The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Latest MLB Negotiations, Updated NBA Return & NFL Redraft

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

Much larger than life. Yeah. Lunch timers is the Matt Thomas show. 12-0-1 in Houston. What's happening at lunch timers? Is Matt Thomas would say it is the Matt Thomas show? But Matt Thomas out today, for sure.

Tomorrow, for sure. Wednesday? Maybe. Do we have confirmation on that? I'm not sure. It's Rosby Real. It's Joe George. It's Brendan Riley.

You sound like a right-handed reliever from the 90s. Brendan Riley coming out of the pin. That's a good, that's a good strong name. I like that, Brendan. How are you? It's a good late, long relief. Middle relief, perhaps. Or maybe a setup man, even.

We can graduate you up to that. I like a set-up position. We might get you up to setup, depending on how you perform today. Who's the closer? We don't have one. Yeah, Joe George sounds. sounds like a closer from like, I don't know, the 1980s. Yeah, I feel like we're going back further in time.

I just didn't realize, Ross, that when Matt and I did a Fantasy 5 on Friday with Beatles songs on his birthday, that when I beat him, it was going to cause him to miss three days of war. No, no. He's had a trip to Lake Charles planned for some time. So Matt Thomas is in Lake Charles. You have us with you guys on the phone lines at 7-13-21-2-5-79. You can send tweets to add Joe George Radio at SportsRV and at Brendan Riley underscore?

At yes. Look at that. Nailed it, baby on the first try. So a lot of things going on in sports, but of course, the prevailing topic has been the drama within baseball. Ah, yes. Like sand through the hourglass. These are the days of our baseball lives.

The drama continues with the latest. A 76 game proposal from the owners. Look, okay, let's recap what happens. happened Friday. We didn't really get to talk about it on this show, right? There was the letter. I like how these letters from player's side to owner's side and owner's side to player side just magically get leaked out into the athletic every single time. Isn't that crazy how that happens? It's bizarre. It's quite coincidental. It's like the athletic is on their emails. Is there a spy? Do they get C-Ced? Are they getting B-C-Ced?

I honestly. Is Evendrellic who C-Ced on every single email that's going from the owners to the players? Yes. It seems like it. All right. So you had Friday the letter, I would say the terse letter from Bruce Meyer, Bruce, whatever his name is, who is the chief negotiator from the Players Association. It was kind of a nasty letter, talking about how the owners aren't negotiating in good faith and all these types of things.

And at that point, it just looked like things are getting uglier. Well, you have another proposal today in the drama, the 76 game proposal from Major League Baseball. So we started off with the owners wanting the sliding scale thing. Players said no, we want full proration. Then the owners said, okay, we can do full pro ration for 48 games. The player said no, we want full proration for 114 games. Now the owners are coming back saying, okay, proration up to 75% for 70, what is it, 74 or 76 games, and then we'll give you some more of the revenue that comes from the postseason. And basically we already have an answer from the players, right?

It is, no, we want full proration. So, this just continues to play out in the public arena, to get ugly on both sides. You have owners going after players, players going after owners. It's like a full-on CBA negotiation, but it has to happen within like two weeks. It's, it's disconcerting. Joe, is there going to be baseball in 2020? Yes, I see. still firmly believe there's going to be a baseball season. I just, I think, I still think we're

going to get that 50 game, like, mandated season at this point. Even though this to me is really positive. Like, this is the first time they're actually negotiating. They're trying to come up from the sliding scale to 75% pay for 76 games. This is positive. If the players are really just not going to negotiate from their stance, then we'll get the 48, 50 game season, whatever, and they'll get prorated for that, or maybe now they're going to actually negotiate a deal to play more than 50 games. I'm thinking the players are just going to dig in so much and they're going to hold so firm. I think it's going to be the 4850 game season thing. I just think, this is getting, this is as ugly as we want.

Remember when this was all starting and we were like, okay, well, we would hope that the players and the owners would understand that there's a national pandemic happening right now, that this is going to be bad public relations for both sides. I think what is the prevailing thought of regular baseball Joe fan? They'd say, I don't care. Have they picked a side on the owners of the players, or have they said, we just don't care, we just want baseball? I feel like they've joined the owner's side because the owners have the leverage in the situation in Ross where they can, they leak first. Like they're the ones that sent the initial proposals. So they're the first ones that Ken Rosenthal and Evendrelick and Jeff Passon are reporting on what's going on with what they're,

they're proposing and then the response is, well, the players hate this and they're not going to negotiate. So I think that immediately makes the players look worse than the owners in that case. So I think a lot of people were choosing the owners, even though they probably shouldn't. That's the way I feel, too. And 713, 212, 5, 790, if you want to weigh in this. 713, 21, 2, 5, 790. It just seems to me that I keep sticking on what we looked at a couple of weeks ago and what we looked at when all of these negotiations were starting is the fact that revenues for the owners

have gone up every single year since 2003 and the revenues that have gone up at a pace that is far outpaced player compensation. Now you can say, for example, if you're Tim Rickett to the Cubs, that oh, well, every extra dollar that we make, we reinvest back into our team and we're spending more on training facilities or spring training facilities or our scouting department. Or fixing a broken stadium. The Astros aren't spinning more in their scouting department. But you can say, would you say? Fixing a broken stadium.

Fixing a broken stadium. Cement falls from the ceiling. Well, that's not good, right? It's factual. Is that part of the old world charm of Wrigley Field? Is it you might get hit in the head by some concrete? Yeah, like there's like legit netting above you when you're at the game. I've been to Riggily once.

I don't remember netting. It's relatively new. But I did hit the Goose Island brewery before, so I don't really remember a whole lot. Great decision. Was it a great decision? Yes. I have vague memories of Wrigley Field, but. We'll go back sometime and get good memories.

Well, the cheese curds and the Goose Island IPA were fantastic. Okay. All right. Anyways, so, I mean, yeah, you say you're reinvesting in your fields and all that type of stuff, but I mean, do they really expect us to buy that they're not making any money off of these teams? No. We're just, we own the Cubs for funsies. I don't make any money.

I'm just here to reinvest in the team. We don't make any cash from these teams. No, we can't believe that at all. There's no way they don't pocket at least half of their profits. I don't buy that all of it's going back into the stadium or into new concessions or new players. You have the same team bidding on the best players. It seems like every year. You guys are telling me that billionaires aren't bleeding money on a baseball team.

I know. This is it's a news to me. You know what's happening is they spent like $300 a million on their new yacht or something like that. And so they don't have, like, you know what? If I'm going to take it in the shorts this season, I'm going to have to sell that yacht. And I really don't want to do that. Well, that's probably a reality. for some of these guys.

Like, if Jerry Jones was in money troubles, I think Jerry would sell us $270 million yacht or whatever it was. I would imagine. That thing is like a luxury jet on the, yeah. It's like a mansion on a boat. It's crazy. But, I mean, that's the thing, right? Basically, the money difference,

just according to a Jeff Pass, an article that we talked about last week. I think we talked about it maybe on the nightcap. But the difference in money from the 48 that they wanted, and the 82 that the players could have them compromise on, is like $326 million, which amounts to a little over $10 million per team. So if every team took a $10 million loss,

and this is after, presuming, making far more than $10 million over the years in profits, then we could have baseball. We can have an agreement. Jeff Passon described it as peanuts. I'm not going to say $10 million a team as peanuts. Certainly when you get to, $10 million may be peanuts to say the New York Yankees.

It's not necessarily peanuts to the Oakland A's. But it is something that you can't believe that they're going to not have a season over that amount of money. I agree. The only thing is, like, how many players on a typical MLB roster are $10 million players? That's where I feel like $10 million is peanuts. Like, they make so much money. Yeah. You make so much money.

You're telling me a $10 million loss is really going to kill you that bad. Like, if a team is fiscally irresponsible with their money and that's when it comes to signing players, you brought up Tom Ricketts, that guy has mismanaged his salary to the extreme. And we see teams all across baseball do that, where they just, they don't do anything. But we've got so many teams like the A's and the rays that and the tigers, like, who aren't really spending money largely across their team. Like, we're not seeing, they're not doing what the Astros and the Yankees and the Cubs and the Red Sox are doing. So I just don't understand why these guys are now trying to claim super poor. Like you keep saying, Ross, they make tons of money every single year.

year and now they're just like, oh, where'd the money go? It's incredible. I could see why the owners are wanting to dig in because it seems like they've been mismanaged their money. And definitely, I more than anything, see where the players are coming from saying, hey, off of our backs, you've been making money for years and years and years. And now the one time that something, now it took a global pandemic and something that's basically unprecedented times, as we like to say, but it took something like that for this to happen. but the players saying, hey, you've been making these profits for years. You're going to have to take it on the chin for a little bit.

And this is just what's going to have to happen. Because we have been basically a cash cow for you. So you know what? Take it for one year. And then we'll be fine going forward. And this will be goodwill towards not only this agreement, it'll be goodwill towards the CBA coming up in 2021. All right.

We've got to take a break. What do you guys feel about it? Do you blame the owners? Do you blame the players? Or you say, I don't care. I just want baseball back as soon as. possible. 7132125-790. Phone number 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-790. It is the Matt Thomas show without Matt Thomas. He is out in Lake Charles, but we'll be with you till 3 o'clock here on

Sports Talk 790. There's a short break here, but don't go anywhere. Houston's official sports cliche translator. I'm working hard. I'm trying to be a good teammate. I'm trying to go out here every day and do my job. Matt Thomas. Taking it one day at a time. Early reaction to this from the players is we want 100% of our salary and that's it. If that is in fact the line in the sand or even the line in the cement, I think we're going to be looking at a 48 to 50 game season, which will start at some point in July and in September with a playoffs in October.

Carl Ravich on ESPN talking about the reaction from the players. So the 76 game proposal coming in from Major League Baseball with players getting 75% of their prorated salaries. The proposal includes eliminating draft pick compensation for free agents for a year. So teams would not lose a pick for signing a big name free agent. And then the team losing the player would get a compensatory pick during the draft. The proposal also includes a $200 million postseason pool for the players. The proposal would end the season no less.

later than October 31st, and the playoff schedule, which involved 10 teams, is still to be finalized. But the players say no, Joseph. Well, I think they're going to negotiate more than they're leading on right now. Like, that's what every step of the way this has been is Max Scherzer goes on Twitter and says, unless they open the books, we're not negotiating. And then the next day, we got reports, they sent a proposal. It just seems like every time, like the owner said they weren't going to negotiate. and then they just sent a new proposal.

That's just... We're playing hardball, and they're trying to pretend like they're so tough and that they're never going to negotiate with the other side, and then they're negotiating. How many times have we heard...

Yeah, how many times have we heard from each side that we're not going to send a counter to that? I guess it means we're not going to counter this is specific lane if this is where you want to go down. Like the sliding scale thing, the players just said,

no, we're not doing a sliding scale. We're just not going to do that. And then they come back and say, okay, well, now you're getting 75% of the proration. Does that mean the owners will bend from this? Or when are we going to hear this is our final offer? Well, I think like what Carl Ravich is saying, Ravich is saying there is that if the players are drawing the line in the cement that it's 100% proration or nothing, then there's really nothing left the owners can do because they're trying, the owners are

trying here. They're trying to say we can't pay the full proration that we originally agreed upon. Let's play, let's do 75%. If the players are not, not going to back down, which it's, I'm not really sure why I stand still, if they should or not. But if they're not going to back down, then we're at a standstill. I think it's just like, that's the reality of where we're at. The owners, I can't imagine the owners are going to keep being told by the players, uh, we're not negotiating. And then the owners will send in a counteroffer that just increases.

It's like 85%. That's not going to happen. I would, I guess that's what the players are hoping for. Is it we 82% or whatever? or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I guess in between 75 and 100 would be, what, 88%?

Something like that. So, I mean, 87.5%. All right. So I don't know if there is going to be a meeting of a middle there. So here's what Evangrelic says about the PA, what the Players Association says. The MLBPA regards today's offer from MLB to be worse than the league's last because it shifts greater emphasis on risk sharing in the postseason.

players would receive 50% of pro-erata if there is no postseason, 75 if there is. MLB's offer to the union including about a billion dollars in regular season and another $200 million in the postseason. This offer basically doubles the amount of postseason money to more than $400 million. The MLB points to total potential dollars as improvement. The union sees other factors. So the MLBPA doesn't even think this is a better offer. Is it maybe just the MLB making similar offers but shrouding them in different wording?

That's totally possible. That's what it seems like because the thing from Jeff Passon is talking about how much money that they're going to put up in the owners. And it seems like their offers continue to just put up about the same amount of total dollars just worded differently. It's almost like they're in some kind of, they're negotiating for a car. and the players are standing firm on their price and the owners keep trying to throw in like extra stuff like we'll throw in this rustproofing we'll give you this warranty on the tires

and it's like it's not it's not really affecting the bottom line that's what it seems like to me. Yeah well because I think the one difference here too is that and not because now you're negotiating differently with the sliding scale and that's why the numbers are probably still coming out to relatively the same is

instead of now a $35 million dollar player taking like an 80% pay cut, he's taking a 75% pay cut, but everyone's taking a 75% pay cut and that's not the way it was before. They're just giving them the same numbers presenting in a different fashion and hoping that more players will be okay with it. I think it's a battle for public opinion though, too, because when you read this, I think it like initially, first thought is this is a better offer. Yes, I think that's what I'm saying was like, like the different wording, but maybe not

even, when you look at the financials of it, it's not really budging that. much. Like Evangeloic says, the player said, this is not a better offer. This isn't more money for us. How is this at all a better offer? But you come out in the court of public opinion. I think the owners are doing a much better job of playing the public game of saying, hey, we've conceded. We said 50-50 revenue. Then we said sliding scale. Then we said 76 games with more postseason revenue and all. Like, they keep changing up their game. The players are standing firm. So the players in the public, they are looking more stubborn. They're looking like they're just not willing to budge.

