The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Luhnow Speaks, Rockets Coaching Search & Trading Texans

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Much larger than life. Yeah. Lunch timers is the Matt Thomas show. 12-01 in H-town. What's happening in luncht timers? Good afternoon to you and welcome to a Tuesday edition

on the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790 alongside. Oh, look you here. Sports RV is back. Hey, Matt. After climbing the Joshua tree. No, it's not. You don't climb a Joshua tree. Why not?

Every tree can be climbed. They're small and very prickly. You don't want to climb them. I've heard that before. Brendan Riley is here. Brendan Riley, by the way, we should give him... Who? That's our producer.

Oh, hey. Major props. Last Tuesday's gut feeling, which you weren't a part of. No. Said he thought that Derek Henry was going to rush for at least 150 yards against the Texans. That's a good call. And he was, he underestimated the power of that. Derek Henry ran wild.

Ran, ran and ran. He's still running it. And speaking of bad gut feelings, I remember when he was coming out of Alabama, I just thought that he didn't have the lateral quickness to be an effective long-term NFL running back. And I was completely wrong. Yeah, but we didn't count that. Okay, good. So that's like a before the bit began.

It is, I think it's a fast growing bit, frankly. Oh, people, it's growing across the country. Yeah, so we'll promote it on all of our Twitter accounts and we'll get people, People called in the last week's gut feelings at 1 o'clock. Why don't we get? You know, like, when we're pregnant, they get a little special novelty shirts with, like, something on their stomach so we can get your face on people's stomach for gut feelings. Would either one of you wore that?

Yeah. You'd wear our Matt Thomas shirt. It's your face on our stomach, like eating a rib or something. Like, what's your gut feeling? And then behind and then down below, it's just picture of me. Yes. All right. Chomping on a rib or something.

Yeah, I can do that. Brendan, I want you next. Where's Ram's shirts? Let's get them on it. Brendan, let's get you one. And then you go to Detroit and have people ask you what the hell that is that you're possibly wearing? I've worn much worse stuff I'm in. Okay.

Explain. I don't know if I want to. Hmm. I'll say this. When I was growing up, I played, I had a big group of friends. And we thought we were really cool to give ourselves stripper names and put them on the back of a shirt. So how have you hidden this from us? until I was

What was your stripper name? Just come out with it Skyler It was pretty bad Diamond Go ahead Alexa Fantasia

It was vanilla cream Vanilla cream Wait a minute How long have you been working with this? You're vanilla cream now That's it That's it He's vanilla cream

I didn't pick my own name I wanted to establish Okay first of all The fact you've hit this from us For so long It disappoints me so Second of all Vanilla cream is the greatest

stripper name I've ever heard of my entire life. I can throw that shirt away until like I was probably 21, 22. So from here on out, you'll either be called Nilla. Ooh, I like that. I'm actually okay with that. You'll be vanilla cream or we'll just call you VC.

No one will understand that one. Vince Carter? No, it'll be so inside the Matt Thomas show. That's why you've got to listen to show every day. It'll be so inside. Okay. But Nella sounds really good. No, you don't want to get confused with the Vietamah.

Kong. Let's go with vanilla cream. I like that. Vanilla cream. Your name is never, ever going to be Brendan Riley anymore. Oh, there's no chance. Can we change it on the Twitter account? Oh, no way. Had vanilla cream. No way. Let me tell you, I have 25,000, 400 Twitter followers. I bet I can get you a thousand if you change your name

to vanilla cream immediately. As a matter of fact, I will put it on Twitter right now. If Brendan changes Brendan Riley undersc, which is the ad's not getting changed. I might change. the name at the top. That doesn't count.

Yeah. I change the name at the top. That's fine. Are you sure? Vanilla cream. I mean, as a compromise. Okay, fair enough. You do that.

I need time to think on that. All right. Whenever you do it, let us know, and I will promise you, I'll get you at least 150 to 200 followers. And Ross, you do the same thing, right?

