The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Kiss Of Death Anniversary, Evan Drellich, NFL Revenue Loss

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

So much larger than life. Yeah. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 12-1 in H-town. What's happening in luncht timers? Good afternoon to you and welcome to a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas show? No, it's Wednesday

Damn it, you're right. You get these days mixed up. No, I'm sorry. No, I said that the other day and you're like, oh, that's because you go to bed and you don't wake up and why don't you wake up at 8 a.m. And you're getting all pissy with me. I stayed up late last night. Okay. We'll see. It happens. You lose track of the days, certainly during quarantine times.

But that only happens, like, once every three weeks. It happens. It's been happening to me every day since this whole, since, uh, I mean, because usually I feel like, I guess I set my calendar to whatever the sports calendar is. like, okay, Rockets on Thursday, this on this day. And that's how I kind of know what day it is. Like, I could tell you... Football on Sunday. I could tell you the rocket schedule three weeks in advance.

Like, you know, because I like to plan out my daytime, which is... I'm old school that way. And I used to always be able to look and say, all right, in four days, I'll be here, five days, we'll have a home game. Yeah. And I would have to look to, you know, Astros off days because that means I have a nightcap or a rocket's off day or if it's... So I'd be like, okay, Thursday, they have an off day. Wednesday, the Rockets are doing this. so I would always know what day it was.

Yep. Now, I never know what day it is. I come here, I do this show, I do the nightcap, I do my show on Saturday, and then it's just every, it's very set. Yeah. But it feels like, little by little, we're going to have some exciting times coming out. Maybe not exciting, but certainly more encouraging times. In what sense? MLB's not looking very encouraging right now.

Well, we'll find out more about that. Evangrelic, former Chronicle writer, now works for the Asthma. athletic. I frankly have called him, and I tell this on text. Him and Ken Rosenthal are like Woodward and Bernstein right now, right? Pretty much. So we get him for a full half hour today. Wonderful. Just so many layers to what's going on in baseball that I didn't want to squeeze it all into a 12-minute segment, so we're going to have them for two segments.

It's like an onion. It has layers. It does. Name the movie. Joe George, name the movie. Yesterday was the anniversary of the coming out, Shrek. Damn, it's good. Good work, Joe. Great movie. Matt's seen all those because of kids. Oh, my God. If there's one children's movie I've seen more than any other, it's Shrek.

Shrek's a good movie. Shrek's delightful. It holds water. It will stand the test of time. It's evergreen. All right. So Evadrallic will join us between 2 and 2.30 this afternoon. Wonderful.

A little bit on the Astro stuff. Again, I don't know where we can go in terms of did Mike call you, you call Mike? I don't know where that. I'll ask him. I can tell him he doesn't have. the answer. Well, yeah, I think you have to, because I don't want him to be like, oh, you guys are trying to put me in a corner. I don't want to do that because it really doesn't matter who gained what. It's just, it's the most fascinating baseball story in a very, very long period of

time. And Evan and Ken Rosent thought were a part of that. I will say, feel free not to answer, but I was just curious, did you guys, did you guys? Did you guys approach Mike or did he come to you guys? Okay. So he's more than willing to. Can I do that? Is that going to piss him off? No, I don't think it is. I'd just say, hey, what I would do is this, I'd say, hey, curious minds want to know. If you can't answer, we respect it. Should we do it in a compliment sandwich? Just like soften them up.

Hey, Evan, you are super duper handsome. Did Mike fires approach you? And by the way, you're a fantastic writer. But go ahead. And your beard is perfectly trimmed? Yes. So that's coming up today. Also, Tim Kelly,

the new Texans offensive coordinator. Who? You better get to know him. he's on a Zoom today with the Houston media coming up in a little over an hour from now and we look forward to hearing from him I don't know if he's if I couldn't even if Tim Kelly walked in the room right now I wouldn't know what he looked like or sounded like so I'm going to be just as astonished as you are either positively or negatively based on what he says but Ross because we love doing bits on the show when it comes to sound bites of people

You know, it'd be just really boring A-F if we just said, here's this player saying this. Rossi, we like to change things up a little bit. We like to do what you're talking about. Okay. Which time my Bill O'Brien has become a national treasure in the radio world. So today we're going to do what you're talking about? Oh, no, it's not ready. He's got to put it together.

I just see the Tim Kelly now. I was going to play that. Okay, yeah, if you want to say that. Let's try this again. What you're talking about? Tim Kelly. Oh, she's British today. Sabrina's gotten British on us.

Timmy Kelly. It's her cousin. It frankly should be Irish, right? It's her cousin from across the pond. We're talking about Kimmelty. Timothy Kelly. Timothy Kelly.

Tim Kelly. So we'll have that free today at 145. Wonderful. A little bit of quasi-breaking news. Shams. Sharania? Right? Shams.

Sharania, yes. We never had him on the show. Why not? Have we ever had Wojohn? Yes. Very, like almost. Early, early. Very early on her show before he was big time.

And I believe it was when he had transitioned to Yahoo. Well, he was still big time then. I think it was only because he had just moved to Yahoo or something. We got him through Yahoo. Okay. So Shams is reporting, along with St. Amick, friend of the show. Yes. That the NBA is leaning heavily towards going to Orlando to finish out the season.

Thank goodness. I'm a little surprised. I'm not surprised about Orlando. I'm a little surprised they're not breaking up the league. into West and East. I mean, if they feel like they have enough facilities. Oh, they do. It makes sense to keep it in one spot to me.

I'm just thinking from a travel perspective, just having people closer to where they live and where they normally work and probably making the communities a little bit smaller that I would have thought. Again, this is not the gospel, but I think he just literally put that out. What do you put it about?

10 minutes ago, I think Shams did? 18 minutes ago, yes. And so the lean is towards Walt Disney World and Orlando. They can handle 30 teams. They get plenty of hotels, plenty of restaurants. I don't think the amusement parks are going to be open, but that just leaves open space, and there's plenty of basketball courts. There are AAU tournaments that are both volleyball and baseball, I mean, volleyball and basketball that are played all year long. Matter of fact, there's a giant AAU volleyball tournament that happens every year in Orlando.

And that's at a convention center, so I don't know if that would be used, but I know Walt Disney's wide world of sports has multiple basketball courts, multiple television. production trucks so they could obviously handle it. Do they have like NBA quality baskets? Like, you know, break away rims and stuff like that? Like, what if some, you know, Clint Capella or whoever wants to throw down a huge dunk and then make sure it doesn't, the glass doesn't bring, you know, rip it down or something. They play major college basketball term. Okay.

So I would assume the answer is yes. If not that you call hoops. Sporting equipment. Yeah. Por dunk, hoops.com. Maybe poronk will get down to Orlando put some more goals in there for. As they should. Point being is that it sounds like there was a report earlier this morning.

that I had kind of heard through the grapevine that the city of Houston was trying to put in their name in it because they were saying not only can we put you at the TOTA center but we can put you at George R. Brown to put these games on and oh by the way you're going to be 10 minutes drive to the MD Anderson area in the medical center which is one of the best medical centers in the entire world. That's a good point.

It made a lot of sense plus the weather's good. There's plenty of luxury hotels because that's what they got to stay. It was like a feels like 106 yesterday. Gordy tweeted out. Yeah, but we were inside 98% of the day. I'm just saying. Now, if you won for a run like Gordy did, then probably does feel like $106. And a few days before that.

We had like torrential floods every single month, it seems like. We all have volatile weather. The entire country is volatile weather. That's true. Except in San Diego. All right. So that's kind of the news of the day a little bit. What else I want to get to you in this first thing?

We mentioned briefly on the show yesterday about Alex Bregman leaving his agency. And now we know why. Yes. Details came out. The production company that the agent that he used to have is going to be involved in something, SportsRV. What is that, Matthew? It's going to be the documentary about the Astros cheating scandal. So Brighman gets a hold of that and says, I'm out of here.

And that's no surprise, right? No, no sure to be. So this is sign number one that the Astros will not be cooperating at all with this documentary. And they can't. because what could they possibly do in the documentary to make them look any better? Unless you just say, I apologize, or here's everything. Rossi, I make this 5 million million star guarantee to you. Every one of these players will write a book of some notion about what happened.

They're just going to wait until they're way, way, way past their playing days. What if you wanted to get somebody in front of the camera and say, this probably didn't help and we didn't do it in the playoffs and we didn't do it during the World Series like everything that Correa came out and said Not enough And we didn't do it in 18 and we didn't do it in 19 There's nothing to the buzzers

No people want But people, okay people But doesn't that side of the story need to be told? Because we're crushing Michael Jordan For controlling everything in the last dance And not having various people Who are going to say bad things about him on So is that going to be what this documentary is

There's going to be literal Astros rebuttal I think you have to tell both sides of every story, even if one side of the story you don't completely believe or don't believe at all. But what if the Astros don't cooperate, which I don't think they're going to. That's what I'm saying. Maybe they should cooperate a little bit or have somebody, I don't know, Jeff Luno or. To go along your line of thinking, the only people that should put the documentary out, if they want to at least adjust the storyline a little bit, would be people from the Astros.

Houston Astros, 2017, we screwed up. I'd wait for a real production company to also put together an Astros documentary before I signed up. The number one documentarian in our generation is Ken Burns. Maybe he's busy. Like who's number two? If you said name a famous documentarian,

I could give you Ken Burns and I'd give you everybody else because I don't know who anybody else will be. The guy who did Tiger King. He's number two in my mind. Jason Hare, the guy who did the last dance, he's got a pretty good resume. Yeah.

Yeah, the only way, again, I think the Astros, and I'm talking as a group, will ever really give us good intimate details of what happened will be when their playing careers are with. And frankly, probably when their Hall of Fame status could come into play. That's just the truth. They don't want anything to interrupt a potential Hall of Fame career. And let's be honest, there are probably three or four players that have got a puncher's chance of making the Hall of Fame.

I don't think any of them at this point are in, but there are three or four, if they continue to have four to five more successful seasons, they could very well be in Baseball's Hall of Fame. Happy anniversary, Houston, Texas. I'll explain that next 12-12 on Sports Talk 790. Hey, ladies and gent, so let me ask you an important question. How are your energy levels lately? Do you feel like they're a little bit low? Like you're sluggish, like you're not yourself, like maybe 10 years ago you were a better version of yourself than you are now?

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This is Craig Ackerman. And the Rockets get the job done. Oh, here's another new catchphrase I have for you. Good gracious. Good gracious. You're listening to the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. A double up, Kenny Smith. He gets it across to Robert Ory.

Ori across the line, long past to Ellie in the corner. Ellie's got a three-pointer. Yes, seven seconds. Yes, seven seconds to go. Time out. It's. That's Gene and Jim losing their blank. I can tell you right now, if I was in that position, I would have been doing the exact same thing.

Seven seconds left to go. So here's what disappoints me about this. I have really good memories of where I was for some of the most impactful sporting events of my life. Yes. That was, by the way, 25 years ago today. Happy anniversary, Marioli for the kiss of death. I remember watching the game. I don't remember where I was, who I was with.

I'm kind of disappointed about that. And then, on top of that, I'm disappointed. I didn't. Obviously, the last seven seconds were. in the Rockets' favor. What happened? I can go back and go back and look at it, but I don't remember what the last seven seconds are all about. Because frankly, let's think about this. Honestly, boys, in

2020, seven seconds left to go on an NBA game is an eternity. You know, yeah, I didn't realize that either, but I watched the whole game recently on my Twitch channel. But I can't remember, I can't even remember when I watched a couple weeks ago. It was either a miss shot or something. It had to been something, right? I like that.

I don't remember if it was a turnover. But seven seconds, I mean, I'm sure people at America, it's now called the Mohegan Sun Arena, but no, it's talking stick. I get my casinos mixed up. Talking stick resort arena. I'm sure they were pissed off and obviously disappointed, but seven seconds in the NBA, especially after a timeout, I don't know, could you move the ball into front court back in that time in the NBA? I don't know if you could. I think so. Whatever, but that's an eternity. You could run plays, you can run a couple of screens, you can get a couple of shots off. Um, so.

first of all, G and Jim's call was amazing. I look forward to doing something very similar to that at some point in my life where I just lose complete control of my voice and emotions. That was the radio call, which you heard on KTRH back in 1995.

Oh, it was a foul battle, I think. That's right. The rocket's fouled. The rocket, yeah. That put them up three, I believe, and then they went to go into foul shots. So what is your general thought about team is you're up to defending. What do you do? Fowl. Fowl? No, no, they're up three. No, three. You would, that put them up three, I believe.