But the owners, they keep shuffling all the decks. They still got the same cards. It's just not really changing much, I don't think. Yeah, and when we're talking about, like, if you're pro player or pro owner, this is why people are pro owner. Because like you're saying, Ross, is the owners, even though they're not showing new cards, they're still presenting them in a different fashion every single time. It's like they're showing that they have a straight or a flush or full boat.

like they're just showing like but like equally like it's a really good hand either way and the players are just it's like they're just folding every time like and that's what it looks like they're just it looks like they're taking their ball and going home to the public and I don't think that's really the case but the owners have found a way to present that constantly in the players that you guys are taking your ball and going home and it's just it's not a good look but I don't know what they do because this seems like it seems like they're trying to negotiate and they're just doing it in a very ugly, ugly way. Yeah, we mentioned the letter from Bruce Meyer is the Major League Baseball Players Association Chief Negotiator. This is what he said on Friday in a league to the owners, which just magically got leaked into the public. He says, quote, the league's cynical tactic of depriving America of baseball games

and furtherance of their demand of unwarranted salary concessions is short-sighted and troubling. Meanwhile, other leagues are moving forward. forward with their plans for resumption. We are disappointed that you are purportedly shutting down negotiations after making one proposal demanding over $800 million in further pay cuts. We reject your invitation that at the end of the letter to negotiate against ourselves, we are similarly chagrined by your decision to carry through a Rob's threat from last Sunday

to intentionally play as few games as possible unless players agree to your demands of pay cuts. So that's what the players association side is saying that the owners are intentionally trying to deprive America from having baseball this season. That's a good stance to take though if you want the public reception to come back your way. It's like this is the like we want to play. The owners are depriving you America.

This is the problem though. They leaked that letter like on Friday. The player's PR department is not doing a great job. They need to leak this stuff earlier in the week. I think a lot of the stuff has been coming on Friday. Yeah. It's been like we've been waiting all week for news and we're just like, what the hell is going on with baseball?

It's been good fodder for the sports RV show Saturdays. Definitely. 10 a.m. to noon on Sports. It's been making weekend programming way easier. And Space City Saturday from 12 to 2 on Saturday. Wow, only one plug in the first half hour. We're doing a great job. Great job.

I just, it's weird how they're doing that even itself. It's the whole situation is bizarre. I never thought we were going to get to this point. Like when they, when we first said that first report from, I think it was from Ken Rosenthal or Jeff Passon that said, I think it was it was passing. and that said, like, June 1st was the soft deadline. I really thought we were going to hit that.

I felt pretty confident. It's June 8th. Yeah, we heard of the June 1st soft deadline, and then we heard of the June 5th soft deadline. Where is the, like, the softest deadline or the hardest deadline? What is... We just start coming back. Yeah, we just keep pushing all this back.

So, I mean, I guess a soft deadline, you figured... Once you heard that type of language, you figured it was going to be blown past, and it has been. Yeah, we're a week after that. How much longer can this go on as far as a 48-game season? I think Ravits said they have to trigger that pretty soon if they want to do at least 48 games because you have to get guys into training camp. You have to get guys ready for the games. You have to get, I don't know if they're going to do like inter-squad scrimmages or whatever.

And then you have to get the postseason done by October 31st. I think that said, so that's like the playoffs starting September 27th. So just based on a guess, if you go back and you play all of August and all September, now that's 57 days. So if you need a three-week training camp, does that mean, like, June 30th is the deadline now to where guys would get into camp, let's say, July 6th, have three weeks and baseball starts July 27th? I think it's possible. I mean, the fewer games you're doing, obviously, the- Like, that's a 48-game season. The less time you need to get ready. So how far is this going to get pushed back?

And then I guess, I mean, what if what if it does get agreed to? And he says, you know what? they say we have a 48 game season and then we're going to do expanded playoffs. I mean, doesn't that seem a little too catchy to talk? I mean, Matt and I have been arguing. I said anything out of 100 is is catchy. He says anything under 82.

We can all agree that that it's just not going to feel real. It's not going to feel like baseball. And I wonder, I mean, is interest going to get driven down from 48 games to 82? I think absolutely. Right? I mean, how can you get into a full season of 48?

Well, you can't do a trade deadline. You can't Yeah, when is your trade deadline? Six days in? You can't do a trade deadline You can't have injuries Or you can't like recover from injuries well

If JV's not ready And he needs two weeks That's literally 14 of your 48 games When someone tests positive for the virus Now God Like they're going to Now instead of them missing Seven games of a 75 game season

Or an 82 game season They're missing seven It's over 48 games season It just changes everything It's so short. It's not enough baseball. Well, now I'm depressed. It'd be intense, though. That's the thing. I guess every game would matter more.

At the very least, I believe the owners can trigger 48. The players don't have anything to, they can't say no because of the agreement from March with the pro-rated salaries and all that type of stuff. They would have to show up, or they would do some kind of illegal strike, which might invalidate their union or something like that. So I'm not a lawyer, but apparently that's what the language is, illegal strike. So they wouldn't have recourse to strike the players. All right, 713, 2, 1-2-5-7-9 of your first. phone number 7132-1-2-5-7-90. That's Joe George, alongside Brendan Riley. I am Ross, via real. You can also send your tweets to at SportsRV at Joe George Radio. We'll be back after this

short break. Let's go! Houston's official sports cliche translator. I'm working hard. I'm trying to be a good teammate. I'm trying to go out here every day and do my job. Matt Thomas. Taking it one day at a time. Early reaction to this from the players is we want 100% of our sales. salary and that's it. If that is in fact the line in the sand or even the line in the cement, I think we're going to be looking at a 48 to 50 game season, which will start at some point in July and in September with a playoffs in October. Carl Ravich on ESPN talking about the reaction from the players. So the 76 game proposal

coming in from Major League Baseball with players getting 75% percent. of their prorated salaries. The proposal includes eliminating draft pick compensation for free agents for a year, so teams would not lose a pick for signing a big name free agent, and then the team losing the player

would get a compensatory pick during the draft. The proposal also includes a $200 million postseason pool for the players. The proposal would end the season no later than October 31st, and the playoff schedule,

which involved 10 teams, is still to be finalized. But the players, Say no, Joseph. Well, I think they're going to negotiate more than they're leading on right now. Like, that's what every step of the way this has been is Max Scherzer goes on Twitter and says, unless they open the books, we're not negotiating. And then the next day we got reports they sent a proposal.

It just seems like every time, like the owner said they weren't going to negotiate. And then they just sent a new proposal. That's just, we're playing hardball. And they're trying to pretend like they're so tough and that they're never going to negotiate. with the other side and then they're negotiating. How many times have we heard... Yeah, how many times have we heard from each side that we're not going to send a counter to that?

I guess it means we're not going to counter this specific lane if this is where you want to go down? Like the sliding scale thing, the players said, no, we're not doing a sliding scale. We're just not going to do that. And then they come back and say, okay, well, now you're getting 75% of the proration. Does that mean the owners will bend from this?

Or when are we going to hear this is our final offer? Well, I think what Carl Ravich is saying there is that if the players are drawing the line in the cement that it's 100% proration or nothing, then there's really nothing left the owners can do because they're trying, the owners are trying here. They're trying to say we can't pay the full proration that we originally agreed upon. Let's play, let's do 75%. If the players are not going to back down, which it's, I'm not really sure why I stand still

if they should or not. But if they're not going to back down, then we're at a stand. stand still. I think it's just like that's the reality of where we're at. The owners, I can't imagine the owners are going to keep being told by the players, uh, we're not negotiating. And then the owners will send in a counteroffer that just increases it's like 85%. That's not going to happen. I would hope that. I guess that's what the players are hoping for. Is it we 82% or whatever. Yeah. I mean, uh, I guess in between 75 and 100 would be, what, 88% something like that.

So I mean, 87.5%. All right. So I don't know if there is going to be a meeting of a middle there. So here's what Evendrelic says about the PA, what the Players Association says. The MLBPA regards today's offer from MLB to be worse than the league's last because it shifts greater emphasis on risk sharing in the postseason. Players would receive 50% of pro-erata if there is no postseason, 75 if there is. MLB's offer to the union including about a billion dollars in regular season and another $200 million in the postseason.

This offer basically doubles the amount of postseason money to more than $400 million. The MLB points to total potential dollars as improvement. The union sees other factors. So the MLBPA doesn't even think this is a better offer. Is it maybe just the MLB making similar offers but shrouding them in different wording? that's totally possible. That's what it seems like. Because the thing from Jeff Passon is talking about how much money that they're going to put up in the owners.

And it seems like their offers continue to just put up about the same amount of total dollars just worded differently. It's almost like they're in some kind of, they're negotiating for a car. And the players are standing firm on their price. And the owners keep trying to throw in like extra stuff. Like we'll throw in this rustproofing. We'll give you this warranty on the tires. and it's like it's not really affecting the bottom line. That's what it seems like to me.

Yeah, well, because I think the one difference here too is that and not because now you're negotiating differently with the sliding scale. And that's why the numbers are probably still coming out to relatively the same is instead of now a $35 million player taking like an 80% pay cut, he's taking a 75% pay cut, but everyone's taking a 75% pay cut. And that's not the way it was before. They're just giving them the same numbers presenting in a different fashion. and hoping that more players will be okay with it.

I think it's a battle for public opinion, though, too. Because when you read this, I think initially, first thought is this is a better offer. Yes, I think that's what I'm saying was like, like the different wording, but maybe not even, when you look at the financials of it, it's not really budging that much. Like the, like Evangeloic says, the player said, this is not a better offer. This isn't more money for us. How is this at all a better offer? But you come out in the court of public opinion.

I think the owners are doing a much better job of playing the public game of saying, hey, we've conceded. We said 50-50 revenue. Then we said sliding scale. Then we said 76 games with more postseason revenue and all. Like, they keep changing up their game. The players are standing firm. So the players in the public, they are looking more stubborn. They are looking like they're just not willing to budge.

But the owners, they keep shuffling all the decks. They still got the same cards. it's just not really changing much, I don't think. Yeah, and when we're talking about, like, if you're pro player or pro owner, this is why people are pro owner. Because like you're saying, Ross, is the owners, even though they're not showing new cards, they're still presenting them in a different fashion every single time. It's like they're showing that they have a straight or a flush or full boat.

Like, they're just showing, like, but like equally, like, it's a really good hand either way. And the players are just, it's like they're just folding every time. And that's what it looks like. It looks like they're taking their ball and going home to the public. And I don't think that's really the case. But the owners have found a way to present that constantly in the players. That you guys are taking your ball and going home. And it's just it's not a good look.

But I don't know what they do. Because this seems like it seems like they're trying to negotiate. And they're just doing it in a very ugly, ugly way. Yeah. We mentioned the letter from Bruce Myers, the Major League Baseball Players Association chief negotiator. This is what he said on Friday in a league to the owners, which just magically

got leaked into the public. He says, quote, the league's cynical tactic of depriving America of baseball games and furtherance of their demand of unwarranted salary concessions is short-sighted and troubling. Meanwhile, other leagues

are moving forward with their plans for resumption. We are disappointed that you are purportedly shutting down negotiations after making one proposal demanding over $800 million in further pay cuts. We reject your invitation that at the end of the letter to negotiate against ourselves, we are similarly chagrined by your decision to carry through a Rob's threat from last Sunday to intentionally play as few games as possible unless players agree to your demands of pay cuts. So that's what the Players Association side is saying,

that the owners are intentionally trying to deprive America from having baseball this season. That's a good stance to take, though, if you want the public perception to come back your way. It's like, this is the, like, we want to play. The owners are depriving you, America. This is the problem, though. They leaked that letter like on Friday. The player's PR department is not doing a great job. They need to leak this stuff earlier in the week.

I think a lot of the stuff has been coming on Friday. Yeah. It's been like we've been waiting all week for news and we're just like, what the hell's going on with baseball? It's been good fodder for the sports RV show Saturday's 10, 10 a.m. to noon on Sports Talk 790. Been making weekend programming way easier and Space City Saturday from 12 to 2. Saturdays. Wow, only one plug in the first half hour. We're doing a great job. Great job. I just, it's weird how they're doing that

even itself. It's, the whole situation is bizarre. I never thought we were going to get to this point. When we first had that first report from, I think it was from Ken Rosenthal or Jeff Passon that said, I think it was Passon that said like June 1st was the soft deadline. I really thought

we were going to hit that. I felt pretty confident. It's June 8th. There was, yeah, we heard of the June 1st soft deadline and then we heard the June 5th soft soft deadline where is the softest deadline or the hardest deadline what is we're gonna get a drop backwards yeah we just keep pushing all this back so I mean

I guess a soft deadline you figured once you heard that type of language you figured it was going to be blown past and it has been yeah we're a week after that how much longer can this go on as far as a 48 game season I think Ravitch said they have to trigger that pretty soon if they're want to do at least 48 games

because you have to get guys into training camp you have to get guys ready for the games you have to get, I don't know if they're going to do like inter-squad scrimmages or whatever, and then you have to get the postseason done by October 31st. I think that said, so that's like the playoffs starting September 27th. So just based on

a guess, if you go back and you play all of August and all September, you know, that's 57 days. So if you need a three-week training camp, does that mean like June 30th is the deadline now to where guys would get into camp, let's say, July 6th, have three weeks, and baseball starts

July 27th? I think it's possible. I mean, if you're, the fewer games you're doing, obviously, the, like, that's a 48 game season, the less time you need to get ready. So how far is this going to get pushed back? And then I guess, I mean, what if, what if, what if it does get agreed to? And he says, you know what, they say, we have a 48 game season and then we're going to do expanded playoffs. I mean, doesn't that seem a little too kitsy to talk? I mean, Matt and I have been arguing, I said anything out of 100 is, is kitsy. He says, anything under 82. We can all agree that anything under that is just, it's just not going to feel real. It's not going to feel like baseball. And I wonder, I mean, is interest going to get driven

down from 48 games to 82? I think absolutely, right? I mean, how can you get into a full season of 48? Well, you can't do a trade deadline. Yeah. You can't. Yeah, what is the trade deadline? Six days in? You can't do a trade deadline. You can't have injuries or you can't like recover from injury as well. If JV's not ready and he needs two weeks, that's literally 14 of your 48 games. When someone tests positive for the virus now, like they're going to, now instead of them missing seven games of a 75 game season or an 82 game season, they're missing 70 games of a 48 game season. It just changes everything. It's so short. It's not enough baseball. Well, now I'm depressed. It'd be intense, though. That's the thing. I guess every game would matter more. At the

very least, I believe the owners can trigger 48. The players don't have anything to, they can't say no because of the agreement from March with the pro-rated salaries and all that type of stuff. They would have to show up or they would do some kind of illegal strike, which might invalidate their union or something like that. So I'm not a lawyer, but apparently that's what the language is, illegal strike. So they wouldn't have recourse to strike the players. All right, 7-13-1-2-5-790. That's Joe George, alongside Brendan Riley. I am Ross, Villariel. You can also send your tweets to At Sports RV at Joe George Radio.