Yeah, I can't promise any sort of follower number. Well, we'll do whatever we can to get your follower count on. Okay. So let's get to what the show is all about today. Got feelings at 1 o'clock today. 130, Aaron Reese from the Texans and the athletic will be with us to join us on the show. Wonderful. And with the return of Believe or Not, and I'm very happy that you're back because doing, believe it or not,

while trying to do a major market radio show is not the easiest thing in the world. I'm glad you're back. It's not that easy, is it, Matt? Yesterday was a nice, it was a layup for me. You know, Charles Barkley, Phil Mickelson, Steph Curry, and Peyton are going to play another celebrity golf event. Those four guys are. Oh, really? Steph Curry is really good, right?

Yeah. Well, we did. Is this person have, what's this person's sport handicapped? You know what his sport's, his handicap is in golf? Charles Barclays? No, Steph Curry's. One. It's less than a one.

It's technically 0.1. Okay. So he's a scratch golfer. Yeah, he's really good. How that sucks. It's not fair. He's one of the greatest jump shooters of all time. And he's a scratch golfer.

Well, I mean, takes hand to eye coordination and precision in practice. But why isn't he, if he's good at all those things? If he's good in that, why is he curing cancer? Or coming up away for us to have a flying car? You'd figure he'd be a pretty steady-handed surgeon, wouldn't he? Yeah. There's so many more things that probably Steph Curry should do in his life besides play basketball and play golf. Wow. Which one of them is going to make him 40 million a year? That's true. All right. So let's get to, again, I'm a son-in-lis and law of sports radio day because I was at home just kind of chilling.

But I would assume that much of the conversation on this radio station, at least in the morning show, is about the Jeff Lunoz conversation. You were back in town to catch it. Yes. I did not watch the 30-minute version. I went ahead and watched the 37 minutes full online. Directors cut. I didn't watch the director's cut. And my thought is probably the seven extra minutes that they put in the interview was just not necessarily fluff, but just,

you know, at some point, Channel 2 had 30 minutes plus commercial time, plus introductions. They wanted to cut out some of the stuff they didn't think was to be overly relevant. Okay. You want to just go, did you,

I'm bringing, I'm assuming you saw it as well? You did not see it. Oh, okay. I was watching football. I was watching both. Okay. So we'll just go this way. Any generic takeaways from it. And then we'll get maybe into a few more specifics. And by the way, if you'd like to just, you don't have to sell a part of the show or all of it. If you watched it, let us know what you thought. Just give us an initial thought. 713-212-5790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. I came into it, just looking at the previews and stuff, I thought there was going to be some sort of salacious bombshell about what the Yankees and or Red Sox were doing. And that just really didn't happen.

a couple of interesting takeaways. One is that he completely denied being involved at all or even knowing about it. And he had some evidence to back that up. So I believe Jeff. I came away from that, believing that Jeff didn't know anything about it or at least can deny or maybe even if he did know about it. He said, I don't want to know anything about this.

You guys deal with this. I'm going to be able to deny it. Stop doing it if you can, if not, whatever. So his involvement was minimal to zero. I do believe that. And I thought it was interesting.

He brought up 2008. how they tried to do it some there, but there were monitors in the clubhouse that were going back and forth so they weren't able to. I wish there was a question about how much they tried to do it in the playoffs in 2017. And it's very clear that nothing was happening in 2019, because he didn't even bring that up. But the presumption is if you was doing it in 17

and you did it as part of 18, that why would they just take a break during the postseason of 17? Well, Carlos Correa said they tried to do it in 17 postseason, but there was too much noise, and they were switching up the sign, so it was just futile. couldn't do it. Okay. So I wanted maybe some clarification on that, but maybe he didn't know, because he didn't know. Yeah. Overall, he also had a pimple on the right side of his cheek that was very distracting, I think, most of the time. I hadn't paid no attention to that. Oh, really? I couldn't

stop looking at it. Okay. Somebody tweet me. There's got to be somebody who just could not stop looking at the three. No, you don't want that. You know what? Because somebody's going to find a picture of him and they're going to blow it up and they're going to send it to you. So that's really about you. Okay. Well, I found it very distracting. But also, it was just mostly vanilla, I would say. It was him trying to clear his name. Not like vanilla cream, but just vanilla. Not like vanilla cream, but it seems like he wants to get back into baseball, right? I took the opposite.