Then you definitely foul at that point. Well, if you got, if you got someone like Shaq on the floor and you're in the bonus. Yeah, but you can't go tackle him unless the ball's in his hands. Yeah, I remember being a little surprised that the Rockets went to the immediately, immediate foul card. So yeah, I'm going to, that's my homework assignment for tonight is tomorrow I'm going to look up and watch the final seven seconds of that game because I don't have memories of that. Do you remember where you were in 95? I don't remember for that game. I remember where I was in 95 at the, uh, during the Spurs series. See, now that was maybe a West Coast game. I was at that time, 11 years old. I might not have been allowed to be up. Yeah. Because like, I remember where I was, I was in Orlando when Nick Anderson missed the free

throws. I cover the, the games for the radio station. Yes. I was the PA announcer for the two championship, so I know exactly where I was for those. Yeah. I remember being up late at night, in 86, when Samson hits the fallaway shot with one second left to win the West, being up in the middle of the night watching that. I mean, there's a lot of things. I remember where I was when Mike Scott had the no-hitter and the Astros lost. I mean, Oilers Buffalo game. I mean, there's all, I just don't remember where, I mean, I want to hope I was in a hot tub with five or six really naked, awesome-looking women, but I don't believe it to be the case. Like a Matt Liner-style hot tub?

I mean, I'd be happy with three to four, but you know. I remember when the rockets were clenching the West that year, and we already knew the opponent was going to be the magic. I remember saying it was my dad had a bunch of work friends over, and I was like, they could just already start making the banner. And they were like, good one, little buddy. Oh, they called you a little buddy. Something like that.

Were you a cute kid Ross at 1112? I was adorable. What are you talking about? Were you a sarcastic a F as you are in our right now? Probably a little bit of a handful. I'd like to mean 11-year-old Ross What do you want to know? Like I think Joe George at 11

You're about the same person Except you have much less facial hair at that point Definitely Let's see Teasing my sister a lot I was happy to go Sports Matt Thomas at 11 years old

Was happy go lucky Portly ate everything on earth And never said a bad word about anybody Now I'm thinner Huh I was just outside all the time Were you really doing what? My buddy had a pool

So like We were there every day Or in the summer Would you put sunscreen on a regular basis? Yeah, because I'm very white. Very good. All right. So that was a television call.

No, that was a radio call from Gene on KTRH. Here's Bill Walton on the color. This is Greg Gumble on the play-by-play on NBC. And here's how that went down. Do you still a hole for the last shot? There's a tendency in this situation to wait too long, though. Can him talk to the Phoenix bench? Saying suck it, B's.

I didn't say that, but the kiss of death. Oh, Mario. I know, sometimes you listen to show. If you are, love you, brother. Because, man, that was so much fun. The junkyard dog. The J-Y-D. One of our favorite non-all-star Rockets.

Okay, so what we're going to do on Friday's Fantasy Five is we're going to create. Now, this person has played for the Rockets, has played for the Rockets, and has never man an all-star team. Ever. No matter what the team he played for. They played for four other teams. It was an All-Star three other times. Yeah, are we doing just top five?

Can I use five guards? Are we filling out a lineup card? No, I think we should do a five, five players, period. Okay. And you just say, man, that group is just, you know, a favor of mine. So we'll do that. If they made an All-Star team, they're out. But if they were Irish League player of the year, they're okay.

Should we eliminate, should we call the Samario L.A. Fantasy Five and eliminate his name? No. So the question is going to be, do you take him with the first overall pick? Hmm. We'll find out Friday at 2.30. Once again this week, I have the option. It's been happening a lot lately. Unfortunately, because you get your buddies calling. Oh, please.

So, yeah, for me, what a game. And the second straight year. And how about Charles Barkley just being crushed by Houston back-to-back seasons? And then that same broadcast crew of Greg Gumble and Bill Walton were the ones that were on the call when John Stockton hit the shot. ironically the only rocket highlight of the last dance video or a documentary that we saw on ESPN was stocking in that shot to win the 97

finals West. So there you have it. I do remember Bill Walton saying, uh-oh, what they should have said was who's got a hold of Clyde Drexer's uniform? Oh, that's Carl Malone, flat out holding him.

Why are we going to bring that up? I know. Today's about the good anniversary stuff. Yes. Rossi. For the good time. 25 years ago today. I believe it was a Sunday afternoon in Phoenix, if I'm not mistaken. Wait a minute.

Then I was, was I only 10? Yeah, I was only 10. So you're even sweeter and cuddlier back than you are now? I was very shy. God, I want to meet shy Ross. Because the one I know right now is far from shy. It was a very shy young man. Maybe it's that facial that you got going.

All right. If you'd like to join us today, 713, 212-5-790, 7-13-212-5-7-9 if you want to join us. If you like to be a part of the show through Twitter, you can join us there as well at at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Joe George Radio. Money could be a problem for a lot of NFL teams, including your beloved Houston Texans,

if they don't play with fans this season. I'll give you the latest details on that. Plus, there is a story out there this morning about a pair of NFL players who were harassed sexually on a flight. What? And they're suing the airline for it. United Airlines. Not the friendly skies. What kind of United Club were they trying to get into?

No, it's not the, no. No, it was the women that were going after, the woman going after the guys. This is the reverse. Interesting. Let me tell you about bronze roofing. That's interesting, too. You want to save your home from lots of damage and potential repairs when it comes to roofs. Then you've got to call bronze roofing.

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That's B-R-A-U-N-S. Bronzeroofing.com. This is linebacker Whitney Mercilus. Take the best coverage of your Houston teams with you wherever you go. Get Sports Talk 790 on your I-Heart Radio app. Open it up or download it today. 1232 on the Matt Thomas show. Good afternoon.

Some startling numbers have come in from Forbes magazine about revenues for NFL teams when it comes to you, the fans going to the games. We'll give you some details on that coming up at just a couple of seconds. 1.45 today, which talking about Tim Kelly makes his debut on the show as the new offensive coordinator for the Texans.

We'll speak to the media. He's going to call plays for maybe a couple weeks. I was going to say, would it be really doing an over-under on is he calling plays by October 15th? I think the day we found out of that, we did the over-under, and we made it like a week or something. How long it did it last last time?

Was it a week? No, George Gatsy did it longer than that. It was only a few weeks, I think. And it wasn't like they made this announcement. I think Bill O'Brien during a press conference just dropped the bill. I'd take it over it again. Bill O'Brien is...

What do you call it? Control freak? Is that what you would call? He needs his hands and everything. He's the emperor. He's the king, yes. He's not even a micromanager. He just manages everything.

And he's always so nice about telling us all these different people to do things for them. It's because they're all yes, men. Three games in. God, that's it? Yeah. Oh, I think it's going to be way longer than that. First of all, I think the team's better. And secondly, he knows that people are going to keep an eye on how long this guy's going to be running,

Tim Keller is going to run the offense. Problem is this. Will he ever really run the offense? Will he ever build or really dial up some things that Bill O'Brien wouldn't normally do? or is he just going to be, you know how you name, you know, you have an assistant manager of a restaurant or assistant manager of an office. But you just, there's no room to flex to show off what you can do, innovation. You're just going to be doing what the leader wants you to do. Yes.

Call plays like Bill O'Brien wants you to play and call him. So, yeah, in week three, I don't even remember this. They lost of the Patriots 27 and nothing. And that's when Bill O'Brien said, all right, I'm calling. place. But wasn't the gotsy-hire kind of dicey to begin with? I don't remember thinking that. I don't need it. I don't know. But it just, it felt like, again, it was just somebody in the O'Brien coaching tree that got a chance to get bumped up and maybe did he, he had never been an offensive coordinator before, right?

Yeah, before that he was quarterback's coach for the Texans. Okay. Let's go to Derek on seven out of your 1235. Derek, good afternoon. Hey, Mr. Thomas, can you hear me today? Yes, sir. What's going on? I was listening to y'all talking about the Rockets and the All-Star and I guess I have a quick question Did Robert Ory ever start an all-star game or make an all-star game? I don't believe so You don't believe, okay, because I was thinking that could have

When you guys are talking about the question What are you going to do on Friday? I was the first of the pop in my mind Was Robert Ory, it wasn't Mario Ellie It was Robert Ory. Robert Ory had seven championship your rings, in my opinion, two of them is because of him. Two of those rings, one with the Lakers, one with the Rockets, two of me, two of those

championships belong to him. Yet Robert Ory never made an All-Star game. And his nickname is, pickshot Bob. You know, to me, I thought about it, and you think about he never, you know, he never did. Shout out to Robert Ory. Great jump shot. Good, very good player. He was only at the white place at the right time for a lot of these scenes.

He never made an All-Star game. And I was like, oh, okay. See, that's why it's going to be very difficult, thanks, Derek, to really separate yourself from this list. Because, as Derek now just pronounced it to us, those are the top two picks. I mean, there are other great players that have never made an All-Star game that have played for the Rockets before.

But to me, those would be the two that were so associated with the championships. So it almost feels like we're going to have to draft how your fourth and fifth round selections are may determine how you win this fantasy could be tough Matt the top is stacked the bottom is where you get your good value God you sound like Kuiper back there

are McShay Yep By the way is McShay over the virus Coronavirus is he okay I don't know We haven't heard word one from him He did a podcast With Shifty What it was more about

Shifty Wait a minute I didn't realize you guys are that tight That's what everyone calls him Okay It's not Well I mean I guess you could With Adam Shefty

sir. And he said that it was more about how he was bummed that he missed the draft, but he was feeling okay. He never said the one that I listened to that he was like over it. You know why he was bummed is because Kuyper's like, this is my territory, bitch. Let's go. Yeah, he lost on like the one. He works for a year for one like three or four days. And he lost it.

Yeah. And apparently he was on the Adam Schefter podcast. He also said he didn't get to see his kids for five weeks. Oh, because he was in quarantine? Because he didn't know if he had it. He self-quarantine and then he was in quarantine, yeah. You know, if you live in the north and you have a house, you could do a basement thing really easily. It's true.

That's what you don't have, you know, not. I think of something, when I lived in Salt Lake City, I had a huge basement. My basement was probably almost 2,000 square feet. What did you do down there? Not much. Was there, I mean, you said it was huge. Did you have like a pool table or anything cool? No, we built bedrooms down there.

Oh. And we had that, remember we had the wine storage for the, right? when the rapture comes. The angel Maronai. By the way, the Maronai was spinning a little bit, apparently, in Salt Lake City a few days ago. Oh, really? Yeah, and it flipped everybody out. What is a, Maronai is a what?

Some do know the horn. Okay. I don't mean to say, I don't mean to be lachydical, but I don't really know what he is. Well, let's run through it. People are dying. There's a pandemic. Apparently there are locusts all over. There's like locusts infestations.

Yeah, there's those hornets, murder hornets. Murder hornets are here. Yeah. There's been floods. It's supposed to be one of the worst hurricane seasons in recent memory. Someone said Trump is our president. I wouldn't say that. I mean, 45% of America would say that.

I think 48% of the voting in public voted. Okay. You know how my philosophy is. 45 loves him, 45 hates him, and 10 can't figure it out yet. Well, he did lose the popular vote by 3 million. It is what it is. All right. Now we're going to shift away from politics because that's what we don't like doing.

we mentioned NF, there's these conflicting numbers about what every sport loses without having fans. In fact, that's part of the reason we're going to have Amandrelic on with us. He'll be able to give us a little more of a crystal clear detail of what baseball is going to be like without revenue in terms of stadium revenue, at least for the early going. And even if they're in September and they're playing ball games, like, if I gave you a, let's make a small little wage right now. I mean, we don't have to cash in it in it. by the end of the season, what will be the largest number of fans you think would be at a major league baseball park?

Well, you use Minutemate, 40,000 seats. By the end of the season? Like when they say, this is the largest crowd of the year. What do you think it'll be for Minutemate Park? 10,000? 10,000. Okay.

Write this down. We'll see how close we get on that. I mean, I have zero. I mean, yeah, I'm basing this off of nothing because I'm not an expert. I'd probably go on the under on that. Under. Yeah.

Not because I think people would be scared to go back. I just think it's the availability. The availability and hey, let's really make sure we're keeping people safe as possible. No, if they open it up to everybody, opening day, it would be a full crowd there. I mean, you've seen when they open up the beaches, everybody goes nuts and they're opening up bars. Everybody's going nuts and they're going out. The people don't care. So bars are at 50% this weekend.

Is that what I saw? Yes. Okay. And like you said, you were at. a restaurant and they were not adhering to the 25% were they? The two restaurants, the one restaurant I went to this past weekend was not adhering to 25%.

