was supposed to join us in this spot, but I don't know what the hell has happened. I think his plane got in okay. But point being is that he's not been able to join us. I don't know what we're going to do.

We may have to push, believe it or not away, but I still want to give away those tickets for the Rockets game that I have for the Pacers tonight. So let me talk to behind the scenes and see what's going on with our guest and flip that and go forward here as we take the show until 2 o'clock today. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We will hear from Willie Fritz and hopefully Robert Ory before the close of the show here on 790. More Matt Thomas now on Sports Talk 790. Are we going to pivot a little bit? Hopefully to get Robert Ory before the close of the show. But right now let's spend some time with our friend, Coach Willie Fritz.

is brought to you by the joint chiropractor, the official chiropractor of the Houston Cougars. Cougars taking on the Baylor Bears this Saturday TDCU Stadium at 6 o'clock. Coach, obviously, disappointment with the performance against Arizona. How long to take the boys to kind of get their feedback on the ground after playing a late-night game on the West Coast and having to come all the way back to Houston when you wake up when the sun's rising? Yeah, we got back about six in the morning on Saturday.

Dave. They had the weekend off for the players. We worked as coaches. You know, it's part of, unfortunately, as far as sports, you got to bounce back when you, you know, you have a poor outing. And then when you have a good outing, you got to also make sure that you move on in the next game as well. So we're disappointed. It didn't play as well as we're capable of. And we need to play really, really good this weekend. It's a very good bailout. overly simplistic but man the turnover margin is going to kill you every single time isn't it yeah it is you know i know i've said it on your show many times we're just uh we're at a point where we've got to play real good you know in all all three phases and part of that's not turn the

ball over and also getting some takeaways and you know we didn't do that and that happens you know we're at right now it's going to make it difficult to win games so we've got to do a much better job hanging out of football and creates some takeaways as well. You know, the numbers, you got bounce passing, you got balance rushing, you got close to, you know, and then the Red Zone multiple times. And look, you can't necessarily reinvent the wheel this late this season, but your general thought about Red Zone execution is necessarily play calls, because you guys go through this all the time, but sometimes you just got to be able to take the play that's called

and finish things off because you work so hard to get it inside the 20-yard line, you'd like to get something out of it. no you're exactly right you know big deal we talk about four point plays all the time to touchdowns and you got a few goals you know when you get down in that area especially on the one yard line

you got you get good point you get touchdowns and you know it's just as you know we try to try best you know put them in good positions to you know make plays

and you know you got to execute the play and wherever the play call is sometimes it might not be the perfect play call but you've got to execute it in the better of your ability. That gives you a chance, you know, to score a touchdown. But, you know, we've had our difficulties this season in the red zone. It's got to be a lot better in that area Saturday. You have put games to bed everything in good times and in bad.

Do you sometimes when you get the clicker gone, do you look at the body language of the kids? Do you like to see them go, oh, man, I should have done this, or, hey, I need to pay more attention to that. and do you sometimes get the non-verbal cues from mistakes that are made and kind of see what the characters are your squad are based off nights where you have to show the tape of a 27 to 3 loss? Well, you know, part of it. You know, we watch every single play on Monday morning after a Saturday game. You know, we look at it all.

I tell the guys to be very critical of yourself. Now we're very critical for ourselves as coaches. You've got to be very critical. yourself as a player. You know, there's a difference in, you know, maybe, you know, you had a their Joe beat your gym, you know, on the field, but not if Jim did execute properly, you know, that's an issue. We just got to make sure that we're doing a super job of that.

And, you know, we just, you know, it's everybody. It's not just, you know, the assistant coaches is the head coach. It's, you know, errors and everybody's connected with the program. We've got to do a great job of playing well in all three phases. You know, the games we've won this year. We've done a good job with turnover, takeaway margin. We've done a good job running the ball, playing defense, tackling. So all three phases have to play well for us to be successful.

You know, I told them that at the beginning of the season. There's been some years where maybe we could have, you know, give our C game and still win. You know, we just got, we've got to play well. This is, you know, big boy of football in the Big 12, and we've got to play extremely well. And kids know that, and the coaches do also. Baylars have a bounce back season. They're up to six and four.

They went to West Virginia and scored 49 points. I'm going to assume you do not want to get into an offensive shootout with them, correct? No, we certainly don't. They've really played well the last four weeks, you know, and been very opportunistic in defense. got a really good kicking game. Might have the best power turn, kick returner, kicker, kicker and punter in the country.