We'll be back after this short break. Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson here. You're listening to the Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas Show coming at you from The Matrix, sounds like. Welcome back. There is no Matt Thomas. Okay, he exists. He's just not here right now.

He is in Lake Charles. Are you sure? You know what? He retweeted the show tweets. Oh, he did. So great. So Matt Thomas is alive and well. That's good to hear.

He is in Lake Charles. Charles, for the next couple of days, he'll be out today and tomorrow and Wednesday or not. Do we have confirmation on that? I'm not sure. We'll figure it out. But anyways, you have myself, Ross Villariel, you have Joseph George, you have Brendan Riley, talking a lot about baseball and what they got going on. And basically, what they don't have going on. They can't come to an agreement.

There's a lot of new layers coming up on that. We'll talk about that coming up in the next hour. But I wanted to ask you, Joe, I know you're a huge UFC fan. Do you watch UFC 250 over the weekend? I did. One of my favorite U.S.C. fighters was fighting Cody Garbrandt, and he got a beautiful, beautiful knockout. It was a lot, very fun, very fun card. Yeah, I thought it was a good card, a couple of big knockouts.

And, you know, one of the things, I mean, it's basically all we have as far as mainstream. I wouldn't call UFC big time mainstream, but it's a big money type of deal. There's a lot of interest in it. Sure. In the United States. And how are you feeling now, like your current feeling about the crowd? noise with the UFC. Are you used to it? Is it still weird? I am used to it and you know it's not that weird for me because I've I've been invested in the Ultimate Fighter TV show that

started on Spike you know 15 20 years ago it feels like it's like 15 years ago at this point when like Forrest Griffin and stephen Bonner like became like the face of the UFC you know like does that show still come on yeah they still do it now and it's just like so they put 16 guys in a house or sometimes women now. Uh-oh. They fight- All the protocols there. And they fight in a tournament

to get a UFC contract. And there's no fans. It's just their teammates and the coaches and then like Dana White. And that's it. Like there's no fans. So there's always some cheering

from the guys there, but never much. So I'm kind of used to it and it doesn't really bother me. It doesn't, it isn't the same. But the one thing I do appreciate is like,

I like, like, I enjoy the wrestling aspect of UFC. Fans don't. They boo that. I enjoy that. I feel like the diehards enjoy it, I think. They're like a good grappling match. Yeah, but like, I, I don't miss fans booing for no reason. But you don't, okay, so.

Honestly, I won't miss the woo. I know people love Josh Reddick. Mm-hmm. You won't miss people wooing? I won't miss the woo. You are, you get annoyed by it? Yes. Okay.

I don't like the woo. It's fun. It's, look, if you've, if you've knocked back like six times, Collies of Bud Light and Josh Redick is coming to the plate. That's the first thing that's coming out of your mouth. Sure. Is it a giant, whoo? It's almost involuntary.

It just happens. It just comes out. You have no choice, okay? Yeah, that's a different scenario. Well, the reason I bring that up is because I was watching it too, and I was trying to, I was really trying to focus on the fact that there was no fan noise because coming up in July 31st, obviously, is when the NBA is coming back, and there's not going to be fans in the stands.

And there was an idea floated about them possibly using. crowd noise from NBA 2K, and now it's official as far as the Premier League in England. They're coming back. And according to Sky Sports, which is one of, it's basically like the ESPN of England, they said in partnership with EA Sports FIFA, Sky Sports has created a range of bespoke and team-specific crowd noises and chance to bring the vibrant atmosphere of the Premier League to the restart. Viewers can select the Sky Channel to watch with the added sound or with stadium noise.

So what do you think about that? I think is a good option too, because now you're going to provide options. I'll give it a shot. I would try to watch the NBA with the 2K on there, as long as it's not the part where Bill Simmons is being interviewed. Or like when David Aldridge is giving the pregame report. That's what everybody on Twitter was making fun of. We just skipped the David Alder's interview.

Can we get a skip button for the TV? Yeah, exactly. David Aldridge, it's like a virtual David Alder's doing a pregame interview that absolutely means nothing and then he just gets skipped over. I'll give it a try, but I do like the idea of there being an option. I don't know. How would you do that? Like if you're AT&T SportsNet Southwest, I guess they have an alternate channel.

You would put alternate channel with rockets noise. I don't expect... Rockets with noise? I don't expect the local broadcast to do this, though. I expect this to be national broadcasts. And then they have, I mean, they have a number of their channels in their same family that they could do that. So is that... Which one do you think you would choose?

I think it depends on who's calling. the game actually for the first time. And normally I don't care. Well, I thought they did the NBA 2K tournament, right? That nobody watched with the players. Yeah. And they used the, uh, the, the, the call of the 2K. I thought that was lame. It's stupid. They're not going to do that. I think just fan-dose is what they're going to do, right? But like, it's going to, but I mean like, if it's Kevin Harlan on the call versus... Oh, you mean on the regular call. On the regular call. Not the virtual Kevin Harlan. You know, the actual Kevin Harle. I'm getting confused between the virtual and regular realms.

So if, depending on who's on the actual call for the games, I think that that might factor in. If someone's really boring, the broadcast with the fake crowd noise might sound better. I think my initial thought is I do, I definitely would want to check out the first couple of games without the crowd noise, because those are the things that I'd be interested in. I'd be interested in here. One of the things, one of the benefits people tell you, I've never sat courtside in an NBA game, but one of the things people tell you is really fun about the experience is you can hear the trash talk. You can hear the defensive callouts. You can hear the coaches working the referees and the

players working the referees. And that just makes it that much more cool. It's like inside, it's more inside the NBA than anything else. And that's what I'm kind of excited about. I want to hear what Mike D'Antony is saying to the referees. I want to hear what the referees are saying to Mike D'Antony. Yeah, I do think it would be really interesting. It'll be really compelling. And there will be a question of like, will it be the same? Like, will we get the experience? that those people normally sitting courts I get because we know they're going to have to button up. The players, the coaches, the reps,

they're going to have to be careful about what they say. Matt's talked about this a lot. A ref normally can be like, I'll get you next time. Or I miss that one. They won't say I get you next to. They say, I think they do. They think that. Make up calls are absolutely a thing.

They can't publicly say, no, I miss that one. Yeah, because then publicly have talked about how they missed a call. And I mean, I mean, one of the, think of like, Rashid Wallace screaming ball don't lie after somebody misses a free throw. That was always fun. And stuff like that or any kind of trash talk. I want to get those little things about the game. And I wonder if they will be toning down the crowd mic or if they will have

crowd mics at all. I guess they would have to, right? Yeah, I just think it's going to be, I think there's going to be, we're not going to notice because there's going to be no reporters there. There's going to be no one there to, like, spoil. Are there going to be no zero reporters? I think so. You got to have some.

I honestly, I don't think there's going to be. Maybe not locally, but I would think, I don't know how they would do it. How would they would do it? I think they'll just do zooms after the game. And the reason why I think you don't have reporters, one of the benefits is that you could have a 30-second delay and none of us would notice. You could have a two-minute delay and no one would notice because no one's at the game. Yeah. So you're not going to have.

So when James Harden is, you know, when it's game's, in the NBA final. James Hardin is shooting three to win it all. It happened two minutes ago. It happened two minutes ago. No one's tweeting that it happened two minutes ago because we're all watching it on the same screen at the live time. You don't think Lowe has a source?

Probably a good point. That's the thing though. Now we would know, actually here at 790. You know what's funny though? What if you had a mole inside the building and you did live betting? Like somebody goes on a Tano run in like two minutes and then you can live bed and you're like, uh-oh. time to put some money on the Rockets they went on a 10-0 run baby and then you could live bet it online

that would be awesome like if you did it the right way if you talk to your partners like you know if someone called us at 790 and was like hey your producer running the Rockets game cannot tweet oh that's true you would have it live in here we would be like the only ones but what I'm saying is like you just listen to the radio

maybe you could find a way there goes my live betting idea I know but maybe you could find a way to do it where there's a delay where you know, that like, they can prevent some of that. I mean, we could, we have a delay machine. We could put a huge delay on it with the way that we do it here. So, like, maybe there's something that could do that. So you open up your live betting account.

Yes. With lots of money. I feel like that's not allowed. It's probably, it's very much not allowed, Joe. All right, we've got to take a quick break on. For you to, no, I think. No, you can bet on games, I think. Yeah.

Maybe. I don't know. Just don't do it. All right. Okay. Just just keep. Brendan is shaking his head. Not in Texas.

You do not. Well, Brendan, you know, if Joe gets let go because of improprieties, you move up the ladder, buddy. So, bet away, Joe. I'm not about Joe. All right. We're going to take a quick break here. That's the first hour of the Matt Thomas show without Matt Thomas with you till 3 o'clock. But right now, I got a question for you. How are you feeling right now? Are you feeling? Great. Not you, Joe. I know you're feeling great. You look great. You look vibrant. But maybe not everybody is feeling like that. Maybe you want to feel a little bit younger. Maybe you want to pump up that strength and stamina. You felt like you lost. Maybe. the libido is not what it once was, and let me tell you what you need to do. You need to call my friends at Synergenics and experience a life-changing results of testosterone replacement therapy. Centrogenics is Houston's premier men's health clinics specializing in low-treatment

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it right here on Sports Talk 790. Yes. Is the Matt Thomas show. Number two of three of the Matt Thomas show here on Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas out at Lake Charles. Hitting the craps table right now. Hopefully he's tearing it up.

In the meantime, he'll be back in a couple of days. You have Matt, I mean, you don't have Matt Thomas. You have Ross via Real. What's my name? I don't know. Joe George. You're not Matt. Brendan Riley, I am not Matt Thomas and quite frankly for that, I'm thankful. Mainly I can tell because of the top of your head.

Well, I do have more hair than Matt has. He is older than I am. He is married with three children. There's just a lot of things different. Matt and I have a lot in common. We have a lot different. That's why we kind of get along. But he is out. You have, as I said, Brennan Riley, Joe George, talking a lot in the first hour.

Most part about baseball. And the new proposal, if you have not heard, the latest. So we've had all these back and force, right? It's been the 50-50 revenue sharing. that the owners wanted. Players rejected that. The pay scale, players rejected that. Now the latest from the MLB is a 76 game season. Here's Carl Ravich on that. We are now willing to play 76 games, more games than 48 and 50. 76 games. The pro-rated salary will be at 75%. There's no sliding scale, which was a thorn with a lot of the folks in the Players Association that certain players were

getting penalized more than others. This is a 75% of your full salary over the course of 76 games for everybody. Major League Baseball got rid of what was always an issue for players' draft pick compensation. There was the idea that teams would be reluctant to sign a player. Yankees signed Garrett Cole. They forfeited a future draft pick. That will be eliminated, which will allow teams to sign players and not lose a future draft pick. There will be a compensation pick given to these other teams. It is an effort at the very least to show that Major League Baseball is interested in playing more baseball games. They do want to play more games. That was something the association and there was some narrative out there that Major League Baseball is not

interested in more games. So there you go. A 76 game proposal at 75% of the money. Now, I would think, first of all, this has already been roundly rejected by the players. But I think kind of like what we were talking about earlier, Joe, is this seems like the players have want 100%, now the owner said 75, maybe we can finally have an actual negotiation. An actual negotiation of meeting in the middle. Will the players ever back down

from their 100% proration from the agreement in March? Because they have not done that since any of these proposals in the last few weeks have been put out by the baseball. They've said 100%, 100%, 100%. Now do we think we could see them coming back off of that a little bit? I think finally we could see players start to negotiate, where it feels like they do have the leverage, where the owners are the ones spitting out all the stories, all the leaks to the national reporters.

It seems like the players are starting to get the leverage because the owners are the ones that are coming up in percentage-wise. So maybe the players are just like, well, we're just going to wait until they get to like 80. We'll counter at 90 and we'll call it a day. Like maybe that's the path we're on. hope it is. I don't want, I want a 7580 game season. I'll be super, at this point, I'll be super happy with that. I will enjoy that baseball is back. I will be ecstatic. It'll be fun. Hopefully the Astros will win a World Series, convince George Springer to stay. More asterisks. I'm fine with that. Let's go. But at this point, it feels like we're on a path of where they

should start negotiating. I think so, too. Which means they brought me all. You also had something about John Heyman was talking about. A big part of this is the postseason and what's going to happen with the money there. Because the owners in this proposal also have offered more postseason money to the players, revenue sharing, if you will. John Heyman reports 30 minutes ago. MLB's latest proposal potentially adds to postseason teams to make it as many as eight per league. Which means last year, based on last year standings, the Astros would have played the Texas Rangers in the first round of the playoffs. what you would have, so they would want to do, what happened to the whole 10 team thing? They're not going to do that? No, it was seven. Or seven was it was? It was seven. Now they're making it eight.

Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, you're right, because it was going to be 14 total. I don't know why I was thinking of 10. Maybe I was thinking of an earlier proposal when they were talking about that. Okay, so they want to seven. So now they're going to eight. And that gets more players, playoff shares. Yep. Is that what's the bonus of that? Overall playoff revenue. Overall playoff revenues. And then there wouldn't be any kind of buy system, I guess. The one would just play eight and then you would go bracket style from there. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I'm fine with that. So last year, you have one under 500 team make the playoffs. That's it. And that would have been the Rangers.