What percent full would you say it was? North of 50. I wouldn't say three quarters, but I would certainly say at least 50%, if not a little bit more. I mean, we've seen photos on the internet of bars and there's people out at the beaches and drove. So, I mean, the people are ready. They're ready. All right. So to the NFL,

the Dallas Cowboys in a single season, make $950 million in total revenue. Now, there's expenses that are associated with that, but that's $9.50 in total revenue. Their stadium revenue, meaning tickets, food, parking, shirts, anything that happens at AT&T stadium. $621 million. That's crazy. That's what about two-thirds of their money they make for a team happens at their stadium. That's incredible. So just putting in percent. This just shows you how much money in theory they could be losing this year.

The NFL owners could be losing if they don't have full crowns. Let me give you the Texans. The Texans in total revenue, $497 million. Their in-house, their stadium revenue is at 218, so it's a little less than half. So, in theory, if there are eight or nine home football games for the Texans and it's on a single person that goes in the stands, that's going to be $218 million in less revenue for the McNair family. Still doing well, because the TV contracts are going to be just off the charts, and as they always have been. And there's always the online stuff and different marketing deals

that leagues have. I mean, look, nobody, nobody's going to be crying over the NFL proceeds, but it is a dramatic difference. That, that to me is astonishing because, Ross, I feel like for the last two months, we've had so many conflicting reports about what percentages fans really put into the franchise in the stadiums. If there's anything close to that, the NBA is going to be in big trouble. Major League Baseball is going to be in big trouble. And for that matter, college athletics has to be in trouble because college athletics, I would assume, from total revenue to stadium revenue, is probably very, very close to each other. Because these TV, because most of these schools, not all of them, but most of them don't have these outrageously huge television contracts. And when they do, they share them with other, you know, Alabama shares with Vanderbilt.

Well, so do the NFL teams. Yeah, that's true. But there's no way that Alabama, I mean, I'm trying to think of how on our phrases. If Alabama makes $200 million a year in revenue, probably 150 of it, or 125 of it comes from the stadium. I mean, I bet their percentages are way higher because a full stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama is a cash cow from sales to sweets to donors to, to tickets to sponsorships, that's how they're going to make their money. The TV deals just aren't even close.

So it just kind of gives you a little perspective of what these teams could lose. In fact, the NFL says if there's not a fan of the stands this year between tickets, concessions, sponsors, parking, and team stores, they could lose $5.5 billion of stadium revenue or basically 38%

if you take all the teams together, 38% of their total revenue for the season. Just kind of a few numbers that kind of get over... They're all big numbers, but it's just kind of weird that we're seeing the numbers rise in terms of what we've been hearing

about what ultimately non-fans could cost these teams in all sports. 713-212-579. If you want to get out on the show today, 7-1-3-2-5-7-90 on Twitter at SportsMT, at SportsRB and at Joe-George Radio.

We're back with news of an interesting flight involving a couple of NFL players, 1244 on 790. Hey, it's Carmelo Anthony. The Matt Thomas Show. Continues. On your home of the Rockets. Sports Talk, 790.

Yes. 1247 of the Matt Thomas Show, 713, 212, 570. Some news from the Big 12 conference at the top of the hour here on the program. We are your home for Big 12 football, right? We carry Texas games. We carry the Texas Longhorns, the most storied program, at least in the state. Next to the University of Houston, sure. That's coming up in about...

Football we're talking about Matthew. It's right, because all athletics. Cougar baseball, Supreme Women's Basketball, and the Uptake, college basketball, a legitimate final four contender next year. I'll give you golf and track, but other than that. Track. Texas is also one of the most storied college baseball. It's the programs of all time.

Well, that's because you bought your way into having a bunch of home regionals. And you know I'm telling the truth on that. That's not true. You had to sing Texas fight after that series. It was an awful. That's because you guys bought your way. You said, we can't get on a bus and go to Houston and play. We're Texas.

An unnamed NFL player is suing United Airlines, alleging he was sexually harassed, assaulted, and violated by a female passenger on a February flight from Los Angeles to New York, or Newark, New Jersey. A passenger? Yeah. and that the airline failed to properly respond to complaints. The civil suit seeks unspecified statutory and punitive damages from the airline. Thought I heard a flight coming over, but maybe not.

According to the lawsuit, the player and another passenger in the same row made four complaints to flight attendants that the woman allegedly was making... I'm hearing Doug Pipe. Why am I hearing Doug Pye? What the hell's going on? back there, Joe? The woman allegedly is making unwanted sexual advances before she was moved to a different seat. I mean, that seems like they took care of it.

The two men are suing United, the lawsuit says, because the airline refused to give them the name of the woman, the flight attendants, and the potential witnesses, and because the airline failed to follow policies to respond to sexual harassment and assault on the February of 10th flight. this story is getting juicer do we have any like juicy airline music in the background now don't play united airlines music is that they would probably wouldn't want that rhapsody and blue i believe is their song dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun uh according to the lawsuit if we had airline music i would be like doing the pilot

i guess i could yeah just go ahead and do it well folks according to the lawsuit uh sit back let me tell you about it the men first oh Well, there we go. Turn it up. Well, the men first alerted flight of tenants that the woman was disruptive and belligerent and appeared to be intoxicated. They noticed that the flight attendants again when the woman made sexual advances toward the NFL player, massaging his knees and thighs. What? Relaxing. I told you to sit back, relax, and we finish the story here. More than an hour into the flight, the woman advances in intensified the man alleged, and then she allegedly grabbed and grew up. the player. Flood attendants were once again notified. The woman continued her advances. The lawsuit

says pulling off the protective face mask the player was wearing and grabbing his genitals. What? At that point, the player jumped up from his seat and complained in front of the entire plane that a woman was touching him. The player went onto the rear of the plane and again notified a flight attendant. That's what the woman was removed from the row according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that United's failure to have or enforce a, have or enforce a, adequate policies and procedures for the prevention and response to the in-flight sexual assaults

is a breach of its duty to protect and care for its passengers. The woman? So basically here's, and I'm going to just give you my interpretation of this. Old nasty ass woman. She wasn't hot. If she was hot, there's no chance she was hot. We would have never heard anything.

No chance, no way, no how. She was hot. Not a little that she make any difference, but it does. But it does make a difference. I mean, we're going to be a grown ass about this. Yeah. I mean, it's anybody.

If you're a female, well, not a female, I guess it's a different scenario. If you're male and an attractive female just starts groping and getting all over you. On a plane. You're probably going to allow it to happen. And you're probably not going to say a word about it. You're certainly not filing a lawsuit. That's not sexist. That's just the truth.

Yes. So nasty-ass old woman. Guys trying to get his rescue. Well, L.A. and New York, I've done that. It's about a six-hour flight. It's a long, long, long flight. Chance for you to take a little town a L. P.m., whatever, sleeping pill. Get you some rest. It's an overnight flight. All the windows are going to be down. You can get some good shut-eye. Be good if you can fly in sleep. Not when someone's grabbing your junk. And apparently she went multiple junk grabbing. Two dudes, one NFL player, one not. So my guess is the following. Old nasty-ass woman who had had a few pops before the flight. and was Fritzky

and thought, you know what? United Flight 243 from Newark would be the chance for her to join the Mile High Club. Get some action. I mean, unless this flight is half empty,

which I guess, well, February 10th, no, that was before everything went down, right? Flight's full. Absolutely, it's got to be full. You can't get anything done on that, on a full flight? Well, there's a, there's a blanket.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, you can get something done, but. Joe, any thoughts? He's shaking his head, no. Why are you out of this, Joe? This is interesting. Come on, Joe, this is, you've been on planes of 49.

Hey, by the way, where is United based out of Joe, George? Chicago. I would just love that it says, the woman was disruptive, belligerent, and intoxicated. Yeah, so she's going for a little hanky-wanky on a fine. All right. And she had a few pops. Now, here's the question. I wonder if United served her any beverages beyond that.

Ooh, they could be culpable in that. I've seen them overserve on a plane. Definitely. I have been on probably, I couldn't even give you the number of flights. 6,000. 6,000. In the 6,000 flights have been on in my entire life. One time that I see someone get arrested.

And the guy was drunk when he got on the plane. He never, we were in, ironically, we were going from Las Vegas to Houston. He never shook out on the plane. His, I think it was his daughter or his young girlfriend. Somebody was with this dude and he was beyond blank-faced. He was in a row right in front of me. And he was so belligerent and they were very, very patient and very calm and said, sir, you've got to calm down. And he wanted zero part of that.

So as soon as we landed in Intercontinental Airport, cops arrested him immediately. Wow. But that's one time in 6,000 flights. And I'm just using that number as a number. never seen either anybody get i've seen people like over drunk and being loud and obnoxious but i haven't seen i've never even seen getting it like likes to fight guy drunk on a plane i've never even seen um sexual activity on a plane not that i would stare at it but my point is that well you wouldn't no time to relax in the plane rest say what you're doing over there but you know what i'm saying

what potentially could happen yeah like uh you know you just like i'm making noise like you're still awake. Like, or not even a make-out session. Like when you're in your college roommate, the college dorm and you're trying to be quiet or the other people, and you're like, oh, come on. Are they really doing this right now? Yes, that's happening. That's happening.

Yeah. That's happened to me before. Well, I had to do that when I was an Uber driver. I would jam the brakes a little bit if people were getting a little too feisty in the back. So you were anti-feiciness in the back of your car? Why would I want, yeah. Why would I want people getting after it in the back of my car? Well, maybe they felt very comfortable in your vehicle.

Yeah, but I had cloths. seats. I don't have to clean that out. 1001, 1002, 1003, 1,000, 1,000, 5,000. I got a follow-up question. Of his Uber or United Airlines? So in Uber, you can get paid back for for vomit?

Yes. Is there... All right. All right. Big 12 puts out a deadline. See, I... This is where he jumps in? I regret asking you to jump in on this conversation. Shame on me.

Yeah. to break check those people who were getting after it. Did they apologize to you ever? Or do they go, hey man, what's up? Yeah, they would just play cool. Because I'm very passive-aggressive, so I wouldn't be like, hey, guys, stop! And because then your star rating goes down. You know what I'm saying? Because you can't be like, hey, guys, stop making out because they're drunk and they're going to give you one star.

Okay. Yeah, keep the star rating up. Big 12 developments, sort of. Deadlines, sort of being put out there. 1257. It is the Matt Thomas show. 713-212.5.7.9. Evan Drelich. is going to, Evandrelic is going to join us from the athletic for a full half hour. I'm calling in a deep dive into baseball. That is coming up at 2 o'clock.

1.45. What's talking about Tim Kelly? You'll hear from the brand new Texans offensive coordinator. Right now, a message for TGS insurance. Would you like to save some serious cash on your home policy? You can do that today by texting the word money, Mone 1, 23, 23, 23, 23, and getting with the folks at TGS Insurance. when you text money to 23, 23, 23, they'll ask for your address back when they text you. You type that in, 15 seconds later, you're going to get a quote.

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7-13-212-5-7. I just went and checked the ESPN on the front page of their website. it says Barnwell counts down NFL's off-seasons from worst to first. Oh, no. Without even me looking. Because every time the Texans have done something, Bill Barnwell has destroyed them. Rushed Bill O'Brien. Let me save that for a little bit.

Okay. Because I just know what I'm going to read is going to be everything that I think it's going to be. Real quick, as I teased it, the Big 12, Bob Bowlesby. we've seen him at Big 12 Media Days for multiple years. We've never had him on the show. Well, he's very busy. Well, I don't know how interesting is a commissioner. Sometimes it can be good.

If there's something big about a realignment or something like that, maybe the, you know what? It'd be interesting to ask him about the athletes, what is it, names, likenesses and whatever. Do you think he would have a definitive statement on there? Yeah, I guess he couldn't really say he's got to be, you can't really come out and say anything about that. You've got to be careful. I used to have Mike Slive on when I was here in many years ago. He was a commissioner of conference USA. He turned out to be the future commissioner of the SEC. Really, when SEC got their SEC network and all that, that was Mike Slive. He did all that. And he's now no longer with us. But he was a really good guy and I really enjoyed getting to know him.

Well, Bob Bolsby says he, the Big 12 conference does not have a date set for its return to sports. He did, however, say yesterday that the league needs to be, quote, up and running by mid-July if the college football season is going to start on time. He tells ESPN, if we're not, we're looking at it probably having to delay the season a little bit, but it's too early in a little if we're going to be able to make that or not. Again, nothing earth-shattering, but at least we're starting to see some more timelines put into play, right? Let me ask you this. SEC says we're ready.