They really did a good job. They got four really good players in those areas. So that's another area that we got played much better in than what we did on last Friday night. Lastly, coach, the guys are going to be wearing the Houston Blue uniforms. and look, you and I've talked about this, ad nauseum all the course of the year. It used to not care about what you wore

just putting the uniform on and playing, but today's kids are a little bit different. But I'll say this, for a large section of people that were fans of a former professional team in this town, the fact that Houston blue uniforms were so good last year and looked so clean

and a tremendous energy for a set of some blue uniforms will be on the field on Saturday night. Yeah, I think, you know, there's a long tradition. with, you know, Houston and that color. And I think it's, you know, I know a lot of people are excited about it. And hopefully everybody comes out and wears their blue on Saturday,

605 kickoff. And I think we'll have a great atmosphere. And we're looking forward to it. Do you spend a little extra time with the seniors? Do you have that pregame speech already kind of locked and loaded? Because you've had a few of these over your career. Yeah, you know, we, it's great to honor this years. We'll have their parents out there as well in pre-game.

And, you know, obviously I've recruited very many of these guys. And they've really been a lot of fun to work with. And they've been, you know, just played their tails off for University of Houston. We appreciate that. Another thing is on Saturday night. Coach, thanks for the visit, as always. We'll do this one more time next week. Getting ready for that trip to BYU.

Good luck this Saturday against the Bears. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Go Coogs. You got it. Thank you. Willie Fritz joining us here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross and his interviews are brought to you by our friends at the joint chiropractor, the official chiropractor of University

of Houston Athletics. My rocket contacts are trying to get a hold of Robert, and there may be some flight issues, whatever the case may be, but we are unsuccessful at this point, which is disappointing because I like talking Robert Ory. Again, he's got a nice little television crew out in Los Angeles doing his thing there. and it's always good to bring up the memories. Memories of a team that Choke City was in play. It's going to happen when you blow a 20 point fourth quarter lead in a playoff game,

two straight games where you play the Suns. And then you came back and became at Clutch City. It's crazy. As many people that weren't around over babies or just kids that didn't realize the value of it, still use the Clutch City mantra. the rockets have still used it. It makes a lot of sense. It's crazy. One championship team

has created a vibe for an organization for as long as it has. Some people still call it Clutch City all the time. And I kind of like it because, frankly, this city with all its sports teams have had moments of not being clutch.

Oilers versus the Bills. Astros losing 86 and 98 and dramatic fashion. Fai Sama jam. I mean, there have been a lot of stuff in our life. It's like, oh, that's been far from clutch.

How about the Astros being up three, two to the nationals in a World Series with two games at home when needing to win one? Hell, I don't want to, what am I doing depressing myself? I don't want to do that. That's why that year still to me carries so much cash in so much importance because of the fact that they were able to overcome. two terrible home losses. Then going on the road down 02.

Charles Barkley, still very much in the private's NBA career. Bad-mouthing. We're in the butt kicking business, and business is good. I remember being in that locker and calling, what the hell? Because remember, that team was so good in one, I think, 57 or 58 games. I mean, it was not a fluky team. The second year championship team was actually flukier because of the fact that They were a six seed.

Six seats aren't supposed to win conference championship. Sixes aren't supposed to win NBA titles. That Rocket team in that first year, 93, 94, that was the second best record in the West. But the only problem we have now is there's been a generation of fans that go to the games now. There's a generation of Rocket fans that listen to the game on the television and on radio and whatnot that just don't are starting to lose that. And I think it's one of the things that sports organizations have to be very careful of. part of the emergence of what Kelvin Samson has done at the University of Houston

is while he appreciates Phi Samma Jama, he doesn't want to talk about Phi Sama Jama anymore. Because that was, you know, early to mid-80s. And today's 18, 19-year-old kid who's trying to think of the University of Houston is not thinking about Phi-Sama Jama.