Rangers, get it together, Rangers. Everyone else in the National League and the American League would have been above 500. Did you see the tweet yesterday where the Rangers said they have the best baseball park in baseball? No one's seen. My baseball park doesn't start on fire. That would be a Wrigley Field you're talking of. Or minute made. Or minute made.

I mean, their ballpark did start. on fire already once. That's true. Well, maybe that's what they're saying. It's so hot. It's on fire. Oh. No, I don't know. So you would have eight teams in each league. You would have a 76 game season. But this is my question, though. Isn't it the owners with every game that they add in the regular season, they're losing that much more money?

Yeah. Because they're not giving, yeah. They're not getting revenue and they're not getting, I mean, is there going to be an opening for this as far as when can we have fans in the stand? Because apparently in Texas, is certainly if the roof is open, maybe not. We don't have full confirmation on that from Governor Abbott. The Astros and the Rangers can have fans in their stands. Yeah, and see, and I would think that if the NFL believes they can have fans and their stands and college football believes they can have fans in their stands,

that by the end of baseball season, by the postseason, the hope would be that fans can start coming in across the league. So how do you incorporate that money? Like now there's just more revenue. And if I'm the players, that's my concern. right now, in all honesty, is you're telling me you're not making any money. So we're going to renegotiate our deals based on you not making money. But then what happens when fans start showing up?

Then you guys just get all that money and we once again get nothing? That seems to that. That would have to be a concern on the player's side, right? They have to negotiate that. Hey, we're doing all this negotiation and you guys might end up having a bunch of fans in the stands and what happens with that revenue. And that's where I would start if I'm the owners is like, look, we can only offer you 75%

but 70% of fan revenue until you reach your full salaries as a league will come from like you'll get 70% of the fan revenue they can just make some agreement that way just like something like that

or like for every for every dollar that fans spending we want half the beer and half the peanuts I bet you can break it down by certain items and the players get nacho the owners get nachos

I want beer sales oh what do you want I want cotton candy and beer. I just want the TV deal. You can have everything else. Yeah, that's true. You're like, I want, I want the beer.

What's the most, I want beer and hot dogs. I mean, that's gotta be the most, those are the most two common things. The markup on the hot dogs is ridiculous. I mean, they do dollar dog night. I'm sure they, look, how much does it cost to put out of Frankfurt? They make 15 cents. I bet you they make a ton of money on dollar dog night. Tons of money.

That's why they do it. That's what I'm thinking. Like, well, yeah, because then you have to sell all the other types of concessions. So nobody goes there and just gets five dogs and leaves, although they probably should. But, yeah, what if you get tickets from a friend? Just go eat five dogs and then walk out. But that's the thing, right? What's a normal cost of a hot dog?

6, 7, 6, 5, 6 bucks, more than that? For like a whole pack? No, no, I'm talking about at the stadium. Oh, at a game, yeah, like 5, 6 bucks. Man, the markup on the hot dogs has to be out of control. Isn't it a whole pack? Well, it's everything you buy is like a whole pack. Yeah.

A beer is like getting a 12th. That's true. Yeah, you know what? Maybe it's the markup on the beer is where it's the biggest. That's what I'm thinking. So if I want revenue share, if I'm the players and fans are back, I think I want beer and I want hot dogs. Yeah. You would claim those two items.

They have to figure something out. They just have to. And the more I think about this, the more I am on the player's side, because I want the revenue that would come. I feel like come by the end of September, you would think, unless there is going to be this massive second wave, which is possible, especially when you have, I mean, in every major city, there were huge protests and a lot of people weren't wearing masks. I would figure that you would eventually be able to have fans in the stands, and we don't know what's going to happen with that revenue. If it's all getting pocketed by the owners, then I think the players should continue to stand firm on all of this. And this is to me, this is the Trump card in all of this. The players have said, okay, you want us to soften off our stance?

Open up the books. And the owners, of course, that's a non-starter. They refuse to open up their books. And you know why they don't want to open up their books? Because they don't want the players to know how much money they've been making over the last several years. So if you continue to say you're crying poor and you won't open up your books, I'm sorry. You're just going to have to take it on the chin this year. That's the way I feel about it.

Yeah, I completely agree, even though the books thing, I feel like it's more complicated than that, because I don't think they should have to open them, because it is their business. No, they shouldn't. Then negotiate, but then come to meet us on our side. Yeah. If you're going to cry all this poor. Yeah. Like, you have to, if you're not going to open them, you do have to go more towards the players. Yeah.

But I still feel like even though the players, like, we're getting reports that, you know, like this feels like it's the same deal just presented in a different way. it still to me feels like they are negotiating. The players, at some point the players, if they really do want to play, they have to look at this new deal now that's being offered and be like, okay, how can we get this, but get what we want as well?

Like how do we either add more games or add more revenue? How do we make this a win-win situation for both sides? Because the players, you can't just be like we want our way or the highway. It's not the reality.

If the owners want to cry poor, open up the books. That's what the baseball players stances and I stand by them on that. All right, 713, 2.125, 790 is your phone number. Do you agree with my stance on that? Do the players

have to see the books before they back off? 713-2125-790. The Matt Thomas Show continues until 3. After this short break, don't go anywhere. The most awkward nooner you'll ever be a part of. This is the Matt Thomas show.

Matt Thomas show continues. Without Matt Thomas, on Sports Talk 790. Ross via Rio, Joe George, Brendan Riley with you folks. On the phone lines at 713, 2, 1,2, 5, 790. Talking a lot about the league that just refuses to get it together. And the time continues to tick on them.

One week ago was supposed to be the soft deadline for baseball. We heard June 1st, June 1st, soft deadline, and then nothing happened. And now it just seems like they might not even be close. There's a good thread from Jeff Passon on. on the money breakdown on what the differences are between the different proposals. We'll get to that in just a second. Let's go out to the phone lines to Brian in East Downtown here on the Matt Thomas show. Brian, go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, gentlemen. The truly sad part of all this is not the owners, it's not the players. It's the people that live at the ballpark that do that as a second source of income. It's all your vendors, all your security people, the front office people who work for the Astros. I mean, if there's no season, a lot of those guys get furlough. I used to work in the front office in MLS, and thank goodness we were still on, you know, good footing back then. But if there was one point, there was talk of a player strike, and we didn't know what

was going to happen. And it's people like that that I wish had more of a voice. And, I mean, you know, those guys are only making $70,000,000 a year, maybe, if that, those are the people I truly feel the worst for. I can care left about the players of the owners not getting their millions. I mean, you're doing it to play a game, but it's everybody else who it impacts is who it has the hardest effect on. And I wish they had some kind of a voice, you know, they could go post in the Atlantic or write for the Players Tribune and say, hey, ultimately, you guys are screwing up in the end because I can't pay that mortgage.

You know, fortunately, Mr. Crane has been nice enough to say, hey, we're going to pay your salary for a few more months. But after a while, it's like at what point can they say, we can't continue to fund everybody if there's no season? So we're going to have to let people go and then rehire you hopefully before next season. Yeah, that's a good question, Brian. And thanks a lot. Appreciate you making the phone call. I mean, how much have we heard about, specifically, let's keep it on the Astros,

about them continuing to play? We had heard that Jim Crane was still going to be taking care of everybody for the most part, right? Yeah, I think so. I know, honestly, it's already like even keep tracking. I know. I know. I think... Because they're paying the minor league players

to August 31st. I remember that. Yeah, which is only like seven days short of their actual season. The regular season for minor leagueers goes till September 7th. So they're taking care of their minor leaguers. They did cut a bunch of guys,

like 20-some players, but those were probably should have been guys that should have been cut after spring training anyways. So, you know, it seems like a lot of teams are doing the right thing and they're keeping their employees

and maybe that will change. after this week. Like maybe we will see some front offices start furlowing scouts and some positions because, you know, after the MLB draft is this week. And I think it was like, I think it's the A's said they're going to furlough most their scouting department after this week. Well, honestly, you don't need them. So maybe we'll see some teams change up what their strategy has been.

But so far the Astros have been one of the positive ones. And the A's have really been the absolute worst franchise at baseball. when it comes to this. They admitted over the weekend that they had, they made the wrong move and not playing their minor league players. I think they're going to pay their players now. Yeah, they are. They're going to go back to paying their minor leagues. Yeah, his owner John Fisher said Friday that he, quote, made a mistake and we'll pay the minor league players. Their $400 a week stipend for the remainder of what have been a typical minor league season. So the A's players are going to get paid. I mean, see, that's where I feel like you have to

have distrust in the owners and all this. Because they're saying I'm poor. They're saying I can't pay rent. We're not paying our minor league. and then they get and the nationals did this too and then they get public pressured into paying their minor leaguers and it's like oh wait now i have the money so it's it's do you have the money i just found a stack of hundreds under my mattress man i'm my bad dude i'll go good with you guys that's what it sounds like it's like do you have the money and you're choosing not to pay people to save money or do you legit not have the money that's what it seems like it's like they're penny pinching and i you understand where they're coming i mean these are billionaire businessmen

they didn't get there by having a bunch of lavish expenditures all the way on their way up. A lot of times these guys make a lot of money because they spend their money smart and they save their money. And that's fine. But yeah, exactly. The Nationals thing, they said they're going to stop paying their minor league players. Sean Doolittle and the entire organization, the millionaires come together and say, okay, the billionaires aren't going to pay you. We are going to pay you.

We're going to take care of you. Then there's this huge public firestorm. Everybody gets upset. And then the National will say, all right, you. got us. We're going to pay for our minor league players. That's within days. And we saw that at the beginning... Oh, yeah, it's a very quick turnaround on that.

Yeah, we saw that the very beginning of the pandemic. The 76ers did that. They said they weren't going to pay their concession workers and the people that worked at the stadium. And then, like, Joel Ambide was like, I'll pay it. And then they backtracked. And they were like, oh, no, we'll step in. That happened all over.

It happened to Milwaukee. It happened across the NBA where, like, players were stepping up and doing the job the owners were supposed to do. And I'm not surprised. And I appreciate we have people like Sean Doolittle in this world. And because when they know, like, I can take care of this. Look what David Price did. David Price has never played a single game for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

And he gave $1,000 for the month of June to each minor league player in the Dodgers system. Do you think owners are just not used to making these decisions in a social media world? Yeah. I think that's totally fair. They're not used to have. That's why they want to open up their business. book, yeah, they're not used to making decisions where people know what's actually going on. Yeah, because they're used to keeping and hoarding as much money as they possibly can.

And then when the public pressure hits, that's when they have to turn around and say, oh, okay. Because like worst case scenario, right, if you're the nationals, the Washington Post used to write a major story in their sports section, which right now is still, what, on page 10, page 12. And they're getting crucified in like the early 90s for in a paper. it's so different like Brendan is saying on social media to have all your fans and fans from other fan bases who are paying their minor leagues or are paying in their stadium workers and they're just getting crucified and like they're just they're not prepared none of these companies are

I mean like there are companies that furloughed people when this pandemic started like their businesses will never be the same because of the way they treated their employees because social media the outcry is so much stronger than just writing in a paper used to be. It's so different. It's like what we talk about like Michael Jordan and LeBron. Imagine Michael Jordan with social media.

Would have been bananas. I mean, well, Michael Jordan, if we heard about it, when the Jordan rules came out, if we'd have heard all that type of stuff, like Sam Smith would have been putting in a tweet. Sources. Michael Jordan punched Steve Kerr in a practice. And then we would hear about that. I think

honestly, Michael Jordan probably would have been crushed a lot more than he was. If we had social media now with his personality and the way that he is and how he came off as an a hole to a lot of players you would have you would have scotty pippen leaking stuff you would have horace grant leaking stuff well we know horace grant we know we know he did too exactly you would have all them leaking stuff but we'd be like oh my gosh michael jordan get it together yeah so it's like social media is just it's so different in that way and and that's why like the strike of 94 compared to what's going to come up is happening now it's it's so different because back then you had

very little sports talk radio you had very little television like I think Sports Center was still in its infancy then really you didn't have social media and now like these owners and players are just getting crucified and they don't honestly they don't know how to handle it

the part of that though that all you what you just said I mean we keep thinking that one of the big things that we can't calculate and won't be able to calculate until the scenarios play out is interest in not only baseball but basketball which has been gone for a few months and all the

different options we have in media and how much interest will there continue to be in these sports. On one hand, I feel like you can make an argument that there are so many other things going on like Tiger King and my 600 pound life and Top Chef and Health Kitchen. 90 day fiancé. 90 day fiancé. There are 9,000 things that we can watch. So if basketball goes away, you can say, you know what, whatever. But a lot of us who consume sports media, what we do is we follow Twitter accounts who revolve around sports. We watch TV networks that revolve around sports, and they need content. So they're not going to shy away. When baseball comes back, they're still going to be covering games. They're still going to be showing games. They're still going to

be talking about games. So, I mean, will it be more of a pickup where we left off type of thing, or will it be a lack of interest? I actually, I don't know. I don't know which direction it's going to go in. And that's the thing that we have to wonder about. And that's the thing baseball needs to definitely be thinking about. And I think they will probably lose some fans, but for how long will they come back? I don't know. And I think a lot of it has to do also with the fact of diehards are going to come back. People who are season ticket holders for the Astros, they're going to come back no matter

what. How much are the casuals going to come back? How much are the people that kind of just halfway or go to a couple games a year that you still make money off of those thousands and thousands of people? How much are they going to come back? And will they come back in full force for half a season, for 48 games, or for if there's no season, which I don't think is really on the table. Yeah, I think at this point it's just, it's all about winning.

Like, if you have a 48 game season, you start 5 and 11, people will check out immediately. Like, it's just because, especially specifically with the Astros, everything, the cheating scandal, and then everything's just so different now for Astros fans. If it doesn't start well, and then this pandemic and the ugly negotiations, people are going to bounce and they won't come back until they win again. And I think a lot of MLV teams are in that reality, where if you're not good, your fans won't come back for one. Yeah, it'll be, this is going to be, like, and this coronavirus is going to be, like, so many social experiments can come out of this and answers to questions of things we've been wondering about, especially when it comes to interest in sports. So we got, I guess we just have to wait and see on this. Hopefully they make an agreement on the baseball side pretty soon. All right, we're going to take quick break here on the Matt Thomas show.