Big Ten says we're ready. Okay. ACC says we're ready. Pac-12 is like, man, hell, no, we're not ready. And the Big 12 says, we're not sure. How many teams does it take? And this is a rhetorical question. How many teams it take for those mega-conferences?

Because that's how college football run it by the mega-conference, the Power 5, to say, we're going. Let's go. If the Big 12 says we're not ready, but the ACC and the SEC does, then what do they do? Do they go on? What if we have, let's give me, let me give you an extreme example of that. Go ahead. What if one says we're ready and they're the only one?

They just all play each other. And SEC, you could do that conceivably. There's, what, 14 teams in the A of, SEC? Yeah. You could make 12 games out of that for every team. Yeah, you could place, as we talked about on the show yesterday, you could place a couple of teams, well, actually, a couple, several, couple times. You could play them twice if you needed to, and then you obviously can go cross-divisional,

and you can, you just, you don't need anybody else if you're, the SEC. ACC's got like 16 teams or something. Because the reason why you're saying that is because they want their schools opened. They want their students back on campus and they want people in their stance. So I think in theory you don't need

if you're the Big 12, you do whatever you think you have to do or if you're the Big Ten or whatever. You don't have to follow the lead of the other conferences. Maybe you would want to but I don't think it's necessary. As long as you get all the schools on the same page,

The problem is, especially like the Big Ten, right? You have Rutgers in New Jersey, and then you got Iowa and all the way down to Nebraska and all that. Less heavily populated states, yeah. Yeah, so it makes it a little bit difficult. Or maybe if Rutgers says, hey, we can't do this, they're just out. But then what happens with the television money? What happens? I don't know. SEC presidents and chancellors are expected to meet and make a decision on Friday.

So it feels like to me one conference is going to be the lead dog on this. do the rest follow or do the rest say we're not ready to go and speak to what you're talking about is 15 teams, 14 teams playing college football this year. This feels like to me, either it's posturing, whether either it's still a lot of uncertainty, or this feels like this is going to be a complete jumbled mess of a college football season because there is not one governing body. The NBA are governed by one league over 30 teams. The NFL over governs 32. The NCAA has already said they're leaving it up to conference commissioners. So essentially five conference commissioners and the university president slash chancellors, there is no one man.

There's no grandiose grand Poubaugh commissioner. And that's why it feels like it could be a little chaotic this year. That's going to be. It's going to be segmented. It's going to be a little bit different. Or I guess best. case scenario is, I mean, you have most colleges talking about coming back early, right?

And then being done by Thanksgiving? All I'm saying is the easiest thing, the best than they can do, Ross, this is telling grown-ass men that run multi-million dollar operations, they should all be unified on this. I don't think you want to have,

if the PAC 12 says we can't do it, then they can't do it. But I don't think you want SEC schools returning back to campus on July 1st and then big 12 schools going back August 15th, Big 10 schools going back September 1st and trying to put together a schedule. I think it would be chaotic. It would be frankly unfair to the kids and it would make it a very uneven level of competition in my opinion. I mean, and what's the level of power? Like an athletic director can't, I mean, that's the school president's job, right? Oh yeah. This goes above 80s. The AD can't just be like, hey, guys, let's go

and start this up so we can play football. But that will be factored in. This goes to conference commissioners. The five most important people in college football are the commissioners of each of the five power conferences. So it's going to take five grown-ass men who have to hear from the people that they represent and they're going to have to speak on behalf of those particular schools. So instead of one person, it's going to be five. The problem is you've got five different parts of the country. You have five different levels of schools. You've got five different levels of budgets. Meanwhile, today, University of Michigan, coach Jim Harbaugh said, we can play without fans.

Well, guess what? That's because Michigan's got millions and millions of dollars coming in because they've got awesome shoe deals and apparel deals and television deals. And they've been able to pocket millions and millions of dollars because they draw 110,000 people their games every week. That's not the same to be said for what's going on at Kansas State. Kansas State needs 50,000 people in their stadium. to fund their athletic department.

And they're in a big, they're in a Power 5 school conference. So Harbaugh, again, well, I understand why you believe what you do, there's very few of you. There are very few college programs that make money.

Very few. Michigan happens to be one of them. Because they got 110. They've got a hellaciously large alumni who chips in millions and millions of dollars. They got a really nice TV contract with the Big Ten Network and with Fox. Jordan Brand Apparel.

Yeah. all that good stuff. So that might be the most interesting. You know, we're all watching what major league baseball does and watching, but they at least are unified. I feel like the NBA is very unified with Adam's sort of running things. I feel like there's going to be a variety of different agendas on the college football so they could make things very, very uneven.

And I don't think we want any uneven season. We love college football, but we want, we don't want to know that, like I said, we talked about yesterday. I don't know if I'm thrilled that A&M is going to play 11 games and that Texas is going to play eight. You know, it just seems kind of weird how that's going to turn out. It's going to be a weird year. It's just going to be one of those years.

Soobes, League City on 790. Subs, what's a good word? Hey, guys. Unfortunately, one of the COVID victims in terms of work. So, but I'm happy to be back home in Houston. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Hope and for the next job. And you got it.

That's right. So I know these guys, well, one of them might be in your list. But in terms of the rock, it's like as a kid, like when they were on Channel 20, when it was, you know, 20-vision-vision, whatever. Buck Johnson was one of my favorite ones to watch just because, I mean, all he did was dunk on past breaks, but it was just pretty cool, you know, does he do that? Vernon Maxwell, another, just more of his attitude, tenacity, and just,

I had a Vernon Maxwell jersey until I went to Afghanistan, and it just, I mean, that has holes in it, Wilchard, faded letters, but those were my two. And I know that's not what you guys are fasting because you get to, thing on Friday. But the real reason why I'm calling in addition to that, Ross is right. And as a retired Uber driver, you have people who wanted to feel spicy that would try that. With me, it was always like midtown crowd. They would always try. Yes. You know, and you could smell like the wine or liquor.

Like, I had an accurate yell with leather seats. And yes, that's your official question. You can charge them. any type of, you know, on organic, I don't know how to say it, but any type of, you know, whatever, that comes from the body. Bodily fluids. Yeah, I didn't want to, I didn't know if I could say it in my FCC. But me and Ross to share, like, many Uber stories. And when I started doing a couple years ago, and I remember listening to him,

and we talked at, it was a Texan Saints preseason game at the one of the, one of the, your viewing parties over and over in Willebro. But I remember we shared so many stories that I was just like, holy, cow. That's not even like telling you what, you know, as the Uber driver, like you are, there's people that always try and hit on you. They just always try it. And that's why I was like, you know, I got to stop because I don't want, you know, any allegations or whatever. And, you know, you're just trying to get people home from off the road. But anyways, I love you guys show. I miss, you know, you guys. It's out there. The internet was horrible. I decided to get those.

And you guys aren't hard too much. Ross looks like my boy Pablo from Narcos with the So going on. I love it, man. A new producer, nice to meet you. I also want to give a shout out to TIF and ATX Holo. Those are my peeps and death by sexy and all the other seven-nine-knit family. And Derek, shout out to you, too, and Larry and Saford. I miss you guys.

Godspeed, man, and I'll talk to you as soon. All right, Subs, keep us update on your work and life, okay, my friend? We'll do. We'll see you later. All right, that's Sube's calling in. Appreciate that. Thanks. Yes, we did.

We might have shared an off-air Uber story or two. Are you sure we can do a podcast of your crazy-ass Uber stories? Yes. And like he said for sure, is you don't want to do anything or engage in anything. Even if, I mean, there's just no reason to. It sounds cool and salacious, but you just don't want to get a hit with a lawsuit or something. So it's just not be a good Uber driver. Just pick your driver up.

Chat with them if they want. Take them home. And that's that. Sorry, Matt. I don't believe in any of that. Yeah, you want... Hey, by the way... You want taxi cab confession stories.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Nobody watched taxi cab confessions for, hey, pick me up at the airport, take me downtown to my hotel. Thank you very much. See you later. Nobody wanted that. Sorry, Matt, but that's the best way

to go about your business. That's not how we make great radio or television. Sorry. Taxicab confessions involved. Well, why don't you go start driving? You're not doing anything after... If I hated to drive... I hate the drive, I don't want to.

Hire somebody to drive for you while you drive Uber. Give them a cut. Like, we could do tag team Uber. I'd be in the passenger seat. Yeah, that's what they're trying to do back there. That's the reason why you probably don't do it that anymore. Fair enough, I've been corrected.

114 is at time. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. It is a Matt Thomas. Shall we take this program to 3 o'clock today? Coming up in a half an hour, what's talking about? New Texans offensive coordinator? You think it's going to be good?

I don't think I've ever heard his voice. It's like I never heard Jack Esterby speak for a little bit, but I wasn't completely sure that was him either. 713-212-5-790 with a message here for Shaw's Jewelry. They have been around in the Houston area since 1966. No faux sales. Prices are beyond competitive. Don't shop online because you need to see what you're looking for and purchasing for that special someone in your life first. And you can do that today by going to the corner of West Gray and Montrose.

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Three. At two. Hey, is Joe Green. The Matt Thomas show continues. Three quarter, nothing but. On Sports Talk 790. Milo! On me your Rockies.

A lot of you are emailing and sending me tweets about how you want to know what flight number that was between L.A. and Newark. That was a one-time occurrence, Ross. That's not what a flight attendants do. This was an old woman on a plane, a passenger, not the flight attendants. Yeah. And flight attendants just aren't what they used to be. I feel like, right? Oh, if you think I'm going down this road, you're crazy.

It's all let Joe do it. Joe, are flight attendants as hot today as they were 10 years ago? No. Care to further explain? I don't think it's a lucrative business anymore. It sucks for the pilots now, too, right? When I was a kid, pilots were making six figures comfortably coming out of flight training school, whatever they went to. You know, a lot of them had a Air Force background, Navy background.

I was told like five or six years ago, I think I may have written a story that, you know, the regional jets that the airlines use that are smaller planes that have like two seats on each side. You know what a regional jet is, right? The 37 or 57 seats jets. Some of those cats were making like 37-5 coming on like flight school. Wow. I think my, I got a buddy who's a new pilot, and I think he's under 40. That's. But, I mean, You're doing less now, right? Well, you're flying less people is the problem.

Well, and is it more of a set it and forget it type of deal to be a pilot? Like how difficult. You're only there for if things go wrong. Like up and down. Yeah. I would certainly hope not. I would not like to go on a plane and go, you know, once we take off, I don't do much, but just sit there. Yeah, that's why I mean there's the old, the drug pilot trope.

I was a drug pilot for Halloween once. How'd that go? It was good. I had a drunk, and my date was a drunk flight attendant. By the way. And we got drunk. I got a couple of sports times I want to pass along. But one time I was, this is within the last five years, we landed in Intercontinental.

It was a United Flight. Guy lands and says, hey, I just won't let y'all know. Innovation is amazing. The autopilot landed this plane. And I didn't, I wasn't like happy about that. Do you don't trust the, you don't trust the autopilot? Thank God. Nothing went wrong.

obviously and thank goodness there were live pilots in the in the cockpit ready to land if there's any problems yeah but I don't know if I brag about that you think eventually do you think they'll be in like 20 years it's possible there's no pilots no no circumstance they'll always be someone there just in case like I never envision remember those those those cars that were driving you the Tesla has auto drive now yeah but you can't be other cars have auto drive but no one it's not going to be like like I you guys know I I don't like to drive. I have a bad example.

I guess I drive to King one to him from. I didn't work. But I would never get in a vehicle in the backseat with not a live person in the front and say, take me somewhere. I have no chance, no way of that. Would you drive with an auto drive? Yeah. You're just going to hang there. Yeah.

Because Matt Buller talks about his Tesla. Matt Buller took me from, I had my car was at Intercontinental one time, was we had a different flight than the rockets. And we landed at Hobby, and he took me in his Tesla from. hobbyed Intercontinental and he and I talked. We watched stuff on YouTube. We listened to music. And the only time he'd ever have to touch the vehicle was just to make sure that he had to put his hand on the on the wheel, just every like every 90 seconds or so. But the car did all the driving. So it was, it was fascinating and cool. And you felt very, I felt very safe. But no, I'm not going to be in a car with someone behind the wheel. Okay. So again, going back to how this story

began, please don't send us stories about what flight number those girls are on. Because it was one woman, and apparently it was unwarranted. She was just a passenger, right? Correct. All you sicko Cinemax movie, people at 1230 in the morning want to watch something else. Nauty flight attendants. Who wants to join the Mile High Club? All right.