He's thinking about, first of all, frankly, how much NIL money I'm getting, number two, how great are my facilities? Number three, am I going to be able to be on national television every single night? And number four is education. Now, that may be kind of flawed in terms of priorities, but that's what today's kids are all about. And I hope this generation of fans tonight that go to the game, and by the way, tickets are still available for the game against the Pacers, will sit back and relax and enjoy the nostalgia of 30 years ago.

but more importantly, just enjoy what we've got now. And that is the most relevant basketball we've had in quite some time. Good veteran mix with Van Vlead and Brooks. Alpi's taking his game up a notch. A man, Thompson's only getting better every time he steps on the floor. Tari Isson's constant aggressiveness is passionate. It makes you just find more thrills of the game. and while all the things I just said makes a lot of sense and is interesting and fun,

it's going to ultimately come down to what you do for me in the postseason. And the first step is for the Rockets to get to the postseason. Now, on Pace Guy, things are going well, but things are going to get tougher for sure. This week, not so much. Indiana's beat up, but they play really well. They score a lot of points. But they've been hurt, and Tyreys Halliburton is still there, so he's still going to cause a pain. and then Portland's coming in the next couple nights

and those should be a little bit easier but back to backs are always going to be tricky sometimes but you still got to play the Lakers a bunch you still got to play Dallas a few times you still got to take on the Minnesotos of the world while I may have the excitement because I'm calling the games and on the radio announcer I know it's going to take a while for those of you

to get on board with that and I understand that I'm not foolish to believe that a 10-and-5 start, all of a sudden is going to get the city of Houston revved up for it. But maybe we can talk more of this so when they get to 40 wins maybe? Or get to the midway spot of the season, All-Star Break? Because there are still a lot of people that have not gone to games in a long time that don't realize how much fun a post-season playoff game can be in the NBA. You can definitely feel a different vibe in the arena where every basket is talked about.

every pass, every defensive play. And it's kind of cool that we would be able to ultimately have a situation where we are talking about a basketball game in this town for the first time in five years that actually is going to mean something. And I think that's what the value of a postseason can do. No matter how far they go, just getting back to the postseason, not talking about just playing, but actually getting to the playoffs would be huge. 713-213-2-5-790. If you want to join us, that's how you play, believe it or not, up next. And we'll have that for you coming up in just a couple of minutes. We are playing.

The first person that wins today is going to get a pair of tickets to see the Houston Rockets take on the Indiana Patriots as long as you can go tonight. If you can't go tonight, you can certainly play for Cougars versus Bears tickets on Sunday. 713-212-5-790. That's 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. I want to tell you about Sethi's fine jewelry. They're on San Felipe. near P of Voss, and I've been happy to speak for these folks for a long period of time because they're just really cool people. Sethis has been around for decades, and they're offering

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There's a broader collection. There's a gemstone collection. There's fine jewelry. There's lots of different specials available for you right now, and it's all located at 2221 Voss Road between Westheimer and San Felipe. Unlike chain stores, they build lasting relationships with their clientele, and that's why I've been proud to speak for them, and you can go there with utmost confidence that everything's going to work out well for you when it comes to your Christmas buying needs. At set these fine jewelry, their phone number is 713-789-3-3359. 713-78-9-3359. Much larger selection available at their location

than you'll find in any department store. That's Sethi's Fine Jewelry. S-E-T-H-I-S-Ethes-Fine Jewelry.com. Next time, tell Alexa. Playing 790 on I-Hart Radio. Wherever you are, so is Matt Thomas. 149 on Sports Talk 7-9. This will surprise you like nobody,

but Adam Clanton's wearing a rocket jacket. Are you excited? That's fine. No, I mean, are you excited about tonight? It's fine. 182. It's Pacers. No, no, no, no.

The city edition and the court. Oh, the summit court's going to be nice. Like, you've got the summit on the floor where the rockets are playing for the first time since, like, what, 1996? Yeah. After you left us to go live in Utah and Minnesota. I left in 2004, but thank you. You left us discount Matt Thomas as the PA announcer? Now you're all choked up about.

about it's wrong with you he was awful Mario no he's not he's in Oklahoma City they love him there exactly that's where he belongs Oklahoma City you never been in Oklahoma City you can't for what it's not bad at all

I drove I drove through there on my way to Kansas City you've never stayed there you why would I stay there on purpose it's a nice place you would never stay there if you didn't have to work there a couple times but I mean when I go when I land in Oklahoma City I'm in hell no one has ever said I said that about Philadelphia. Well, yeah, that's because there are meth zombies walking around outside the arena.

That's right. No, no one has ever said with a stray face, oh, Oklahoma City, that's a nice place. Great Steakhouse. What's it called? Mickey Mantles? I thought you were going to say Outback or something like that. No, stop. They have a better downtown than we do.

Oklahoma City does not have a better downtown than Houston. Every city's got a better downtown. Oh, my gosh. Did you hear real quick, and I don't mean we got one minute here, do you hear about one of our favorite eating places is going on a business. Ours or like just... In general. Kim's son's out.