You want to weigh in on the baseball and then coming back, and your left. of interest. Are you going to be done with them if it's a 48 game season? Or are you just going to be back like normal? And you're going to be watching every single game and keeping your normal level of interest. 713, 2125. 790 is the phone number. 713, 2125. 790. We've got baseball stuff. We've got basketball stuff. We have a retired fighter calling somebody out. We'll talk about that coming up. We also have some Tiger King News that we'll get to. A lot of stuff going on the Matt Thomas show without Matt Thomas till 3 o'clock. Short break here. Don't go anywhere. Hey, it's Craig Ackerman.

Your teams, your town, your voice all day. This is Sports Talk 790. Your home for your home teams. 133 in the PM. Sports Talk 790, Matt Thomas Show, Nomad Thomas. Ross Villarreal with you talking to baseball. Talking some, well, not hard rock like this, but that's okay. I almost did the growl.

Whenever Joe plays that song, Brennan, I have to let out like a this deep hard rock growl, but then it ruins my throat for like 45 minutes. So I'm going to try to avoid that right now. 45 minutes? I'm just mad. It's pretty impressive. What are you doing that's messing up your person? No, I'm just kidding.

Yeah, well, you know, I'm a chain smoker? That's not true at all. Fake news. I'm in the chain smokers. I'm one of the, I'm like the Fifth Beetle. Fake news. Also fake news. We'll have, speaking of Donnie T.

We'll have somebody who is asking for his help. We'll talk about that in the next segment. But we're talking about baseball. So Jeff Passon has broken down. I told you about the article last week where there was all the millions and billions that he's breaking down. So this is what he's talking about about the financials. And that's really what it all comes down to at the end of the day, right?

It's almost what Blake Snell said is what everybody knew. I'm not putting my life at risk. I'm not putting my health on the line unless you cut the check. That's what the baseball players are feeling like right now. So he says the original offer, basically, of the 82 games, the players will receive in total about $1.2 billion. And with the new current offer of the 76 games, players receive about $1.3 billion. And if it's the 48 game option, the one that the owners want, or they said they will invoke if they can't come to an agreement, that's about $1 billion. So we're still talking about the differences between $200 and $300 million.

dollars. And that's pretty much what this is coming down to. And the last, the structure of the league's last two offers, just according to Jeff Passon, are the same. A 50% cut on pro-rated salary plus a playoff bonus. With this one, with the bonus doubled, and with a $50 million playoff pool to be distributed players, it would take them in total to almost 75% of pro-rated salaries if a postseason is played. So it is kind of like what we're talking about, where the owners are just putting different languages. But the bottom line for them continues. to be the same. So I get why the players continue to have this hardline stance

of, hey, you're just shuffling the cards around and it's the same deck. It's the same bottom line for the players. They're not really negotiating. Yeah, you just keep on changing the language, and you keep hiding the cost somewhere else. And they're not changing much of anything. It's just

this is just continues to drag on, and it continues to get ugly, and then the strong language that we had from the last, we talked about in the last hour, from the players, how the players association chief negotiator Bruce Meyer says, you're depriving America of baseball games and furtherance of your demand for unwarranted salary concessions. It's short-sighted and it's troubling, Joe. It is troubling. This is a disaster. This could not be more ugly. They have to come,

are they going to come together anytime soon? Are we just going to see, this is where we're going to, the nuclear option basically for the owners is going to be invoking the 48 game season. I'm starting to think that's what we're going to have. I do agree. I think a 48 game season is honestly just like, it's where we're headed. Because at some point, you also just lose the reality of having a longer season, so there's nothing to negotiate. Joel Sherman from the New York Post reported that this plan would have started a season on July 10th. So every week now, we're just we're going back another week another week and at some point you just got to play the season now let's say they want to expand the playoffs eight teams even in this 48 season format

well well that's more time you need for the playoffs like even if it's a seven game that's more time you need for the playoffs it's like we're running out of time here it's not they're not just they're not just negotiating with each other like they normally are like if this was a normal cba the season would end the cba would expire on december 1st. and then they would have, you know, five months between December and the start of the regular season to get everything done. And in all reality, like crunch time, we don't, we don't have that now. Every day you don't get a deal done is less baseball games you can play. That's what's, I mean, it kind of does seem like this is on accelerated timeline because we're going from, even from, like last Sunday was the 114 game proposal by the players, right?

That's over. They wanted full pro-rated salaries, but it feels like we've had like two or three proposals from the MLB since that point. Yeah, and that was what, regular season all the way through October and then probably like a neutral site playoff? I can't remember exactly what was in the 114. It didn't say neutral site playoff, but if you're going to go regular season until October 31st, you can't be playing playoff games in November and New York and Chicago. No, it's certainly not going to happen at that point. Yeah, maybe we are picking up the pace here, but it just feels like we're staring at like one of those like time. Yeah, this is what the players had.

The players had the opening day on June 30th and then the regular season ending on October 31st. That ain't happened. No. So, yeah, their proposals, you're just not going to be feasible. And then basically every hour that passes, that's another hour that you're burning to the ground. And every day and every week that you're burning to the ground with the more games that you can play. So, I mean, I think that's what the owners have in their side. The owners have the ultimate Trump card.

They have the March agreement that says that they can have the 48 game season, and then every time you want to renegotiate and continue to send counteroffers, the clock continues to tick on the timing of all of this. Well, what if the player, I think the players might view that as, you know, leverage for them as well. Like, that's full prorated salaries. And that's what they're saying is, like, we agreed to prorated salaries. And I understand you can enact this 48 game season, but there are scenarios where some of these guys will get more money

in 48 games than they will in these prorated things like the sliding scale. Yeah, with the 75% cut, it depends. Yeah, it's just, we'll see, we'll see what happens. I, every day I try to like be more, like, I try to be less optimistic. I know that sounds weird. About baseball?

Yeah, I just, because you don't want to get your hopes up? Yeah, I just, I still feel like we're going to have a normal season in all honesty, like, or at least a, a season, not normal. Normal's way out the window. You mean, you mean the 48 thing, you think is what's going to happen? I think the 48 thing still is, like, the leading candidate. I just, I, I don't see anything else coming into fruition.

So to me, I'm just kind of set in the stone of, can we just, like, at this point, I just want the owners, I just want Rob Manfred to just, just do it. Like, let's stop playing games. Give them two weeks. Give them a week. Give them seven days. Tell them, hell, tell them by Friday. I mean, you want a full deadline.

Say this, this is the deadline. If we don't come to an agreement, we're triggering a full 48K season. And I think if Rob Manfred would be an actual commissioner and an actual, be good at his job for once. For once, if he just gave them a deadline and said, you've got till next Friday. Like, you've got till next Friday. And then the day after Father's Day, you guys are showing up for spring training. So you've got till next Friday, then June 21st, spring training starts. that's what we're doing

if you don't make it a deal by then it's not that hard for Rob Manfred to step in and help make this situation easier and he just won't do it and there's a reason why the owners and the players believe in Adam Silver and there's a reason why the owners and the players in baseball are a disaster

and don't believe in Rod Manfred because attitude reflects leadership and this starts at the top it's a huge problem and we mentioned it earlier today that Evangrelick says the MLBPA considers this offer even worse than the last offer because it's a greater emphasis on risk sharing in the

postseason, players would receive 50% of pro-hra, if there's no postseason, 75 is if there is. So I guess that's the worry on the player's side too, is if what if there's a huge second wave and we have to shut down everything and there's no postseason? So I think that's one of the reasons why they want and why they're demanding the full proration that they agreed to in March because it's possible that there could be that second wave. There's possible. The second wave could come in two weeks, the way that everybody's, things are getting opened up,

and people are protesting in the streets and just spreading and all that type of stuff. So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see, and we're going to have to hope for the best when it comes to baseball and when they will come back. 7-1-3-1-2-5-790 is your phone number 7-1-3-1-2-5-790. You can send tweets to at Joe George Radio, at Brendan O'Reilly underscore and at SportsRV. coming up next, one of the superstars of the pandemic has sent out a letter. He's requesting help from Donald Trump and others. We'll get to that next here on the Matt Thomas show. The message here for bronze roofing, would you like to get your roof checked on?

I know you don't want to, but sometimes you may need to, and that's why you've got to get a hold of the folks at bronze roofing. They'll do a terrific job for you, whether you have a tile roof, whether you have an asphalt, whether it's, you know, whatever the kind of roof you have, the folks at, bronze roofing want to help you out. Their website is bronze roofing, BRAUNSroofing.com. Bronsroofing.com. They've been in business for over 30 years. They are here today, here tomorrow, and they don't sit around. They're not a fly-by-9 operation because that's going to be sometimes very, very scary if you're in a position

with your company that you can't trust. Their estimates are free. The inspection is for free. And if there's any problems with your roof, they'll actually give you a fair and honest assessment right on the spot. But you've got to call them first. 281, 480. 9900. 281-480-999 or online. Bronzeroofing.com. B-R-A-U-N-Sroofing, bronze roofing.com. Daryl here. Let's go rock this. This is the Matt Thomas show on Sports 790. It's my jam. It's time to just rock out, folks, to one of the all-time jams. Tell I'm not the tiger Needs a little bit of love

I was devastated when I found out that Joe Exotic didn't sing this actually I wasn't surprised at all I was like this guy can actually sing this is pretty good. That was my first thought too but then I heard him talk and like no this is the same person This can't be the same guy like this guy has this booming deep a velvettist voice Go ahead man Doesn't it seem like Tiger King was a thing like six months ago? Yes.

Not six weeks ago. Brennan, have you seen Tiger King? No. What? So I was, I don't know, I feel like I was still relatively busy at this point in whatever you call this era. The pandemic era. The shutdown?

I was trying to book guests in a world without sports. I was busy, man. You were doing that eight hours a day after you got it. What time? What was your shift? Were you getting off at 5 o'clock and then you're booking guests for the next eight hours? Come on, man. I mean, I'm not saying I couldn't have watched it, but I didn't need it.

I mean, I know who he, I worked with the same host he used to work with. It was work. It was work. Okay. Work. Things are a lot easier here now. You're safe. Okay, Brendan?

Yeah, so far. Everything's okay with us. So far it seems like you guys booked the guests. Well, for the most part. No guests today, but that's okay. We'll work on something for tomorrow, perhaps. This is Matt Thomas show. Matt Thomas. So we played the Tiger King song because apparently we have an update from Mr. Joe Exotic,

Joe George, our own Joe Exotic here on Sports Talk 790. What's going on? Joe Exotic wrote a letter, three pages handwritten. And let me tell you, it's on TMZ. We'll put it on the What's Mads Mine Show page blog. Sure we will, I'm sure. And it's three pages. It's kind of eligible at points. Well, that's to be expected. He's got the shakes because he's not getting his math. Well, it's, they clearly don't provide like lined paper. And so like it's it's a wide rule or college ruled with him. So like his sense is like like like they go in like an angle. Hey, that's going to happen when you don't got the college rule. Look, I agree. So I clearly so so it's hard to read. So I'm just going to read the, uh, the opening paragraph and the closing paragraph because it's three

pages. So you're not going to read the whole thing. Uh, no. In your Joe exot, best Joe exotic voice. I don't do voices. Okay. Dear supporters. fans and loved ones. Just would like to be my own voice for a change. Thank you all so very much for the support and love from all around the world. I have a quick question. Sorry, Joe. Yes. Where did he send this letter to?

I don't know. Probably directly to TMZ. Directly to TMZ would be a good play. You know you're going to get some clicks there. It just says three-page document obtained by TMZ. Obtained by TMZ? You probably sent it straight to them, I guess. Sorry, go ahead.

Okay. Sorry, I lost my place. The pandemic is over, and now I ask you to ask President Trump. The pandemic is over? The authority has spoken. Yeah, it's true. Screw you CDC. Screw you World Health Organization.

Joe Exotic has said the pandemic is over. Keep his word and looking to making this wrong aright and grant me a miracle. Brendan, do you want to take a guess at how he spelled miracle? I don't. M-I-R-I-C-L-E. Merkel. Merkel. We also have a little note in here. As most people know, I was born with CV-ID, not COVID-19. What is CV-I-D? I don't know, but just to clarify, because I was a fake newsian. I was a provider of fake news for a little bit.

Oh, it's common variable immune deficiency, a disorder that impairs the immune system. Because I thought Joe Exotic had COVID. Oh, and you probably read that he had CVID. Yep, can't read. But I can read this. And then he's Here's just the last two paragraphs, okay? He talks about his husband a lot, Dylan. He's not hearing from him. So this is what he says. Do me a favor. And since I can't get a response, play the Michael Jackson song.

Will you be there to Dylan and ask him, will he or not? My heart must know. And this is the real kicker here, folks. Cardi B. Kim K. What? Why is he talking to Cardi B? Please, ladies, I've done nothing wrong, but act a fool. to protect my zoo from arson

and people hurting my animals hear my scream for help I love you all Joe Exotic This is a song he's sending to his husband Yeah If you don't respond to this Dylan If this doesn't tug at your heartstrings

For Joe Exotic and spur you to not go radio silent on your husband You got all fancy on us Because you got teeth now, huh? No, I think... Oh, is that the other guy? No, Dylan's the new guy.

Oh, Dylan's the new guy. I'm sorry. The other guy was going fancy because he had all his teeth. Yeah, he got his teeth, though. Oh, okay. Dylan said he was going to stick by him. Apparently he did, and he's famous. He's famous?

In what way? I think they all think they're famous after us. Joe Exotic probably thinks he can win the presidency now. And actually, he might have a shot. He's got my vote, I think. So he's asking for Donny T. Why is he asking Cardi B and Kim Kardashian to help him? Yeah, I don't know where that comes from,

but it's because, Donnie T. was asked about pardoning Joe Exotic at one point. Oh, okay. And that's something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do. And why is he using, why is it like the song from Free Willy is the song for Dylan and Joe? It's like their jam? Of all the things you're going to pull out of your pocket? Yeah.