713212-790. 713-212-570. We're about 20 minutes away from the inaugural edition of which you're talking about Tim Kelly. Wonderful. That's really. It's more. segment that is mine. But I don't know. I mean, look, I've gotten a really good feel for the way Bill

O'Brien is going to attack for certain questions. And now, I don't know what Tim Kelly's going to say, but we'll have to guess. Yes. So don't judge me too harshly, man. No, you'll get a, you'll get a nice curve on this first part. Thank you. 713-212-5-7-9 if you want to get in on Twitter again, at SportsMT, at Joe George Radio, and at SportsRV. Have you noticed in the last couple of days? We had Pizza Man on the show yesterday who was bitching a moment about how he was being treated. Yes. And now Horace Grant is losing his effing mind over this. Horace Grant is not happy.

Horace Grant wants to settle it like men, according to him. I want to play a couple of bits of audio from him because he is in absolutely no condition to be talking about his relationship. He and Michael got sideways. He is basically the gist of Sam Smith's book. is that a lot of people didn't like the way the Chicago Bulls were being run with Michael Jordan, how bad a bad teammate he was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the presumption back then was, it was, Horace Grant was telling this to Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune, who was a Bulls Breit writer at the time.

He was like, that wasn't me. He comes on and says it. We'll play some audio a little bit later in the show, but he basically says, if there's anybody snitchin, it's Michael Jordan. You remember in the very first last dance episode where he's this young rookie in the NBA, they're playing a pre-season game in Peoria, Illinois. And he's talking about going to the hotel room where there's drugs and booze and girls. And he says, I am a pure rookie.

I want no part of this. He was the one that was snitching. Am I right? Not right? I mean, I guess. You didn't name names or anything like that. I guess you could figure out who it was. Well, you go look at that roster.

It wouldn't take it long. It's 30 years after the fact. I didn't think of that as a big deal. It is interesting, though, that there's a lot of, I mean, apparently next to go out and we'll start saying some more things will be one Scotty Pippin. Because Scottie was involved. If you think about it, the last dance, who got the biggest? Middle finger.

Middle finger kick down to the integrity and the character of a player. I mean, Rodman didn't have a lot to begin with. He just knew he was a badass player when he played. But you knew he was wild as you know what. But I mean, I feel like Scotty in some of the biggest moments of the things against him, he shot himself in the foot in that documentary. He was asked about not going into the game when Tony Kukuch was going to get the last shot. He said he didn't have any regrets about it.

Or he would do it the same way or whatever he said. It's like, what are you talking about? So he was really as honest as anybody else in the whole thing. Bill Cartwright's got tears streaming down his face and apparently he had apologized and said maybe he shouldn't have done it. But then he's like, I don't regret it. Right. What?

Like, come on, Scotty. So Scotty took a pretty big fall. Horace Grant kind of got ripped. I thought Scott Borell got destroyed in terms of his manhood. And again on Scotty, when he's talking about their time about the injury and how it rubbed Michael the wrong way, he's like, I wouldn't get to mess up my summer. He just says, like casually says.

Yeah, it was a dumbass thing I did by not going in in the final shot play where Kookech is going to take the shot. But if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably do the same thing. And yeah, I missed the beginning of the season because my injury, foot injury. And yeah, I could have gotten surgery right after the season. but I wanted to go party, so whatever. And also on top of this, you ready? When Scotty Pippen got that original contract of seven years and $18 million,

who was the one person who said, don't sign it? Jerry Reinsdorf. Jerry Reinsdorf. He owned the Bulls. He wanted lifetime financial security. He did. And for his family. You have like 11 brothers and sisters or whatever it is?

But he also said, let me, it's time for us to tear this up and do this over again. And that's where Jerry could have done that. Yes. but didn't. Yes. Z had his hardline policy. He or Jerry Krause, whoever, of not renegotiating deals. It reminded me a little bit of Andre Johnson's situation here.

That you let Uncle, whatever his name was. Uncle Andre run this thing. Are you sure you want to send this for this a little amount? You had to have known at that time. Was it Cassidy or was it Rick Smith the time of signing that deal? Great question. I think Rick Smith. Rick Smith had been like, this is.

tremendous value. Just like Laramie Townsill felt like when he was signing the contract the other direction. He was like, man, I am completely taking the Texas of the woodshed of this one. This is great. This is the best. 713-212-5-790. One half hour from now, we're going to go to a deep dive

in baseball. Evandrelic from the athletic, former Houston Chronicle writer, and has been, along with Ken Rosenthal, doing some magnificent work. It hurts because some of their biggest story, the biggest story in baseball, co-wrote with Rosenthal on the Astroscanal, but definitely want to get to that.

713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. A couple updates on what's going on in the NBA. That's next. And again, we got which is talking about new Texans OC coming up in 15 minutes on Sports Talk 790. Hey, this is Whitney Mercer. Listen to real Texans talk on your smart speaker. Just say, hey, Google.

Play Sports Talk 790 on IHeart Radio. We should try to get Whitney on. We miss hearing from him. Got a big fat contract now. I feel like we deserve like 8% of that contract, don't? I mean, the young Whitney Mercil's used to be a regular appearance on the Matt Thomas show, don't you think Ross? We help build his brand.

I think his play on the field had more to do it than anything. So you're saying that we did nothing to help build the Whitney Marshall's brand? No. Okay. 8%. Aren't you still supposed to get his fourth football or whatever? He hasn't scored a touchdown yet. May I be waiting for me.

Remember James Casey, though, gave me his football. Did he really? We did it for charity. Remember when we used at the James Casey show? At the Hard Rock Cafe? Had a Hard Rock Cafe? Yeah. That's right.

Damn, this show was old. Been around a long time, Maddie. Joe George's in diapers last when the show began back in 2010. Yeah, that's because he had an issue. I was not in diapers. Well, we don't know that. I was graduating high school. So you weren't wearing diapers?

No. You sure? Yes. I thought you had that overnight issue. No. No, that stopped when I was in like fifth grade. Okay. So you stop wearing diapers in the fifth grade.

At least we had that. Thank you for that. 135 of the bad time to show. A couple of tidbits. Yeah. Oh, he suspended you for the segment. Oh, I'm suspended my own segment. Damn, that's harsh.

Ohio State Athletic Director, Gene Smith, just said moments ago that he's confident that a plan can be implemented where college fans of his school, Ohio State, the Ohio State University, can attend games at Ohio Stadium where 20 to 30,000 fans can attend. I can do a quick Google check. So Ross talk about something about this as I look at the attendance at Ohio Stadium, what the capacity is. It's got to be 100. At the shoe, as they call it, it's got to be around 100,000, I believe 100,000 plus.

It is. Now, remember, Wikipedia when Lowe's. lie to us. No, they wouldn't. Where is the attendant? 104-944. So basically 105,000 people. So that's what? A little less than a third? 20 to 30,000.

I mean, that sounds nice, but isn't that going to bankrupt if a lot of school, not bankrupt, but it's going to severely impact the financial dollars that are coming in? 20 to 30,000. So let's dumb that down. If you have

H's seats 40. That's 4 to 5? Well, I mean, almost 30%. So, my 10? Yes. Most college football teams are between, what, say, 1565, 50, 70? Power conferences. Power conferences.

Yeah. Get to smaller, obviously. There's hundreds that aren't that big. I like, I want to see how they do it. Because I can't, they're going to do it. They're going to play football. They're going to make some money, but I, good luck softball. Good luck volleyball. Good like track and field.

These schools are going to have just dwindling numbers of non-rev sports, which makes you then think, you know what? Maybe the end of the day, these football teams should just create their own league. Call it the amateur football league. This very could well possibly turn college sports on its head, and it's kind of looking like it will. It's very interesting because you think of all these hundreds of millions of dollars that they make, and you should ask yourself, where does it go?

I mean, you got to pay the coach, you got to pay the assistance. Scholarships. The players don't, I mean, I guess the scholarships. But how much of that, I guess it's the food facilities? Because classes don't cost really the college anything, right? They just book them in a class. And it's like you're taking a seat that was maybe going to be empty anyways. Or maybe you have to pay an extra professor.

I don't know. I don't know. And you're talking about when he comes to the football team, what, 90, 90 kids? kids, how many are even on scholarship? Is it that many? 65. Yeah. So 65 of them on scholarship.

An average scholarship probably cost you 20,000 a year. So you're looking at about a million and a half, maybe if you had a few more out of states. We've been doing a lot of math the last couple months. Well, you know what? Here's the problem. We're doing math and we're not math people. So I feel like any time you guys hear a number from us, either double or take and a half.

Take it with a great assault. Numbers not official. Exactly. Numbers pure speculative. I just, well, here's the thing. What if I just said this? That this year, the college football is going to take it in the shorts financially. And that 2021, everything would back to normal again.

I mean, can school survive with one year of, if Ohio state's making X dollars, are they going to be able to make it off of just 30% of X dollars? That's what I'm wondering. What's going to happen? What's going to be the economic impact? I don't even wonder that for college sports. I wonder that for everything and businesses and all that type of stuff. Well, are you, let me ask you this.

Are you worried about a single and. NFL owner. No. I'm not. So this year for them is just going to be a massive loss year. Right? Yes. Are you worried about a single Major League baseball owner?

I'm not, but should I be? The A's, you have to be. The A's already missing rent payment. They're missing a rent payment. So you've got to feel like that's a huge red flag. The A's already telling their landlord, hey, the check cash price is closed. I've got to come back. On the NBA side of things, we've got a local.

owner here that's not getting crushed because the rockets aren't playing. He's getting crushed because his restaurants were closed for a long period of time. Yeah, so he's getting crushed both ways. Yes. But if, but if he didn't, you know, so he has to, what he basically has to do, which we're talking about Tillman Fortuna, he has to rely on his restaurants to pay off his basketball team. Or you would think in theory paying off the dollars for that.

He didn't, he, I don't think he had three million, three billion dollars just sitting around going here, have it, have it. I mean, he needed to, to make sure his, his. companies worth surviving. So I guess it all depends. Like, for instance, Jerry Jones, his business is the NFL. His business has made Bukus and Bukus and Bukus of cash that it's, that him losing $300 million as crazy as it may sound.

If he was to lose that kind of money this year, he's going to make that money back next year because the NFL, in theory, hopefully you'll have back the full stadiums by, say, 2021 or 22. You have to resell some of those yachts or something. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what these guys' savings are because they're all acting like it's just going to crush them. Because, I mean, if you're making millions and millions and millions every year.

Like, are the players in baseball being asked to take this revenue split because they're afraid that these teams are going to go under because they're going to go broke and bankrupt? Or are they doing it because the owners want to shed less money this year? And that's why I think... Who are you asking? That's why I think the players are like, you know what? Okay, so you're not going to make booke who's a cash next year. But guess what? In 2021, you'll be just fine.

In 2022, you'll be just fine. Sorry, a pandemic got in your way of making your ridiculous amounts of money. Yeah. But I also think, and we can talk about this maybe in the next segment, or I mean, maybe later on the show, because we've got to do what you're talking about, Tim. I am wondering, we talk about the 94 strike and baseball went away, and people found other things to do. Five years. It took five years.

Is that going to happen? with certain sports now? Well, that's what I would tell Major League Baseball. Do not eliminate this season because it's going to cost you five years to get it back. Matter of fact, it mayn't take you more because there's other things to do in 2020 that there wasn't to do in 1994. I also think you say five years, but without Sammy and without McGuire, is it really five years? It might have been longer. Isn't it possibly much longer without the home run chase?

Baseball can't replicate that summer ever again. So they're just going to start handing everybody roids when they come back? You mean to tell me that somebody going after Pete Rose's hit streak? Not Pete Rose's hit streak. Joe DiMaggio's hit streak couldn't replicate the excitement around baseball? Maybe it could. That somebody going for Ted Williams, you know, batting 400 for the first time since he's on it, would not get people fired up. Jose L. Tuve, they're going to hit 406.

Matt Thomas called it. No, I'm not saying that. No sure Thomas? No, I'm not saying that. you saw a record in a dynamic stat changes sports. So why can't those? So you would need another one potentially. Al-Cubei going for 400 would be amazing.

But you know what? To your point, though, taking a record in getting sports back into play because somebody's doing something magical is a pretty dangerous risk you to roll in the tank. Not just great competition, not great teams, not big cities, but it took two dudes going after a longtime home run mark that ultimately got the sport bank. All right, the debut of what you're talking about Tim Kelly. This is going to be interesting.