Really? Like, he's done. No, I didn't say that he would open up to anything. And again, I don't think it's NFL. I don't think it's NBA. I don't think it's, it could be e-sports. It could be soccer. He's got a tremendous bad.

He does love international soccer a lot. Oh, really? Yeah. They're right for picking on analytics, by the way. I do, I found it interesting. Did you hear what he said at the end? about the he called the Astros. I took them from a terrible organization.

I thought that was funny for him to call them terrible and then made them a dominant organization. Well, I think part of the bitterness. There was a little bitterness of him is look at what this team has done and I can't celebrate with them because I'm out. And I'm the only one along with AJ that got fired. And AJ. less than a year later.

Remember, he was banned for a year, but it was a baseball year, not a year to year. A.J. is already on the front burner for maybe the Chicago White Sox job, maybe the job of the Detroit Tigers. So his name has already been out there. Jeff, you have not heard anything about any, now, granted, I don't know if there's any front office openings yet. I think the Marlins may have one. But you have not heard about where's Jeff. going to go next. So let me just give you a few.

Matter of fact, you know what, let me get a break in because I do, I want to get stand the clock here. But I have like 10 or 15 different random things about it. But I will say this. Rossi, I do agree with you. I don't believe he knew, but I'm astonished that he didn't know. Because the one thing I've always appreciated with Jeff is that he's always had his hands involved in a lot of things within the organization.

He handcrafted this department. He handcrafted the way they thought about baseball, how they conducted baseball. When he first got here, Ross, they got rid of everybody. Scouts, secretaries, traveling secretary. I mean, everything changed when Jeff got here. So how does he, and I'm not saying turn a blind eye, but how does his eye get blinded to something as elaborate as a sign stealing and or trash can banging, scanning,

a scandal. I'm having a hard time wrapping my mitts around it. But as I say that, I do believe that he was not the kingpin, the leader, the don't ask, don't tell person. And maybe that's, maybe that's talking on both sides of my mouth.

I think that at the very least, he wasn't involved. How about that? Did he maybe catch wind of it and say, hey, you guys knock this off? I have nothing to do with it. I'm not involved. Which would be different than AJ because AJ said knock it off.

They said no, and AJ was complicit with it. And that's the reason when he's out. All right. So a lot to get to this afternoon. If you would like to tell us what you thought of the events. And again, there's so many layers to it involving basically throwing a lot of people under the bus by not mentioning their name,

but kind of towards the very end had a little sly one. when it came to his special assistance, which I thought was very interesting. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. If you want to visit with us on Twitter, you may do so at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Brendan Riley underscore.

We've got gut feelings coming up at 1 o'clock. Aaron Reese on the Texans from the Athletic at 1.30. Right now, I want to tell you about something I'm so happy that a lot of my friends have tried, and a lot of you have tweeted at me, and that's what I've been telling you about Balcones distilling. Some of the best whiskey in the world can be made, and it is made, in Texas. And it's made in Waco, Texas.

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That's Balconi's distilling, distilled to appreciate. The Matt Thomas show continues on Sports Talk 790. 1218, Sports Talk 790, the Matt Thomas show with you today until 3 o'clock. 713, 212, 5-790. Gut feelings at 1 o'clock, Air Reese 130, the return to believe it or not. Actually, we returned it last few days, but return of Ross doing it at 250. And you guys can join us right now, 713, 2,125, 790. again, I'm just going to just go Diary of the mouth here and just go through rampant thoughts about what I watched yesterday.

And then you stop in whenever you think you want to add something Ross or Brandon for that matter. Jeff, a tremendous huge can't be understated role in the development of where we are as this Astros baseball team is concerned. There's no argument he needs as much credit of any of the players. He created it. Now, granted, when you suck, you have high picks, but you got to make the right picks. Just because first round picks are picked in college and high school, then always tend to work out, frankly, the last couple of years.