Do you have a song? Is it like you and your wife's jam? Or like a song that's like it reminds you of the early time? Uh-oh. You look like you know what it is and you don't want to say it. No, I don't think I do. Oh, okay. Well, she probably disagrees.

Well, we went to, uh, I would say like, we went to Zach Brown. three times, so probably a Zach Brown. Yeah, you're a real softy for the Zach Brown. I am. We went like three straight years for the rodeo. I loved free I loved that song by the way when it came out. I loved Free Willy too. I's like, I vividly remember it being like the first movie

I'm going to see with my grandmother. Okay. And you saw it like three times you said? Yeah. That's nice. I mean, I was like one when it came out. Yeah, I'm going to say I do, how do you remember? You have baby memories? Maybe not. Maybe not Free Will. Oh man. See, now you're lying to Joe. No, there's a dolphin movie too. Yeah, I was going to say, that's the only

major Orca motion picture. I think I'm thinking Free Willie, Free Willy 2. Because Free Willy 2 was like 95. I remember loving that, I love I'm fascinated by Orca like to this day. I want to go Seattle and go whale watching to see the Orca because of that movie. Are you not bothered by Joe knowing that Free Willy 2

came out in 1995? I just Googled it. Don't try to put me on blast like that. Free Willy 2 just didn't have the same soul. I love Free Willy One. We watched, I think, a couple times in the theater, too. And my brother, you know, at the end, they're like, if you would like to help the Orca, I call this 1-800 number.

And my brother called the number, and we got some kind of, like, Save the Whales kit. I don't think he ever, he got, like, a free t-shirt, and that was it. I don't think we ever really follow it up with saving the Orca. But I remember Googling that, that Orca's name was like, Kiko, his real name. And they trained it to live back in the wild. And then it died, like, six months later of some kind of infectious disease. It's kind of a horrible story But you know

I did love Free Willy back in the day Do you watch? I watch Blackfish Yes I watch Blackfish as well Have you seen that? Really good documentary Because I told you I'm fascinated by Orca Of course I've watched Blackfish That was like that's one of those that

You can tell there's a slant By the people who do it But it's really well done It is really well done It's a good story And they need to free the Orcas It's messed up SeaWorld And SeaWorld

And SeaWorld got protested by all that And they're talking about how they They need to like a defund SeaWorld Or people need to stop going to SeaWorld You know what it was? I remember Matt Thomas was going to SeaWorld with his family right after I watched that. I was like, Matt, shame on you.

Did you not see? He was like, prices are really good right now. So, you know, go to SeaWorld and see the Orca. But, yeah, I loved Free Willy, and I loved that song. And you know what? Clearly, Joe Exotic was touched by Free Willy as well. Do you want some breaking news? I guess he traps animals like they did with Free Willy, so maybe it tugged his heartstrings.

What's that? Do you want some breaking news? On what? The NBA? How about we save it? Okay, we can do that for the next segment. All right, so we're going to take a quick break here on the Matt Thomas show. If you have thoughts on Free Willy and how it tugged at your heartstrings, you can give us a call.

If you want to talk about the orca and how Kiko died of some kind of mysterious infectious disease after he got released back into the wild, no, we've got some breaking news on the NBA. We've still got a lot of stuff to go on with the baseball. We still need to get to the story about a major Hall of Fame caliber boxer calling somebody out for a fight. We've got to get to that story. And also anything that you want to get to on the phone lines at, at 713-1-2-125 790. 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-7-90. You can send your tweets to at Brendan Riley underscore

at Joe George Radio at SportsRV. It is the Matt Thomas show without Matt Thomas and we'll continue with the breaking news from the NBA next. Now the skydive space land weather center is the Matt Thomas show. The Matt Thomas show. Without Matt Thomas. Matt Thomas continues to be in Lake Charles,

Ross v. Real, Joe, George, Brendan Riley with you. Matt will be back Wednesday, we believe. He is out gambling it up at the Golden Nugget. Currently probably, you know what, he's taking a break from the craps table. He's having a quick, I think he's having a quick margarita at one of the bars.

Is that Matt's go-to? Matt has a number of go-toes, and it's changed for over the years. Changes with age? It changes with, like, no. just with his fleeting feelings that change every couple of weeks. I remember when I first met him,

his go-to was definitely the margaritas because he had a margarita machine, and this is when the Astros were bad. So he used to always talk about having a hit off the margarita machine during the Astros post-game shows because they're losing like 111 games, you know? So you can't have one. Nobody's listening anyways, so at that point,

I don't see what the big deal is. And so then he also likes, he would go with the cranberry vodka as well. You know, sneaky underrated. Also sneaky not that great. Well, I agree. It's not great, but it is, I think, underappreciated. And then he said he had a thing for, well, he definitely likes Long Island ice teas.

That seems very Matt Thomas. It is very Matt Thomas. He likes the Long Island iced teas. I mean, that's like if you're just ready to go ham and you go to the Long Island iced teas. That's what we do in college. There was this place when I was in college in Austin. there is the library on 6th Street. They would have 250 Long Island.

And so we were broke college students. So obviously, you start off the night at the library. You pound at least about four Long Islands. So you're 10 bucks in plus tips. So 15 bucks. And then you're kind of buzzing for the rest of the night. You're kind of chilling. You don't have to really do much else.

You just hop bar to bar and maybe have a beer or two. See, my problem. Yeah. Oh, what's your problem? My problem if I did that early, I would just keep drinking. Yeah. Well, that probably happened in a number. number of times for us as well. I mean, it is what it is. There's a reason that Sixth Street is

basically Bourbon Street light when it comes. There's like people vomiting in the streets. That was always one of the fun times of those. And then you hit a best worst on the way out and you go home. I'm not. I don't like Sixth Street. I'm a rainy street guy. Rainy Street's way better. Yeah. See, but they didn't have Rainy Street when I was first at college. Rainy Street is more like in the last 10 years. Oh, okay? See, I always forget Ross that you went to college like 20 years ago. Yeah, exactly. I'm a lot older than you, Okay. Just because I'm immature doesn't mean I'm not old. Just because I have the maturity of a 14 year old doesn't mean I'm not older.

I do feel like today's show like we're all the same age, but that's right. Like you're not. I know. I'm sorry. You're not that much older than us. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. Appreciate it. But anyways, we do have some breaking. Oh, wait, no, wait, wait, we do have some break. Why? My breaking news sounder is gone. We moved it. Joe, what's the breaking? A couple things from the NBA from Sham Sharania. The NBA and the NBA PA have agreed to conduct performance-enhancing drug tests

during resumed 19-20 season in Orlando, but tests for recreational drugs will remain suspended. It means players can smoke all the weed they want. Wow. So that noise you hear somewhere is, uh, let's see, who would I call it? Stephen Jackson fist pumping. Uh, also Sham Sharania, expected protocol. if an NBA player leaves the Orlando bubble. This has been a question we've talked about many times.

Quarantined for no less than 10 days, it must have two negative coronavirus tests. Okay, hold on. I found this. It's good because we got one more. Oh, one more? Yep. Lastly, Spurs Star, Lamarcus Aldridge,

underwent arthroscopic procedure and rotator cuff. Debre? Debridement. Debridement. I don't know. I wasn't expecting that word on his right shoulder and will miss the remainder of the 2019-20 season. Wow. Lots of NBA news. Ten days if you leave the bubble, yikes.

But aren't they allowed to leave the bubble? Like, go play golf? No. Well, I mean, what, define bubble. It's supposed to be the campus environment, right? So I guess, like, if they leave. I guess they're just going to be certain places where they're allowed to go. Certain places they aren't.

I guess. I mean, aren't people going to sneak out without being, aren't we, look, James Hardin's going to be sneaking out. No, he's not.

Yes, he will. No, because we need him. Well, I know, I know. Definitely he is needed for the NBA.

Who's the first player who has a picture on, leak on social media? On TMZ, they're getting out and there's video. It's James. It's James Hart. Yeah, of course it is.

Come on. He's not hiding. He's got. Yeah, it's fine, all right? Do you know the story came out that he talked about, they talked about him on the podcast? Remember we talked about his jersey getting retired? Yeah, a million dollars.

He spent one million dollars. One million dollars. Can you believe that? I mean, one million dollars. One million dollars at a strip club in one single night. How do you do that? How is that even physically possible for James Harden to do that?

I don't know. I've never even been to a strip club. strip club. So I don't know how you spend a million. You've never been to one strip club? No. Your wife listening right now? No, I've just never been. Really? That's fine. Look, look, they're fun. The idea of them is a lot more fun than when you get there.

Maybe it's because I've been broke for my entire life. It's like, oh, man, there's going to be these naked ladies and they'll talk to you and it's cool. Well, first of all, you get there. You've got to pay to get in. Then there's like $9 beers. Then all the strippers have meth scars and black eyes, and it's weird, and it's awkward. And then they have these weird conversations with you. it's just it's just not as cool as it seems like in theory you see like a strip club on tv or something like that the women are all nines and tens yeah it's unless you're at the spearment rito in

Vegas it's really not going to be like that it's more like what fours and fives well not that bad depends on maybe if you're maybe if you're like in beaum on monday afternoon i mean yeah if you want to go a monday lunches are pretty good because that's when businessmen go and write off their lunches that's true that's what i've heard i wouldn't know these things for a fact These are just all on things I've read on the internet, guys. I don't really go to strip clubs. But anyways, yes. So apparently, James Hardin spent $1 million in a single night at a strip club.

This according to Mal, do you guys know who Mal is? Mal on the Joe Budden podcast. You catch the Joe Budden podcast every week, guys? I do not. Oh, you don't? Oh, that's fine. So he says James has his jersey like hanging from the top. They were doing that because they said James has been going in there spending a lot of money.

So they gave him his own jersey hanging from the Raptors of a strip club. See, I've talked about this on air, and people have told me this is a rumor. I've heard this for a while, right? I think it's very much well known. I don't think we knew the dollar amount until this. Can we do a breakdown? How do you spend $1 million in a single night at a strip club? You have to be getting bottles of the most expensive champagne possible.

You've got to think that you're there for also a very long time. Yeah, you've got to be there minimum 12 out. Like, are you taking a nap at some point on a couch? It's like you're like, yeah. It's like Project Prom, but it's really at the strip club. Like, do they have a bed for him in there? Oh, I don't even want to know about that. Yeah, pass on that one.

Where, how long are you there? How much food? You have to be eating basically every steak and or lobster that they have in the joint. You have to be ordering every single bottle of the most. What's the most expensive champagne in the world? Did he send a million dollars on the girls or on everything? It's got to be everything. It has to be.

I guess you make it. You don't have those guns? The money guns? The money guns? We have the fake ones here, right? We have what? We got money guns here? I thought I saw money guns here before.

Oh, they might have them. Maybe the promotions department has it or something like that. I don't own a money gun, first of all. I don't own a money much of anything. We should get M.T. bucks and put them in a money gun. Yeah. And it's just Matt Thomas's face on there instead of like Benjamin Franklin. And we go back out to her emotion.

He's got to be, you have to be constantly making it rain with hundreds. Yeah. You have to be buying every single expensive bottle of champagne. You have to be buying all of their food. I call BS on this. No, I'm assuming... I'm calling BS. I'm not.

There's no way you can get to a million dollars in an in-in-trub. No, it's not possible. No, I think you can. You're talking a huge entourage, you know, 20-30 people deep. You basically have the club to yourself. You're buying bottles for everybody. You're buying food for everybody. Like, you're just...

My guess is like, James Harder, you're not... spend a million dollars on himself in one night. But he spent a million dollars total. He might spend a million dollars total on like 30 to 40 people. I could totally buy that. Okay, first of all, you have to you have to have that.

How much cash do you have on you that you're making? You have to have like multiple duffel bags worth of cash with you. I mean, no, you can pay card for bottle service and stuff. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Yon easy saying, well, man threw out an unofficial

experiment rhino plug on air, respect. I'm just saying. Samarman Rhino, as far as quality of talent of any strip club I've ever been to, Spiruteron Rino tops the lot. Hilberto says Disney is building a Hardin strip club in the bubble. See, now that would be smart. You get all the strippers quarantined. You have your test.

You throw them into the bubble, and you test them every day, too. And they can't leave the bubble. They probably wouldn't mind that much if they're going to be making tons of money from these NBA players every single night. I mean, what if each person can bring three family members? what Hart just said they were like cousins. He's going to bring three strippers and he's going to make commissions off the money they make.

Now he's a pimp. Oh, no. This is really taking a turn. This is a good point by Grant. Grant says I imagine he bought out the entire bar. Yeah. I mean, so I could see, like, how much is that going to run you, though?

Let's say I buy, let's say, you know what? Can we call a strip club and ask how much it is to buy out the bar? Nobody said no. I mean, sure. These are the questions I have to ask Because I think I know which strip club is His uh is Yeah, I feel like it's not far from the station

We want to try to get it We well, there's a lot of strip clubs not far from the station It's literally stripper alley is right over there Should we start going on homework assignments? Maybe You me and Brendan go to different ones Try to find the picture How about I Google it?

How much do buy out bar Strip Club? Let's see Uh They can be purchased between $1,2,250 thousand dollars. So you know what? You start out with buying out the bar. Yeah, but that's only a quarter of a million. That means where's the other three quarters coming? This says a smaller strip club. Okay. So if you, maybe you buy out the whole club, that's going to run you

three-fitty. Okay. Then you're making it rain Huntskies. Like his boys just show up with like duffel bags, like $500,000 in cash? Then you're having a lot of steak and shrimp. Okay, can we ask this question? Go ahead. Is there any world where you would enjoy $1 million worth of strip club spending. Dude, that's a great question. If I won the, if I won the mega millions,

it's like $400 million right now. I would not spend $1 million of a strip club. Never in no way, no way in hell what I do. In your life? No. But you know what? We're not James Hardin.