Oh yeah, the one downtown was... That's been gone though. No, it's still there. Well, the building's there, but I thought it was been closed down for a while. I ate there within the last year. Well, yeah, within the last year. What's happened in the last year? God, our downtown sucks.

It sucks. Do you know why it sucks? Because everything's going on underneath the streets. The tunnels are actually awesome. And the reason I think in part they were built is because it's ridiculously hot nine months out of the year. Yeah, but it's hot in Phoenix, and Phoenix is a good downtown. But it's a dry heat. Dallas's downtown's kind of, eh, too.

Well, that's because if you're a president, you don't make it out. Milwaukee's downtown is significantly better, and I heard what you just said. I was about to say, that went right over your head. Yeah, I heard every minute of it. All right, get ready for a show. Okay. Five minutes left to go on my show. What should we do? We should play America's fastest growing sports radio game show. We simply call believe it or not and here's how it works. You'll call 713-212-5-7-90. 7-13-212-5-7-90.

Today's edition of Believe it or not, is brought to you by Underdog Fantasy and Underdog Fantasy.com. Use the promo code, SportsMT, for a dollar-for-dollar match. Underdogfantasy.com. promo code. SportsMT.

Category today is all things about the 93-94 championship team. I'll read your statement about that team. statement is completely utterly accurate. You'll say this. Believe it. If the statement, if you're running as full of on commit up, you'll say this. Not. The first person to get two in a row will win what?

Connor D. McGovern. A pair of tickets to the Rockets game tonight. And then the second winner is going to win what? A pair of tickets to the U of H. Cougars take on the Baylor Bears this Saturday, November 23 at TD ECU Stadium. So we're giving away sports prizes on a sports show. Yes. All right. We also have tickets to go see a comedian Lewis Black.

Yeah, okay. Robert on 790, Robert. You're ready to play. not. Believe it. The 93-94 season was the first full one for Coach Rudy Tom Jonovich as he took over on an interim basis in the 1999-2-93 season. Believe it or not? That's right. He had a full season under his belly. Statement number two for the win. The Rock has finished that season with a record of 58 and 24 and with the number two seed in the Western Conference. Believe it or not? Believe it. Believe it. Oh, you were close.

You're close. It's a right one, though. Nicely done. All right, sorry you couldn't win those tickets, but we got Cougar tickets. It's a nice old consolation prize. Roger on 790, Roger. You're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it.

The rocket started that season 15 and 0. Their first loss came against the Atlanta Hawks. Believe it or not? Not. No, it was. It was a back-to-back. They beat the Knicks in New York, went to Atlanta and then lost. Let's go to Matt.

on 790. Matt, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Matt, during the season, the Rockets tried to trade for Jerry Stackhouse from the Philadelphia 76ers for Robert Orie and Matt Bullard, but it didn't go through because Stackhouse failed as physical. Believe it or not? Not. That's right. It was Sean Elliott of the Pistons. Statement number two for the win. Akeem won the league's MVP award during the regular season, and then he won the MVP award during the NBA Finals.

it or not. Believe it. That's it. You're going to see the Cougars against the Bears, baby. Greg on 790. You're ready to play, believe it or not? Greg is not. Daniel on 790.

You ready to play, believe it or not? Yeah. Daniel, Akeem's salary that year was the highest on the Rockets. It was $4.6 million. Believe it or not? Not. Yeah, it was only 3.17. statement number two for the win.

The rocket's first pick in that season was Robert Orry. Believe it or not. Believe it. No, the Sam Cassell. All right. Sam on 790, Sam, you ready to play Believe it or not? Believe it. Sam, the Houston Post famously made the headline, Choke City, after the Rockets

lost the Suns in the Western semifinals. The Post went out of business that July. Believe it or not? Believe it. No, it was the Houston Chronicle. All right, let's get you out of here with the folks at Quality Home Products at Texas and their standby generators. I know that you need a generator for your home because it will not be a question of if but when the power goes out. That's what you're going to call 713 quality.

That's 713 quality for quality home products of Texas. 77,000 satisfied customers with lots of five-star reverse. great financing options are available. And I'm telling you, friends, you're going to need it because you're going to be losing your power. And you work at home. You also have the television going. You have the microwave going. You got the washer dryer going.

You want to be able to have the ability to keep everything on when the grid goes out. Go to QualitytX.com or call 713 Quality. That's 713 Quality or QualityTX.com for a generic, standby generator from the wonderful people. at quality home products at Texas. Speaking of wonderful people, well, at least Wex is here. Up next, it's him and Clinton for the team right here on Sports Talk 790.