I don't know how this is going to plow. This could be a golden-grade bit or it could be a hot mess. That and Evendrelic from The Athletic in 18 minutes. It is the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790 with a message here for the Shell Federal Credit Union. Shell FCU offers ideal. mortgage financing with something for everyone. Fix rate, purchase, refinance loans. You'll get low down payment options. No closing cost programs are available. All the loans are completed in-house from start to finish, which means your loan will never be sold. It stays with FCU the whole time.

And you'll get $500 in cash back on every mortgage loan, all from the gang at the Shell Federal Credit Union with 10 Houston area locations. And now Shell FCU has reopened all their lobbies, social distancing practices are in place. Visit shellfcU.org that's shellfcU.org to learn more about visiting a branch lobby in person. Welcome home to ShellFCU. Tyler White here. Back to Matt Thomas. And it is gone. And sports talk 790. Home of Astros baseball. We here at the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790 are not afraid to try different bits. Some work out beautifully. Some are to utter disasters. I feel like, Ross, you've completely conquered, excelled at what you're talking about, Bill.

That's one reason I didn't want him fired after he was 4 and 12. Yeah, because you finally got his rhythm down a little bit. I present to you a brand new segment on the show. It's simply called this. Tim Kelly. Try it more time. A little higher, a little louder. More voluminous.

Tim Kelly. What you're talking about Tim Kelly? Sabrina, again going with the British card on that one. Tim Kelly. All right, here's how it works. I will give the slug, the little preview line. Ross has to guess what he thinks he says. We'll play the soundbite.

And then Joe George gives him a one-to-five-star rating. Boy, these all feel like gimmies. Really? I like that. I like that. I'm teaching via Zoom. 40 seconds. 40 seconds.

Teaching via Zoom. I don't even know his cadence or how we would talk. So I guess I just got to talk like me. talk like you and then you'll hear one and then you'll be able to figure it out. Obviously it's a difficult time and these are, you know, we have to change things up a little bit and it's not exactly the way we would want to teach these guys, but the guys have been good. They've been attentive. They've been showing up and it's unique. But we've been able to get a lot of good work done, a lot of productive work done. So overall, it's been pretty good.

It's really kind of a unique deal, right? because everybody seems to be more comfortable in front of the screen, whether it's in front of their phone or their tablet or their computers. So the communication that's going on right now between our players, you know, between one another, between coach to player, player to coach has really been encouraging. So while, yeah, you're able to kind of dive into those details and really, really, you know, I know we said getting the graduate level portion of it,

you know, I think you'd always really want to be able to get your hands on them and be able to use the grass. but for our guys to be able to come in here and approach this offseason the way to have in such an uncertain time, it's really been encouraging. You didn't mention uncertain time. I wanted to say unprecedented. I said different times. You got unique in. Yes.

Joe, let's give him a little slack on this. Yeah, I said, come on. No, it started off really strong because you said unique early and so did he. So I'll give you like a three and a half. Thank you. It's not bad. Next. 35, this is a little more of a challenge.

Okay. 35 seconds. We have great weapons at wide receiver. What you doing about? Tim Kelly. I mean, you look at the group that we have right now, losing DeAndre Hopkins was huge, but the group that we have right now,

when you look at, we just have everything. We have these guys who've been productive in this league. We have Randall Cobb, who's been great, who's been a pro bowler, and Will Fuller. We know that he can do as long as he's on the field, he can stretch the field and the speed guy. And Brandon Crooks has been one of the most productive wide receivers in the entire NFL in the last few seasons. So we've got a great group.

We've got a versatile group. And we're going to be really good at the wide receiver core this year. Yeah, we've got a great quarterback, a guy who's going to be able to distribute the ball, get the ball to the guys that are winning. And we've got guys who've won consistently for a long time, you know, scattered throughout that room. You look at Brandon. You look at Randall. You look at Will and Kenny, obviously, with the production they had last year. Kiki and DeAndreux.

Carter, Stevie Mitchell made some big plays, okay? You know, obviously those are guys that have produced and that are coming in, you know, with a great mindset, you know, with a chip on their shoulder and are working hard every day to make sure they're on the same page with the coaching staff and making sure they're on the same page with Sean. All right. I did say they've had production and he did say they have produced. Yeah, but you didn't mention DeAndre Carter.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did he mention Hopkins? No. neither one of you did no Ross well I did I did it oh then you lose points for that yeah whatever

but I want to give Ross bonus points because he doesn't have that whistle going on or whatever yeah what is happening it's called the video feed no it's got some kind of yeah it's weird rough sounds like your headphones

yeah I need you to just do this while I'm talking Joe just go no don't do that Ross I give you like a that's fine two all right last one great effort

appreciate it Say the best for last. 27.8 seconds. Here we go. Tim Kelly. On calling plays for the first time. Well, you know, calling plays is all about preparation. And I've been a part of the preparation for years of the NFL.

And it's about being there and being in that meeting room and knowing what situation we are and what we kind of want to do conceptually. So that's something that I am prepared for and something I am aware of. Obviously, it's a new challenge, and I'm excited to do it, and I'm happy to do it, and looking forward to that challenge this season. Yeah, I think anytime you're doing something for the first time, there's going to be, you know, some form of learning process. So last year, being in the offensive coordinator position, you know, for the first time, it was, you know, the first time I'm done.

So I was learning something from OB every week, every game, every day we're in there. So, you know, being able to take those lessons and make sure that we're able to improve in certain areas. as we moved forward here was a good thing. Ross, I feel like your message was the same, though. Yeah, thank you. I don't think anything you said was similar, but your messaging. The generalities basically. The generalities were in the same ballpark.

You both were in right field. Three. I'm just not going to crush you. It's the first time any of us have heard of speak. Yeah, I can't, you know what? I can't get inside the mind of Tim Kelly. It's his first press conference like this. It's your first time.

His answer is better. Like everything Tim Kelly said, I was like, but Ross, I was like, you know what? I kind of like, I'll answer the answer. So Ross, as Tim Kelly is better than to play Tim Kelly soundbites each day for the next two weeks? No. I hope not. Well, I think some do. I mean, we're not going to do that.

Constant soundbite. That's not how we would rule here. All right. It's easier to get inside the mind of a Bill O'Brien. It's about me and I hate you guys. Evan Drellick is going to join us to talk baseball, deep dive, two segments with Evendrolics. If you're a baseball fan, Evandrelic, the athletic, joins us after Ross tells you how to feel a little energized. Well, I can tell you how to feel energized.

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No cost to you. They've got locations all over town. They make it easy and convenient for you. That number again, 833 Fix Low T. 833 Fix low T or go online to 833 FixLotie.com and tell them you heard it right here on Sports Talk 790. It is 2 o'clock on Sports Talk 790. very excited to have our next guest with us for a better part of a half an hour.

He's agreed to a couple of segments, and we greatly appreciate that. Former Chronicle Astros beatwriter, and now making a name for himself alongside Ken Rosenthal, a dynamic one-two baseball journalism crew. We had to Ken on the show a couple weeks. We say hi now to Evan Drellick of the Athletic. Evan, long time, no talk. How are things? Do you feel more or less encouraged every single day when you pick up your text,

messages, phone calls about the future of a 2020 season? Overall, I'm still optimistic, but the last week, with all the rhetoric going back and forth between the league and the union, the fact that the union hasn't gotten a response from its financial documents yet, they still have to go through all these health protocols, there's just a lot going on right now where it pushes the goal line a little bit further in the distance. I still am of the opinion, and I might just be a little naive. that there's no way they're not going to find a resolution on the economic. And then the question becomes, we have baseball, can baseball laugh through the pandemic, through a postseason.

And I want to get more into that towards the back half of the interview, but let's rewind a little bit. First of all, and this is a bittersweet congratulations to yourself, because you and Ken killed it on the coverage of the Astros stealing scandal. unfortunately it devastates all of us here in Houston for how things came into play. Are you finding even new facets to this, even to this day, or have things pretty much settled down when it comes to everything you want to know, need to know about what happened during that time, and what your reaction around baseball is, even to this day about that? I don't know if you ever know everything you'd like to know,

but certainly our focus, I'll speak for kind of a little bit. You know, we've been focusing lately on, is baseball going to come back? So I think a lot of people who are paying attention to sign feeling in depth, you know, in spring training, for good reason, everybody's attention has been focused elsewhere on something that's probably ultimately more important, even inside the scheme of baseball. But there will always be questions. You know, you can never prove what you don't know with other teams. it's one of those topics that I think will remain somewhat fascinating for a time.

And Ross wants to piggyback on a couple things, but I want to piggyback of what you just said. A lot of folks here in Houston, and Ken was on with us a couple of days after the ruling came down from the Red Sox, that it felt like that part of the reason, now again, we're not trying to equate what the Red Sox are being accused of as compared to the Astros. I want to be very clear on that. I think you understand when I'm coming on this. but a lot of folks feel like Evan that because there wasn't somebody inside the Red Sox clubhouse as forthcoming as Mike Fires was to you and the Astros, that we don't know all the details. And Ken was the first to admit that.

What is your personal opinion about the punishment? And did you get everything you wanted to get out of the MLB's investigation of what the Red Sox did? I think there's a difference between the findings and the investigation. The Red Sox investigation, at least by the numbers in terms of the... the number of people they spoke with, length of time, you know, documents reviewed, at its stake, seemed to have been quite thorough. It's the finding that I think leaves people uncomfortable, the notion that this was one rogue employee's responsibility,

which represents a departure from their previous punishments, the aster's punishment, and even the notice that came after the Red Sox and Yankees in 2017 with the so-called Apple Watch mini-scandal. That was relying on punishing the GM and the manager and making it their responsibility. In the Red Sox case, MLB basically ruled that the Red Sox went to a reasonable effort to prevent this, although they did in the report note that Alex Corr could have communicated better with players, what the rules were. but so it's not so much what the investigation turned up

as much as how it was ultimately addressed if I can draw that distinction. The number one thing my audience says is if there was something in the Red Sox that the Red Sox took a cue off the Astros by knowing that they were going to be ridiculed across America, fans would hate them, fellow Major League players would hate them,

that it would be in their best interest not to be overly forthcoming. Do you assess any of that, or do you think the Red Sox, when asked, were given the proper answers to the questions that MLB asked of them. NLB ended up confirming what Ken Rosenthal and I reported, that it was the video replay room scheme.

The leverage for investigators in the Red Sox situation, you are correct that it was lesser because there was not a Mike fires going into it, and there was not the video evidence that turned up very quickly, thanks to people like John Boy after our initial report on the Astros. So the starting point for the investigation was a little more difficult. That said, it's not like there was an element of it. We reported that they didn't essentially confirm in what they produced. But it goes to the nature of these schemes.

When you're talking about something that is behind closed doors, the Astros thing in an irony in a way, ended up being really detectable. But it, I'm not, I guess expressing a little bit of empathy for the investigation, but it goes to show you the power of locker rooms and the cone of silence that does exist. But again, they found it. It, to me, is more how do they handle it. And Evan Ross for your real here.

And feel free if I'm overstepping my bounds asking this question, I was just curious, did you guys seek out players and Mike Fires happen to be one of the only guys that was able to speak, or was he approaching you guys? Ken and I have not discussed process very much. I will say there was an investigation that we were conducting on our own that involved us reaching out two players. So to directly answer your question, it is not as though Mike Fires called us up one day. said, hey, I got something for you guys. That is not accurate. Okay. Let me ask you, there's the perception among, again, we have an audience here,

Evan, as you know, there are Astro fans that are going to love and disappointing the actions, but the overriding sentiment for a long period of time, before all this pandemic stuff came into play, was that if the Astros are doing it, certainly a lot of other teams, if not every team is doing it. What do you say to that generalization? Is that a fair generalization, or is that, You might have some out there, but it wasn't nearly as blatant. It was what the Astros were doing. I tend toward the latter.

If there was something that was proliferating around the league, or at least being conducted by multiple teams, we already have evidence of what that was, which would be the video replay room system. The Astros were pegged for doing two things, essentially. They had two systems. They had the video replay room system, and they had the trash can banging.

The video replay room system is code breaker. That's all the same idea. That somebody behind the scenes is trying to pick the sign. The general feeling inside the sport from players, and you can get to a philosophical argument about any cheating is cheating. But the general feeling has long been that the video replay room stuff was not quite as egregious as what the Astros were doing. So the suggestion that other teams were doing something, I cannot sit here and tell you, and nobody can what every other team was doing or not doing.