What if he just bought the strip club and like they're pretending? He purchased the, you could probably purchase the entire club for a million dollars before you could spend that much there. Maybe he just bought it. Yeah.

And they're just trying to be like, he's spent it there. So that way he's like not an official investing. You got to do it all in Canada. Actually, these strippers don't have to put it on their 1099, you know? Good point. You've got to think of these things out. All right.

Time for break here on the Matt Thomas show. We'll get to some actual sports stuff going on. Baseball and the owners and the players. They're still at each other's throats. We'll talk about that. Brendan has a story about the NFL getting redrafted. We'll get to that. And a lot of other things mostly about James Hardin buying at the bar.

You guys want to get in. 713, 2, 1-2-5-790. The phone number 7-1-3-12-790. Tweets at SportsRV at Joe George Radio. at Brendan Riley. Final hour of the Matt Thomas show continues after this short break. This is James Arden.

It goes to hard three to shoot. Jacks up a three hits. This is the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. Are you? Matt Thomas show continues. Sports Talk 790. Without Matt Thomas. He continues to be in Lake Charles.

Talking a number of things here on the show, including baseball coming back. James Hardin, how could he? I'm calling BS still. I will still remain. on the side of calling BS on that. There's no way he spent a million dollars at a strip club in a single night.

That's a number that you should throw out after he dropped like maybe half a million at the most. And you're like, he spent a million dollars. That's just what you say for bragging rights. So you're saying he routed up at least. I'm going, I'm going MLB players on him. Open up the books. I want to see the books on this.

I don't. I don't want to see it. I want to see how you possibly were able to spend that much money. All right, we were teasing the story about the fighter, the legendary boxing. fighter calling somebody out. We'll get to that in second, but let's go to Jackie and Alvin on the phone lines. Jackie, go ahead. Hey, Ross. I'm going to give you my perspective as a, I'm a season ticket holder for the Rockets and the Astros.

And one of the things that I've kind of been watching unfold and such throughout all this virus stuff and everything else was, you know, they're trying to come up with these little subset seasons and all these different scenarios to try to get a resemblance of a season. And I will tell you from my perspective, after I started hearing, they said, yeah, probably people aren't going to be able to get back together until August or whatever. my perspective is I would just not want them to even do a 2020 season. My perspective is I would rather them skip this year and not do this monkey business about them playing in MP parks and such. And let's wait until we can do real baseball and real basketball. playing in empty stadiums to me is not real because it is not a true portrayal of what a game is like when you have cheering fans at a game.

Let me ask you this, Jackie. What has the communication been like? You said you're a season ticket holder for the Rockets and the Astros, right? Yes. What has the communication been like on both sides? Have they been openly talking with you guys or keeping you updated, especially, I guess I'm interested on the baseball side. NBA, too.

What has that been like? Well, our season ticket rep for the Astros has been periodically sending us email updates, and they're very vague. And, you know, one of the things that we were wondering is, well, we keep getting more and more into the season is, you know, and we have to pay for those seasons up front. So they had our money a long time ago. So we were kind of wondering, okay, well, what are they going to do?

Are they going to refund us or what? But anyway, the communications have not been good, and everything that we have gotten from both the Rockets and the Astros have been, well, let's wait and see. We don't know. We've never been through this before. So I am disappointed with actually both of them on that part of it. All right, Jackie.

Thanks a lot, man. I appreciate you getting in with your perspective on that. That's interesting. I guess they don't really have much of another option to kind of be vague about everything, especially on the baseball side because they don't know. On the basketball side, if you're a season ticket holder, you're not going to have a season. So my dad is a season ticket holder with the Cubs. and was told that they could get a refund

from the games that have been missed or the money will go towards next year's season tickets with interest. So they do have the option? I thought some teams were not giving the option. Some teams are giving the option. Some teams are not. Basically, I think that's one of the frustrations for some people is like they might hear of another team.

doing something just significantly better than how their teams approaching. Yeah, I think that would be pretty bad, right? If one team, it's going to be almost like the not paying the minor league things. They're just going to end up in a bad PR situation. How the hell do you, can you tell somebody they can't have their money back for a product they're not going to receive? I don't know. I don't understand how that's like an option. I totally agree.

And that's not even a, you need gestures of good. You have to treat your season ticket holders, I think, more importantly than just about anybody besides your players. Yeah. It's bizarre. are too like I don't even know because like my like when I was like my dad was like he'll like he called me and asked he's like well what do you think I should do and I'm like well here's the problem I can't guarantee you that you're going to be able to use those tickets next year so like how long or like how much can they just keep rolling over and so eventually like you just need to

get your money back like like how long are you going to really wait for to see those dollars and and my dad took the money back or because he already took some people's money and then spent it. Like he sold season tickets. Oh, okay. So he had already sold tickets to various games. Yeah. Spent that money. You never think you're going to have to get the money back.

You can't ask me for that money, man. I can't got it. Well, I'm sure there are certain late teams that probably the A, since we know they're trash. I're probably saying the same thing. Like, oh, we already spent your season ticket money. You can't have it back. Yeah, that's interesting.

And Jackie's first point, he says he wants no games. He would rather have no games in this thing in this campus environment and all that type of stuff. I get where he's coming from, but that means no TV revenue. So that's really just not an option for these leagues. And the problem is, and like, so I understand totally where Jackie's coming from,

the problem is Jackie, we can't guarantee you and no one can guarantee you that there will be fans in the stadiums next season. That's true. I mean, so if you don't do it now, if you cancel it now and your sole purposes, there aren't fans, and this season just scrap it because of the way everything played out,

there is no guarantee that this isn't going to happen to both leagues again next year. Yeah, that's just the reality of it of what we're living in. All right, 713, 2125-790. The phone number mentioned a couple of times earlier. First of all, UFC, we talked about. Connem Regger retiring for the third time. For the third time over the weekend. Is this one going to take, Joe?

No. They want more money and Dana White doesn't have it. Yeah. That's what's happening. What's happening with the UFC? You have him retiring. You have the Monzo. John Jones.

John Jones ruling a title. The other guy, Henry Sehudo, says he doesn't want to fight. So, I mean... Well, they have no gate revenue. So, and they don't have contracts. And, like, so they want more money to fight. Right. And now they're not going to fight.

Like, that's what they're claiming, because Dana's like, guys, we don't have the money. Yeah. There's no gate revenue. Certainly in fights, gates are a huge part of the revenue that they make. So, yeah, that's kind of a tough spot there. Anyways, Conner McGregor announcing his retirement, Floyd Mayweather on Connam McGregor's retirement Instagram post says, if I'm not mistaken, didn't you tell Mike Tyson

you could beat me for if we fought for a second time? Now you're quitting. I thought you wanted to beat the best. Well, if you decide to come back, I'll be waiting to punish you again. Or this is Connor 101 and he's not working towards a deal, a super fight deal for the second time with Floyd Mayweather, and this is called a PR stunt. From Connor McGregor? And Floyd. And Floyd. You think they're in cahoots in this one? Definitely. You think they're on the same side?

Totally. Well, first of all, if Floyd Mayweather is calling him out for retiring, didn't Floyd Mayweather retire? Like 20 times? He retired like four or five times as well. At least. This is, whatever. Does any, is there interest, if I told you Floyd Mayweather and Connor McGregor are going to rematch, are you going to

buy that fight? You know, I watched the first one. I watched the first one too and before Connor got tired out it was okay. But I still kind of feel like Floyd was just playing with him to make it entertaining television. Well, Floyd said that. I don't know how much I believe. I think Floyd always feels out in the early rounds.

That's just how he fights. Yeah. Like the first couple of rounds, he just puts his mitts up and he takes a few shots trying to see what kind of power you have and then Floyd starts timing you and then that's that. I mean, Floyd lost the first few rounds to Manning Pacquiao. He lost the first few rounds to Miguel Cotto.

He's lost the first few rounds to I think it was competitive against Canelo Alvarez. That's just what he does. Then he picks you apart, he times you, and then it's over. That's just what he does, and that's what happened to me in the Conner-Megger fight. And then once he figures you out, he's too smart, he's too fast, he's too good at defense, and he has enough power to keep you honest that you're just not going to win. So, I mean, that's to me what would happen again.

And he tired out McGregor because he knows he's not – Floyd Medellar just has all-time great athlete's standards. So that would just happen again, right? That's what I would think would happen. Yeah, I'd probably watch it. I'd at least go to a bar and watch it. Yeah, I guess I would probably watch it again. Let's go to Rudy and Alvin here on the phone lines on Sports Doc 7-9. What's up, Rudy?

Hey, how's it going, guys? Hey, I just wanted to weigh in on that, on the idea of, you know, the what if baseball or what is. I kind of waited like this. You know, one part of me thinks, as a baseball fan, you know, I'm in my mid-50s now, and I'm kind of like that demographic that loves baseball still. But, you know, I think it's like this. From one side, I think, why not the players look bad? Because why not get out there and play?

I mean, I have so many friends and people that I know that work in jobs, you know, that they just have to go to, too. And we don't talk about those. And people work at Target and, you know, like a friend of mine and some other places where they just, they need to go to the work no matter what, some of the risks, you know, there are risk and there's mitigation done at work. And my point is I feel like saying, well, you know, you guys get out there and play. Why can't you do that?

And then on the other hand, I respect that they have a union that, you know, can represent their best interest. And it kind of makes you wonder if everybody in America had a job had a union kind of like that with that much sway, how much different a lot of things would be. So I guess it just depends on both those perspectives of where the pendulum kind of leans in my take on it. My take on is they should play. But, I mean, I can see the other side too. So who knows? Yeah, I think that's important to think about Rudy too.

And also, the baseball players aren't essential. I mean, you've gone about your life without baseball. I've gone about my life without baseball. And we don't need people to hit a ball and throw a ball on its full. fun, it's entertaining, and it's great to watch, and it's the national pastime, but they're just, quite frankly, not essential workers, so there's not, if they don't get something done, the country will move on. That's a great point.

I really enjoy listening to your guys' comments, and I know it must be tough. Sports radio, just like other businesses that you don't think about get affected, the other limbs and branches to a tree, so to speak, of businesses. And, you know, there's so many people that do get affected by this. And you guys have touched on many of them. And I guess the big hope is let's hope that the scientists of our country do courageous and brilliant work or someone in the world. And we get past that. And then we'll be right back hitting on all cylinders.

But in the meantime, I think we're going to have this. And it's not just an easy slice is my basic point. you know, my first instinct wasn't necessarily, you know, because I just wanted them to play. But when I really thought about it, I thought, you know, that may not happen. And you know what? I can see reasons on both sides. So the hope is let's get clear of this and we'll get back to everything being right and have a lot of sports to talk about. Yeah. All right. Right. Thank you, Rudy. Appreciate you. Thanks for getting in and love your perspective.

And you know what? One of the things that makes it easier for us doing these shows is people like you who are listening and calling in. So thank you very much. It is, I'm with you in that on, I can see both sides of a lot of this. I can see both sides of what the owners want. I can see both sides of what the players want and what's going to happen in these negotiations. And the problem is, we don't have any power in it. It's being negotiated through the public forum. And we just kind of have to sit here and wait and hope it comes back as soon as possible.

All right, we're going to take a break here on the Matt Thomas show. When we come back, a redraft of the entire NFL. Hey, yo, Adrian. Um, Rocky, my name is Alexa. Oh, I like to hear sports. Then say, Alexa plays Sports Talk 790 on IHeart Radio. Whoa. How many shots to the head did you take?

Matt Thomas Show rolls along till 3 o'clock, here on Sports Talk 790, at which point we'll hand off to the A team. I have to say that like that at the end of the show, I guess. Like Matt Thomas? Good luck. The A team. Adam Wexler, Adam, planning coming up at 3 o'clock. Do you say good morning,

Shippers, if you're feeling on a Friday? Yeah, I usually have somebody else to it. I just can't, look, I don't have the voice of a Matt Thomas. I can't belt it out. He's a piano. I can't belt it out like that. I just can't. So I just end up making a fool of myself. And you know what, maybe I'll do that if he's out on a Friday. But not anytime soon. So just out the first couple of days of the week here. He is in Lake Charles

gambling. Ross v. Real, Joe George, with you, and also with Brendan Riley. So, Brendan, you brought this to our attention. First of all, there is a redraft in the NFL. as far as they took the pool of the entire players and they started with a draft? Yeah, I mean, if you've ever played Madden. Yes. You know, it's the same idea. Just drafting.

Now, they only did four rounds. Okay. But I thought it was interesting. They used the NFL draft order to determine the order of the picks. This past draft? Yes. Okay. So who did the Cincinnati bingo?

Hold on. I mean, come on. Patrick Mahomes with the first pick. Yeah. So the first couple picks, Patrick Mahomes, followed by Russell Wilson, followed by Lamar Jackson. and then Deshawn Watson goes four. Deshawn Watson fourth of all the players in the NFL, Deshawn Watson fourth.

I actually think it's placed almost perfectly. Yeah, I think I think that's reasonable. Who's in the four spot? I don't even remember. Was it Dolphins? It's giants. So worth noting as well, I'm obviously not going to go pick through, pick through 30 picks.

DeAndre Hopkins appropriately falling to the Houston Texans at 26? Oh, is he the first wide receiver off the board? No. Oh, he can't be, can he? No, Michael Thomas at 22 to Buffalo. Hmm. So they're ranking based on this of the ESPN people who put it together. Be Michael Thomas, then Hopkins, at Mike Evans right after Hop,

and then Tyree Kill, all first round picks the way they did this. Can I say that if NFL GMs were drafting, completely redraft like Madden style, there was, there's no way four wide receivers go on the first round. I agree, but then some of these quarterbacks going in the first, like, that's the problem is, like, you would think, like, everyone would take a quarterback in the first round. But, like, I ain't taking Sam Donald in the first round of a redraft. I'm taking him before I take Tom Brady, who went 14th.

That totally agree. And they put him in Tampa Bay. And, like, that to me is where sometimes, like, ESPN does some, like, really cool stuff. And I feel like they're just, they know that putting Tom Brady to Tampa Bay and then Hopkins to Houston is going to create a little bit of a sensation. Yeah, I'm okay. with that.

I'm fine with that too, but I'm just like, come on, guys. It's like they just planned it out. Because no way, Tom Brady, and they had Drew Breesco eight, if you're redrafting the NFL and you're going to start a franchise and try to build a team, why the hell are you drafting either of these guys? You're getting them for like two to three years. Well, the team's doing the drafting are each of their individual or priders. So Sarah Bar Shop has did the picks for the Texans.

Sarah. I like Sarah, too. So this is the Texans squad right now. Tell me what you think. It's DeAndre Hobbes. Siquon Barkley, Derek Carr, and Tehran Matthew.

Could you imagine going to Sean Watson to Derek Carr? So everybody has a Houston tie in some way, except for Sequan Barkley. I feel like Seekwan's

got to have some kind of a tie to Houston. Probably. Like he had a cousin who went to high school in here or something or a friend of a friend. So what do you think

of the Texan squad right now? I'm still not out on Derek Carr. So I don't hate it. but I also feel like oh this is going to be hot take oh yeah this is one of some of my favorite moments

when Joe has a hot take that he thought of that he's not sure he wants to say I think Seacon Barclay's a little overrated Sequin Barclays oh in one way he's running back I mean I think like you overvalued yeah you get him in the second round that's not bad yeah I don't know

I mean Christian McAfrey goes in the first round of this thing so I guess it makes sense for Seacquan to go in the second. But, God, some of these picks are just awful. Like,

they got Teddy Bridgewater going 18th in their redraft. You know what's interesting to me? You can't convince me he's even going to be good this year.

Cam, Newton goes 36 to the Tennessee Titans. Cam Newton doesn't have a job. Like, can, when is Cam Newton going to get signed

by somebody? He's just waiting his time. Is it because he wears scarves in the post- No, it's because he's got injury problems. And he's just going

to have to wait it out. He showed on a Instagram how healthy he was. I know, but I want to see, teams want to see the X-rays. I got another issue with it. How about Aaron Donald being the first non-quarterback off the page? His best player on the off-the-draft? Yeah, that's fine.

But I mean, is he more valuable than Drew Brees or even Dak Prescott? If you're starting a team, I think I would go with either of them over Aaron Donald. I'm not touching Drew Brees in the first round. This is a, you're starting a new team all over. If you're taking a 40-year-old quarterback, you're crazy. See, I think the reason why you take Aaron Donald there is because I think after those first quarterback four quarterbacks taken, Mahomes,

Wilson, Jackson, Watson, I think that's where you can say, okay, is the quarterback we're going to draft more valuable now or do we get the best player at their position in the NFL? And to me, Aaron Donald is so good that if you draft the right, you can, you'll be fine.

Okay, so the team that took him was Miami. Who did they end up with as their quarterback? You have to have a quarterback at some point, you would think, right? Yep. They had, well, they took Zeke Elliott in the second round. Oh, good start. Kurt Cousins in the third. Yikes.

Well, you know they're going to win a lot of regular season games that are not on Monday night football or in the playoffs. Because Kirk Cousins can't do those things. You know, he's having a tough time. He's going to be okay. He's won the playoffs. He's like one in 27 on Monday night football. He beat the Saints in the playoffs. He and his defense.

No. No, wasn't that Case Keenham? Oh, was it Case Keenum? Yeah. No, this past year? Wasn't it the, uh, look, let's bring Chris Gordy in here. Are you thinking about the Minneapolis miracle? Oh, no, I'm not talking about the Minneapolis miracle.

I'm thinking of, uh, this past year's playoffs. Am I, my thing? No, I think you might be right. I, okay. It took overtime. It took overtime. It took overtime, but they still won. That's right.

Kirk Cousins had 242 yards at a touchdown. He sucks. He was balling out. Now, I think, I think it also. needs to be mentioned. Only two other Texans went in four rounds. Let me guess. JJ Watt?

Correct. Where did J.J. end up, Chicago? Who's the other one? Kenny Stills. Oh, Brandon Cooks. No. Another line. Oh, Laramie Tonsle.

They both went in the third round. Okay. Yeah, Laramie Tonsle going off the third. Well, let's see where Laramie Tonsel went because... You're telling me the highest paid tackle in the NFL didn't go to the third round. Let's see. The first tackle off the board. board was Ronnie Stanley.

And then you don't have another one until David Bactiari, then Ryan Ramzik. Love David Boktiar. Tyron Smith. Great drinker. Laramie Tunsell is the fifth tackle off the board in the third round. That's what it looks like. Okay, that's a little bit ridiculous, too, that only five tackles would go by the third round. Yeah, probably.

Because this draft is really focused on a lot of it. When did Mr. Biskia? I'm going to think he went undrafted. He did. No one took him. I'm sorry, Joseph. I know that makes you upset. So are we all in agreement that Deshaun Watson should rightfully be the fourth player off the board?

No, he should be the third. You want him ahead of Lamar Jackson, the reigning MVP? I still think Deshaunson's a better quarterback. I think he's in the perfect spot. I think four is the perfect spot for me. I think we're, I'm drafting the guy who led the league in touchdown passes and rode, ran for 1,200 yards and seven touchdowns. Lamar Jackson. I want to see him win a playoff game first.

Okay. It'll happen. We'll see. You think he's just playoff snake? He's just not good. He's not going to perform in the playoffs? I don't want to say yes for sure, but the first two performances. How many playoff games did Deshaun Watson one?

One? Yep. One more than... Against the Buffalo Bills, where they scored 19 points or how many points? Yeah. And Lamar Jackson lost. 23 points. Chargers.

Yes. The Chargers were a better team that year I felt like. That was the year they were 14. The Chargers were like 12 and 4, but they ended up in a wild car. And they had to go on the road. Now, this last year,

losing to the Titans, if you want to put that against them, I definitely, I'm willing to accept that. Then they went to beat the Patriots. So, but were the Patriots good? Debatable. All right, we've got to take a break here on the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790.

Should, Deshawn Watson be drafted ahead of Lamar Jackson. 713, 2,125, 7907-197-19. 7-19. The final segment of the Matt Thomas show next. The Rockets had Red Nation. Matt has Maddie Nation. Things are going to start happening to me now. You made it.

I'm somebody now. More Matt Thomas. Now. Joseph George dropping a nugget on me during the break. So apparently, look, there have been a lot of athletes who have been using their voices during these Black Lives Matter protests that have been happening after following the, well, quite frankly, murder of George Floyd in the streets, including Russell Westbrook, including a lot of others. Steph Curry this weekend. Yes. Patrick Mahomes spoke out as well. You've had a lot of guys going out to these protests.

But there was also another athlete, you said, was out of protests. this weekend. Oh, this one's a former athlete. Oh, former athlete, former professional athlete who's made hundreds of millions of dollars in his career. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what.

When I want to hear from people, I like to choose Alex Rodriguez. Oh, God. So I'm going to leave out the first words of his sign. The last of it says, Four Black Lives Matter. I want you to,

I already told you. I shouldn't have told you. Yeah, you already did. So Alex Rodriguez, instead of using, I don't know, just common words, He decided to go to his wife for some help on what his sign should say.

What is this? Jennifer Lopez. And Cardi B or something? No, no, only Joe Exotic talks to Cardi B. That's true. So Alex Rodriguez's sign says, Let's get loud for Black Lives Matter. What are you doing, Alex?

Like, why are you going to use your wife's song? It's just bizarre. It's too fun. It's, you know, what? I mean, it doesn't come. It's not that surprising that Alex Rodriguez would miss the mark. I keep talking about it. Did you ever watch that screwball documentary? No, I never watched it. Come on. I keep telling you how to watch it. He is so fake. I know. He is one of the most fake athletes. I can't, I can't believe a word that he says. And that's why this is so Alex.

This is very, did Jennifer Lopez put him up to this? Is that like her new single? It's not even, let's get out loud come out. It's not. Oh, early night. Early 2000s? Okay. Oh, it was on the six album in 1999. He literally put, you know what's really going to be great? You know what's really going to get our message across? Let's get loud. If I put Let's Get Loud from Jennifer Lopez on here. I just don't understand.

Like, it's just Alex making everything about Alex. And that's why I don't like it. And it's such an Alex Rodriguez move. Did Jay Z go out with us like all the single ladies, Black Lives Matter? Did he put a sign up or something like? Who else would put something stupid like that? let's get loud for Black Lives Matter, Alex Rodriguez. Who else would do something like that they would put? Or what else could he have put?

Jenny from the block says Black Lives Matter. Thanks Alex Rodriguez. You can always count on him to be fake and terrible. Exactly. And root for the Yankees. And just make it so much about himself. We can't root for the Yankees anymore. He's trying to buy the Mets. Oh, is he? Again. How's that happening? I don't know. He's trying to get Robert Kraft. Him and J-Lo and Robert Kraft trying to buy the Mets. is that right yeah well who yeah

the meds have because they've got some money issues yeah there aren't they in the debt or something like that force them to sell or something like that I don't know it's just it's just so Alex Rodriguez for everything to be going on

and for and he's honest like the only person we're seeing like truly want to make this about himself and his wife instead of just going out there and like protesting and standing up for what you believe in

it's I'm gonna make a sign but I'm gonna make sure that it's going to go viral on Instagram and on social media like it has. Well, apparently, everybody in the comments seems to be happy with him about this. Stop it. So proud of J-Lo and A-L-O. Am I on the wrong side of this? Maybe.

Can you just, can't you hide? Look, the sign next to him says, or J-Lo's holding a sign says hashtag enough is enough, B-LM. Yeah, that's great. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe he wanted people to get loud. And maybe he didn't even know. Maybe he didn't even know there's a Jennifer Lopez jammed. Yeah.

Ross. What? Stop that. Maybe it's just a funky coincidence. I don't know. No, that song is sounds horrible, by the way. Okay. So Alex Rodriguez missed the mark over the weekend.

I guess that shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Oh, here we go. Shroes relegation says, in support of A-Rod, maybe Lance Armstrong will say the first cut is the deepest. Black Class Matter. I want to soak up the sun. Is that Cheryl Crow, too? I think so.

How does Adam Wexler know what all the Cheryl Crow jams are? Did you see what we're talking about? So Alex Rodriguez was protesting this week, and his sign said, let's get loud for Black Lives Matter. That is a Jennifer Lopez jam. Right. And so you're coming to me for the Cheryl Crow? Yeah, you seem like you would be a Cheryl Crow expert.

I heard the first couple of songs you mentioned. No, just your thoughts on Alex Rodriguez in a time of one of the most divisive times in nation's history, him going to a Jennifer Lopez jam for his black. Clives Matter sign. Yeah, helps promote the misses, helps make the family more money, helps make his ownership bid stronger. Do you think she sold some records off that? Probably so. Like, what is her? Are you saying he chose the wrong song? Maybe it's a coincidence. That's a good question. Did he choose the wrong song? On accident? Like, what should he have gone with? Where was he protesting? What city? I don't even know.

I imagine New York. Is that where they live? Again, it's hard. Yeah, I don't want to joke too much about all this. No, you shouldn't. Then you wouldn't want anybody to be fooled by the rocks that you've got. Oh, how about booty? Booty is one of her latest singles. Not sure how that plays in a protest. Yeah, probably they're not going to work out. Alex Rodriguez. I'm just sick of Alex Rodriguez.

I'm sick of him being on TV. I think that's why I don't like it either. Yeah, what makes him approved as an owner? Money. That's true. Yeah, I think that's why I just don't like this. It's so Alex. Well, we just spent an entire off season talking about cheating, right?

This guy is a confirmed cheater. Yeah. And they're going to say, yeah, sure, your money's good here. I know. He has a painting of himself as a centaur in his house. He was also orange at one time during his admission. He's very orange. He kisses himself in the mirror.

He is just, I mean, I thought it was a joke with the centaur painting. I thought it wasn't real. I thought somebody was making that. Apparently it's real. Now it's an old spice commercial. He has a painting of himself on a centaur. Do you believe that story more or the million-dollar James Hardin's story? I think James Hardin spent probably maybe close to like three-quarters of a million at a strip-class.

And they just rounded up. There's no way James drop a straight milly at a strip club, right? It's impossible. I mean, things aren't that expensive there. That's what I'm saying. What if it's above a million, then they rounded it down? No, there's no way. Then they would have rounded it up to $2 million.

I think he probably dropped close to half a mill. He bought out the bar. We googled it. You can buy out a bar at a strip club for about a quarter mill. Oh, well, then that's easy. Then you get money guns. How can you buy out the bar in one night? Who said it was only for one visit?

Well, that's what the guy. The story says one visit. That's what Mall said on the, Joe Budden podcast. You must have glossed over it when you were listening to the Joe Budden podcast. You missed that part. You have to go back and rewind. Okay.

And you'll be fine. Okay. But, yeah, I mean, how about if he spent $250, bought it out? The guns spent another $150. Here's some. Here's my boys get some. And then he just, his tip was massive. Okay.

So he's a great tipper. There you go. Okay. He might be. I don't know. He should be. If we make it $40 million here. Well, but not everyone's a good tipper.

That's true. Not everybody that's rich. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you're good. And he already spent all that money there. I mean, the tip is just actually. So is the home jersey or the away jersey? The one that they put up in the rafters? Oh, come on.

This is pretty easy. It's a statement jersey. Oh, I like that. The city. The one that says H-Tor. All right. Well, that is Adam Wexler. He is part of the A team with Adam Clanton as well.

The show's okay? No, you're the A team. Oh, the A-E-Team. I don't know what you want me to say. All right, I can't do it like Matt Thomas because Matt Thomas is one and only. He'll be back on Wednesday. Thanks to all. of you for calling, tweeting, being involved in the show.

Thanks to Joe George, Brendan Riley, doing a great job here on the show. My name is Ross Villariel. We'll be back on the Matt Thomas show again tomorrow at noon here on a Sports Talk 7.9. Have a pleasant rest of your Monday and enjoy the 18.