You cannot prove what you do not know. So that's where it becomes very difficult and similar to PEDs. You don't know what guys are doing, and it becomes very hard to know. But logically, based on everything we have learned so far, we do not, you know, there's no evidence of somebody conducting or no evidence I can report at least. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist somewhere, but there's no evidence of something on the level of what the Astros garbage can banging scheme was like. That's the distinction. And I think also, Evan, one of the questions, of course, is the, how much was it happening?

How long did it take place? And then questions about 2018 and 19. Did you, obviously, Carlos Correa came out very strongly and said, we couldn't do it in the World Series because we couldn't hear them. And then nothing in 2018 and 2019. Did his comments, are they in alignment for what you uncovered? It goes back to that the century we were just talking about between the video replay room system at the trash can banging system. With the video replay room stuff, it's at least possible that not every guy on the team was always aware of exactly who was doing what.

So if it's somebody in a replay room or a video room messing around with signs and then somebody is getting those signs to the dugout. Not necessarily everybody in the dugout on a particular instance who might know what's up. So that would be my intuition as to what the explanation there is, why didn't they quite grasp it? Whereas the garbage can bang system was, I think arguably required more attention from everybody on the team. But I also don't want to give too much credence to the idea of pleading ignorance because they are. tight-knit group of players. They usually know what's going on in their own dugout. You know, the video replay room people are traveling on the road with them. But there is at least some plausibility that the 2018 video replay room stuff might not have been

quite as widely grasped as the trash can banging system was. Evan Drellick from the athletic with us to the bottom of the hour. We're going to talk more big-picture things on the baseball side of things in the next break, but I want to get one more two things in on this. The buzzer stuff, and a lot of other things that through the Internet, social media, John Boy, whatever the hell is name. I mean, it took us to a different world. What did you make all of that of all of that after y'all's reporting

and after the subsequent interviews that Major League Baseball conducted with the Aster's? Yeah, I have no proof of it, and it doesn't seem like anybody else has any proof of it, But this is kind of the damning problem with this sign-stealing issue overall, and particularly the wearable technologies. It allows your imagination to run wild. You don't know unless you set up some sort of TSA-style pre-check scanner what somebody has on their body going to the plate. And you can have that worry or fear now going forward.

And the argument for why people wouldn't do it, particularly now, would be the punishment should serve as a deterrence. And at some point, it was supposed to come in spring training, at some point there's probably going to be outlined here going to 2020 of what the sign stealing violations would be like for players. It will be agreed to that players can be punished going forward, at least my expectation. It's the power of the imagination. It goes back to what I said earlier.

You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you can't prove. And so it's where the integrity of the game was hurt in this situation, because you start to think about what people could do if left unchecked. And the failure in a lot of ways here certainly was on the teams that conducted schemes like this, but also on the league. So to allow something like this to kind of fester. Two more questions on this, and we're going to retire to the big picture.

If the Astros had not taken the immunity card that Major League Baseball was offering to them, how would this investigation have ended, do you think? Well, they had the video evidence, as we talked about earlier, and they had Mike Fires quotes to us as well as the rest of our reporting. You know, the story we published, not the Tudor on Horn, but it was thorough. It wasn't like it was just Mike Fires' account and nothing else. It was a in-depth piece of reporting. So when you have those two things as your starting point,

I don't think immunity reasonably would have helped there. And the thing to understand about immunity for the players, even if the commissioner hadn't granted it, he would have had a near impossible time effectively punishing them because they had not previously bargained with the union over this as punishable activity. In addition, the commissioner's office had previously stated that he was going to hold the GMs and the managers

and the clubs essentially responsible. So it's not even a scenario that would have been successfully pursued or would have been likely successfully pursued if they had decided to go that route. Okay. Lastly, in five years, getting your crystal ball out, Will A.J. Hinch be back in baseball, and if he is in what role, will Jeff Lano be back in baseball, and if he is in what role? I think A.J. Hinch will be back in baseball as soon as he wants to be once the suspension is over.

And that could be manager. He's got front office experience as well. Either path, if he wanted, I do believe we'll be there. Jeff Luno is a better question because of the way the commissioners, office indicted the culture of the Astros under Jeff. And he only has a year suspension as well. So time might heal that, but if I were to say who could more easily return sooner, it would be hinge. And it always goes back to a question of what does either of them want to do?

Does Jeff Luna want to come back into baseball? Jeff did a lot of really smart things as well as some things that weren't so smart. but there's no question either of them could add value, and time seems to heal a lot of wounds like this. All right. Evan's going to hang with us in another segment on the show. We're going to talk about the big picture and the hopeful return of baseball. We'll do that next. Evendrelic from the athletic, he along with Ken Rosenthal,

doing a fantastic job of handling the big picture items of what has turned out to be a very, very interesting offseason for Astro fans and for all of us as baseball fans trying to get this sport back up and running. More with Evan coming up after I tell you about Oop, Steamclinning at 281, 2-2-0-561 for true steam cleaning of your carpets and your area rugs and your upholstery and your air ducts and your tiling ground. 281, 8-2-2-061. 281-8-2-0-561. True steam cleaning done by true professionals, full-time employees, not contract employees.

You'll trust them like they've done in my home and been in my home many, many times. 281, 8220561 and oops steam.com. This is Carlos Correa. Back to Matt Thomas. It's your home of Astros, Saturday. It's your home of Astros baseball. We are pleased to have Evandrolick with us from another couple of segments, or like another segment here on the show.

He is with The Athletic, former Houston Chronicle and Astros Beatwriters. Speaking of Beatwriters, did you see your boy Channel Rome did his story about the number of times the Astro has spit in two games last season? You know, he deserves some kudos for that. That's some real elbow grease. There is. activity there. I think he did a good job there.

Evan, he needs to know how to touch a woman. I'm serious. We need to get him out of the date or something. This is just ridiculous. But to the big picture, I mean, poor Chandler. I mean, just sat there for hours and watched Jose El-Tube chew his fingernails. It was really interesting story. Did you read all 67 pages of the MLB report that you and other newspaper or news organizations were able to receive last week? I did. I can't say I've memorized every page of it. It's a lot. And what we're waiting on now is for the union to send back some revisions as well as teams. So it's not final. That's important to understand. Does it seem like it's going to be preposterous to try to watch over everything,

or do you think that Major League Baseball and the cities themselves will make sure that these boys behave themselves? if all these rules are put into play, like spitting and water bottles and showering and fist bumps. I mean, how do you police such a thing? Well, that's a really good question. And at this point, I don't know the specifics of it. My gut is that it's not going to go off without a hit. You're not going to have perfect behavior because you're asking people to relearn ingrained behavior. It's stuff that they've done their entire baseball playing careers and lives.

I don't think it would go down perfectly, and maybe in the revisions it'll reflect some changes. You know, it could go both ways. There could be things that are added, even further restrictions, or maybe some restrictions are lifted from the initial proposal. Anything that seem patly absurd to you, or does it all make sense? Here's the one that I, and again, it's just logistically for me. One of the things was they don't want them eating buffets, and they want the pre-package. meals. They don't want them leaving the hotel to eat. They don't want them to go to the restaurants in the hotel. Are they assuming that every meal should be served and consumed in

their own hotel rooms? Is that we're talking about? I mean, literally ballpark and dressing in your room, eating in your room, going to the game and coming right back. Is that how we're going to see this for a while? Well, that's what they're proposing, but I think you're touching on something that will be addressed in your revisions where maybe the food is indeed, something that is that is watched closely. They are permitted to get in-room dining, you know, room service, but the idea that they're going to kind of be isolated in these hotels, I imagine that's something that's going to be somewhat pushed back on the shower restriction that you're not allowed to shower at the ballpark. Why couldn't they limit the number of people

on a shit? You know, these are kind of like open wide showers, I think, in most cases. So, you know, say three guys in there at a time. But those are all the little logistical harangings that they happen to go through right now. And how, I mean, what is the punishment going? Let's say somebody takes a shower in the facility. Are they going to get fined? Are they going to get fined it? How is this going to be enforced?

And what are going to be the penalties if somebody just says, you know what, screw it, I'm going to the bar tonight? My guess is, and remember, the union will be involved with this, that punishment of that nature is not going to be. on the table. I guess there could be a scenario and I'm just speculating that, you know, if somebody were to kind of very deliberately and continually break the rules that maybe there would be some sort of, you know, form of a reprimand that's like a fine, but that's not really the intent of any of this, right? It's not something, you know, theoretically they're doing it for their own good and the good of their teammates. So I don't think they're going to approach it with a rule

and trying to slap some back of the hands here. I would hope not, because there's bigger fish to fry, so to speak. Let me get, let's get to the nuts and bolts of it. So the players are asked by the owners, Evan, and please, pardon my eighth-grade economic skills on this, they were asked to take a pay cut. And did the owners at that time presume the pay cut was going to be just for a period of time, and then when baseball resumed, whenever that was going to be, they were going to be in full stadiums because the notion I'm getting from a very simplistic view of mine on this is they're now

going back to the players and saying we thought we were going to have stadiums full of fans we were going to be able to pick up and that we were going to ask you to make a prorated salary based on the number of games now they're asking to revenue share which the players believe is a salary cap did the owners misstep by not thinking that fans may not be able to come back i mean where did the well you backed out of this and part of the reason why some baseball players have been vocal about already taking the cut and then saying, well, now you're asking us to take another one. Where do the owners, if you believe they did, misstep on this? The agreement in March that is guiding how they're moving forward outlines pro-rated player salaries.

Elsewhere in the agreement, not in the compensation area, but in the scheduling area as well as at least one other area, It says there will, it basically says there will have to be a conversation about the economic feasibility of playing without fans. So the basic way to look at this is the owners have the power to not start the season. That is ultimately in their control. The players indeed have a pay amount mapped out. So they're kind of talking past each other right now. A player saying, well, you agree to pass. The owner's saying, well, we don't have to start the season.

The argument, particularly from ownership, would be that the intent of that agreement was to kick the can down the road on player compensation. There's nothing that I'm aware of stopping the league at this moment from making a new proposal on economics. And we thought, the general week, we thought that was going to come last week. MLB had a meeting with the union digitally on Tuesday. It was the Monday and the days leading up to it where the revenue sharing plan got floated. Revenue sharing is just one way of asking players to take a pay cut. The issue, they don't like that form of a pay cut, but they don't like the idea of a pay cut, period. And so they've asked for these financial documents to prove the owner's peril,

and the owners haven't responded to that yet. at some point, presumably owners are going to make a new proposal. And then a negotiation would ensue. They're not really negotiating in this moment. They're kind of talking about whether they have to negotiate. And you believe they do go. They're going to have to because it feels like every report I'm seeing now in the last handful days is the owners are like, we're going to take it in the shorts big time if we don't have fans and stand.

So help help the audience here because there's a certain notion of players are being greedy. There's a certain notion of, well, the owners should have thought about this ahead of time before going to the union and asking them for the pay cut knowing that there probably were going to be fans in there. And I think people are trying to draw sides on this, although, as I've said before, many times on this show, the court of public opinion is going to crush the players if they don't take further cuts. Do you believe in that? Or do you think at some point, the players are going to be like, you know what? you were making a lot of money off of us and your revenues were way higher than you ever anticipated and then you had one down year because of this.

Why is it on us to take the brunt of this fall? The answer is yes to all of that. Yeah. All of these points are valid. The argument for the whole situation is colored by the labor tension that's existed in recent years. So, yeah, if I were to guess, I would think that the ultimate result here is some sort of negotiation that might result in the players taking some sort of percentage pay cut as opposed to agreeing to a revenue sharing system here. But it is the players prerogative whether or not they engage in any sort of negotiation, whether they are willing to take even less money. and it's complicated because you're going to have guys who feel like they're putting themselves at risk,

they're putting their families at risk by playing, kind of an argument for hazard pay, basically. So it's not simple, but the thing that would, to me, seem to move things along would be if the league were to, in fact, make a new economic proposal, which at this moment has not happened. Last question for you. Are there some owners, and I don't mean you to speak on behalf of 5, 10, or 20, or none of them, are there some owners that are preparing for not there to be a season because they just feel like there's going to be an economic impasse between themselves and the players? I don't know at this point if anybody's kind of shut the door on anything.

They have a little bit of time, despite the fact that it seems so near where they want to do spring training in June and start a season in July, They can probably drag this economic discussion right up to the start of June or maybe even into it a little bit. The owners, the dynamic amongst owners right now is, it might even be more complicated than it is normally, where normally you have the big market, the small markets, and big markets are in better positions of strength. It's reversed here to an extent because the big market teams, despite how much money they get from TV, are going to be, hurting at the gate more than the little market teams. A team like the Rays, which has an above-average TV deal for its market, but doesn't do

much in attendance, is ironically in a better position, or at least in several ways in a better position, than a team like the Yankees. The Astros are in a bad position because they don't have a particularly good TV deal for the market, and they are reliant on the gate. So owner interests are more fractured in this situation, at least arguably than they are normally. We'll leave with that. I feel like I could ask you 75 more questions, but we'll let you get back to you writing great stuff on The Athletic. I'm a subscriber, and you and Ken have killed it with all your baseball coverage.

We continue to look forward to seeing more and more things. Very last question, what's the drop dead date in your mind, whether that we'll have a baseball season or not? Well, I think they would probably have to start playing games no later than, let's say, August 1st, because at some point you need a regular season to feel somewhat substantial. You know, 82 games, you're already at half the normal load. You know, like, you would just feel kind of silly if you played 30 games in a regular season and then went into an expanded playoff format. But my feeling is they'll get the economics done,

And the question is, does the health impact the sport? Can they play through the pandemic? Great stuff, Evan. Thanks again. Congratulations on all your hard work. We look forward to seeing you at some point in a regular baseball stadium here in the not too distant future. Again, we appreciate the time. Thanks, guys.

Thank you, Matt. You got to take care of us up. Evan Drellick, whether it's from The Athletic, kind of giving us a little what-for on the Astros and a lot of great information on the upcoming baseball season. And then you want to pontificate on. Recap, 713-212-5-790 is how you reach our show. 713-212-5-790. Also some positive news coming on the NBA, just a matter of moments ago.

We'll tell you about that as well. Right now, a message for Woodhouse Day Spas. You want a good message? The message of a deep tissue massage could be a great message to send to someone in your family, your wife, who's been working very hard, taking care of the family economics, cooking the meals, educating your children, getting into and from a variety of activities, or yourself, put in those 60-hour work weeks. Just want to get out of the house for a while.

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He sounds optimistic about the two sides getting together to play. And again, a lot of it is minutiae over my head, but I'm in more encouraged than perhaps I was yesterday when reading Mr. 250 John Heyman giving us doom and gloom. You know, as far as the Astro stuff is concerned, you know, I don't know if he gave you direct answers, but he certainly felt like he vetted everything on both sides in the Astro's story and the Red Sox story. He felt like, and I don't know if I necessarily 100% agree that if the Astros would not have given up the information that they would have been penalized as much as they would have been.

What he essentially is saying is that Mike Fires and their investigation would have been enough to give the Astros a same sort of penalty. I just don't trust Major League Baseball. I think Major League Baseball would have been in a major trouble with the plate with the baseball union saying, you can't do this without the hardcore evidence. Problem is they would have said, well, we do have the evidence. We got Mike Fires sent on his own on his old teammates. Yeah, and the players didn't face any punishment.

So maybe it still would have been possible for them to suspend to find the organization and to suspend Luno and Hinch. No, I think I'm with you maybe. They wouldn't have taken all those draft bakes and stuff, right? Just based on a report? Here's how I see it.

The Astros are being asked by Commissioner Manford to come speak up about this. They say, oh, hell no. They punish them anyway. The Players Association, on behalf of those players all appeal the suspension. And we're in this. Players weren't suspended though.

No, I'm saying they would have suspended the players. Oh. Oh, if they didn't. If they didn't come talk. Then the union would have gone and said, we're going to a file appeal on this. Yeah, the baseball. And there would have been this big cloud of uncertain.

Yeah, that's, they would have been, the union would have kicked the MLB's ass in any suspensions thing. That's why it was off the table. That's why it wasn't going to happen. And Evan was one of one of the guys. guys who talked about that when this was all going down. Because everybody's like, punish the players, you cowards. It wouldn't have held water because it wasn't, it's not in the collective bargain agreement.

And apparently, it even said in the report from the commissioner, this wasn't effectively communicated to the players. So if the players don't have the communication from the upper management, how can you suspend them for breaking the rule? So did the Astros air by being so forthcoming? It cost them a little bit, yeah. How much impossible to say? But I think the punishment would not have been nearly severe.

I do believe that. I'll say this. These guys will get over this. There's no reason why Alex Spragman and George Springer and Carlos Correa and Jose Al-Tubi and anybody else can't have successful careers. Yes. But knowing that this haunted them by always having this cloud of uncertainty about whether these guys did it legit, that might be more of an effect than their long term. We've been saying this. And unfortunately now, the season got to push back.

If it happens at all, just play games. Just go out there and hit. They said nothing happened in 18 and 19. They said especially 19. Nothing happened. They had a great offense. They were a great team. They were better than the 17 team.

They just happened to lose game 7 when they won game 7 in 2017. So, I mean, if they truly believe that this didn't help us and we didn't do it in 19, and Alex Breggman hit 40 home runs and was second in the MVP voting, and he's still young, as is Correa and Altuvae in the core of the team. Just go out there and perform.

Well, you know, it's always, I know Adam and Adam in there in the afternoon show, they do like a segment where they recreate history, where they turn the decision around it, I don't know what they call it. But could you imagine if they did a segment based off of the Astros not giving up the information? And then Rob Manfred having to basically take what Mike fires and the athletic reported in saying, all right, how do I navigate this? How do I judge it? How do I penalize if I penalize at all?

Yeah, it could definitely be a different scenario. Isn't that weird? Think about that. If you could ever go back and recreate history, Rob Manford calls every astro. Rob Manford calls A.J. Hinch. Rob Manford calls Jeff Luno. And says, I don't know what you're talking about.

Do you think the offer of immunity and just to make it easy was too much to pass up. Would A.J. Hinch still have a job today if you wouldn't have spoken to Major League Baseball? I would say no. I could see both sides of that. I think he came out of this pretty well. well as much as more than anybody because I mean he's on record that he destroyed the

yeah the biggest blemish that AJ's having to carry on is you were the manager you should have had the stone to do something yeah and he did something but it's just clubhouse culture yeah yeah that he couldn't just he couldn't betray his players all right a little bit of encouraging news on the NBA we'll tell you about what that is to follow up

the final segment of the Matt Thomas show Clatin and Wexler coming up in 17 minutes here on Sports Talk 790 what do they call that show I'll tell you in 15 when they call it How about that? I believe it's an initial followed by a word that Bill O'Brien loves to use. I can't think out of the time I have what they call it. Let me tell you about Big City Wings. What is today, Ross? I always messed this up. Wednesday. You know what Wednesdays are our Big City Wings? Eight dollar burger Wednesdays.

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Bungish League soccer? A Bungish Liga. Who's his squad? Don't know. You should have him on the show and ask him. On a sports RV Saturday. Well, he's on with... I think I have had him on one sports Saturday. Well, I mean, people... Guests deal all the time on this station.

Yeah, we'll have Chandromo on tomorrow. Saturdays are... No big deal. Tomorrow on the show... Hey, what's it? Saturdays are a huge deal. The sports RV show... Oh, by the way, nice you to pay attention to our show this hour. I paid attention.

Nice. Evan Drelick cuts in the system if you want. Now, I'll play playing some of that. What do you got? What kind of cuts are there? Evan Drelich? Drelic. Drelic.

I really thought it was Drelich. I had to listen to him on YouTube to see what I was properly. Drelic. People ask me, like, how do you get the names of the teams in the NBA? And I'm always sometimes embarrassed to ask at visiting PR people. So I just go to YouTube and hear what the TV announcers say. You get a pronunciation guide on the, you get a pronunciation guide on the, you know, because you see it, you still want to hear it. Okay.

I'm trying to think of a name. Oh, W-I-L-Y. Don't say it yet. W-I-L-L-Y, first word. Second is H-E-R-N-A-N-G-O-M-E-C. I think he was a Knicks. I lose track of where he plays, but he was a Nick at one point. Willie, Aaron N-G-G-M-G-M-A-R-N-G-G-E-N-G-E-D-E-E-N-G-E.

You do not pronounce the H-E. Wait, you said W-I-L-O-W. Yeah, Willie Billy, yeah. What about Niminia? Oh. B-A-L-L-L-A-L-A-L-A. Why is at one point B-A-L-Litsa? Now it's...

Now I forgot what it is. Yeah, me too. Because it was for a couple of years when he was in Minnesota, he was a B-A-Litza. Yeah. And then he was something else to... B-E-L-L-L-L-A or B-L-E-L-E, or what was it, N-M-M-M-A, and then he changed it. N-N-N-N-N-N-L-L-L-L-L-A, that's right. Nemanya Bialitsa.

This is very confusing. We could hear the call of the Rockets lost that way. Remember that one? No. For Sacramento? I guess we could. I don't want to. I would rather not if we can avoid that.

Speaking of the NBA, Woj just put out, NBA teams are expecting the league office will issue guidelines around June 1st. Boy, they are pushing this bad board of the very last second, aren't they? That will allow franchises to start recalling players who've left their markets to return as a first step towards a formal ramp up for the season. Good. Positive news. Ramp up for the season?

Yes? So you're saying June 1st, everybody gets your ass to town. Let's practice. And then we're kind of ramping up and we're ready for July for the regular season? Rossi, could July 1st be the most, the craziest weekend of recent sports history? I mean at July 1st, July 5th, July 7th? I think this baseball thing's going to drag out a little bit, so no. Because you're in the obvious you're asking that question because that would be possibly

Major League Baseball and NBA coming back on one weekend. I would love for that to be the, it would be like Christmas times 50. I was asked, I was on Channel 11's Sports Extra on Sunday. They asked me which one was coming back first. And I had said basketball because they were fighting the calendar way more than baseball. is, although baseball, as I said before, is fighting the weather calendar more than they are anything else. That's true.

July 5th, 2021, we're talking about a month and a half from now. Are we getting ready to talk about a Rockets game against the Milwaukee Bucks, an Astros game against the Oakland A's or none of the above? July, what I say, fifth? Yeah. I'd say basketball's back. baseball is in and we'll be in a couple weeks because this I don't feel like this labor negotiation is going to be over

in the next what Woj's tweet says maybe um he says teams also expect that around June 1st they'd be a lot to expand workouts that are already underway with in market players that doesn't feel like camp resumes that feels like we're going to get you here

I think if you're going to play a season you've got to have a couple of weeks where you are really playing five on five. You really have 15 players in a court. Maybe, or maybe they'll never have that. Will there be a time where they'll have 10 players on the floor and the five that aren't playing have to go in another area? Again, who knows? Well, they just have the distance on the bench?

There'd be a lot of room. Oh, yeah, there'd be plenty of room on the bench. Hmm. Let me read it again. You tell me if I'm reading any more or less into it. NBA teams are expected expecting the league office will issue guidelines around June 1st that will allow franchises to start recalling players

who've left their markets to return as a first step toward a formal ramp-up for the season's resumption. It's okay, let's put it this way. If your mindset's always been about July 15th, then June 1st will be a good ramp-up date. Get everybody in town, get them shooting the three-on-three, you know, the individual drills, and then you start putting three-and-three,

four and five, who, you know. And again, you're hoping that nothing gets derailed along the way. Nobody tests positive. All it takes is one. So if they got the season started, how long do you think it's going to take? Playoffs take two months? Like I'll say, normally, mid-April, we crown a champion

in mid-June. So that's May, June's two months. We can crown a champion by September 15th? Yep. And then the next season starts. December 15th? Okay. I like that. And free agency starts a week after the end of the season

because you need to make sure everybody and has a chance to go talk to everybody. You wouldn't have that silent period. You wouldn't have that. I think all that, well, you can talk to them, but you can't officially sign until two weeks after. You know how like, remember like in July 1st and yesterday? It would be like you'd have training.

You'd have guys talking and they really couldn't sign to July 15th. That would probably be gone, right? I would think so. Okay. So this is a step in the, the right direction, right, Matt? We need baseball to agree on its finances. Basketball agrees on its finances because Adam Silver, to his credit, has been able to keep the players and owners in a kumbaya situation, right? Everything's hunky-dory at this point. Okay. Now we've got to figure out

college football because Michigan's already said, we're okay without playing fans. Ohio State said we can play with $20,000 to $30,000. Meanwhile, other schools are dropping their programs left and right because they can't afford it without having football. but at least we're moving in a positive direction. Speaking of positivity, Adam Wexler is here. So is Adam Clinton. Together they form the A team, and they will be up next to entertain you between now and 6 o'clock.

Nightcap at 6. We're back tomorrow at noon with non-Florida Stories Raw Us. And you too, Joe, George. I've already got one. Can I go first? Are you sure you want to? Yes. That's tomorrow on 790 beginning at noon. A team isn't up next.