We'll back that up. He made a lot, a lot of really, really great moves. Didn't bat 1,000, but was certainly with bat 750, 800. If you get a general manager in any sport that bat 750, 800, that's a winning formula. He, as I said before in the beginning of the show, when he took over, he basically, you know, tore the department up.

He wanted it a certain way. He wanted metrics involved. He wanted analytics involved. He wanted lieutenants around him involved that thought the same way that he did. I feel like, and again, I've not been on that side of the Astros curtain. This is just me guessing that Jeff had an intimate knowledge of just about everything that was happening in the organization on the baseball side of things. So, yeah, it's hard for me to fathom that he was. that he either turned a blind eye or had zero idea this was happening.

But I'm going to go off of what the testimony he said he has, off of the testimony that was reported by Rob Manfred, that Jeff Leno and was not intimately involved. Now, I will say this, there was a lot of bitterness in that conversation. And my guess is Ross, if we had been fired for something that we think we didn't do, were going to be bitter as well. He made it sound like that they were looking neither find a scapegoat or to get some hide from somebody

and it sounded like Major League Baseball wanted Jeff Linneau's hide. Maybe that's his interpretation. Maybe that's the reality. Maybe both sides are inaccurate on this. But it felt like to me that he felt like there was a witch hunt against him. And I think part of that is because

when you are the general manager, you are the president of the baseball operations of it that you would think everything on your watch or under your umbrella is on your watch. For instance, if something bad happens Ross at Alabama in the football program, whether or not Nick Sabin intimately new details of it or knew about it all, they're going to say, Nick, you should have known about it. So when you have such an egregious mistake made by your organization where you have to lose draft picks, you have to get fined, find million of dollars and you have this tarnished legacy on your franchise for the one and only

championship it ever has, I really can't blame Jim Crane for making this move. And I don't know if Jeff understands why Jim had to make that move. And thus the bitterness. Yeah, I think a lot of it is what you pointed out about the Nick Saban thing. That's pretty relevant here is that it was happening under his watch. and I think they had enough. It was interesting to me that brought up that he had, they extended the investigation two weeks to try to nail him

because apparently the Dodgers wanted him nailed and probably some other Major League baseball teams wanted Jeff Luno nailed. They got a little bit of a feather of evidence and that was enough to suspend him. New bit of information that I didn't know yesterday was that there was a Fitbit in the Astros coaching staff. I was unaware of a Fitbit. Yes, same.

So that was interesting to me. what I would have liked to have known and what I would like to have seen asked was whether or not he believes the Yankees and the Red Sox are guilty of what and what kind of and how does he feel about the punishment

the Red Sox got based off of that that would have mentioned it briefly but didn't really give his opinion not a whole lot about that what I will say troubled me more than anything else was probably the back half of the show with the whole stuff about Brandon Tomlin you are the president of baseball operations.

He is your number one or number two lieutenant. If he does something stupid and you cover it up and you weren't and you didn't think it was a right thing to do, you're the president of the baseball operations. The only other person that should have kiboshed you going up there and saying, this is wrong. I can't believe what he said. I can't believe we try to cover it up would have been the owner Jim Crane.

There's no one in the middle. Now there's legal counsel and whatnot. But when you tell the truth and you feel sorry and you're apologizing and you're embarrassed and you're embarrassed for the actions of an employee, you don't need legal counsel for that. In fact, the woman that was saying all these things,

all she wanted from Sports Illustrated was an acceptance of, yeah, Brandon Tom and said it. She wasn't looking to sue the Astros. Instead, they took this horrible, horrible 30-second lapse in Brandon Tomlin's judgment or minute or whatever, however long it was in the clubhouse, and made it this three-ring circus with denial and with statements and that, you know, were we supposed to feel bad for Jep that they had to go up there and explain

why one of his lieutenants is a complete ass? What you do is if you find out what he did and what he was said, and you make sure, first of all, as a president of business baseball operations, you absolutely do not allow this to be switched around and manipulated to make it look like that it was the reporter that from SI that said these, that was in the wrong on this. And that's exactly what the Astros did. And he's got to step up and take the responsibility for that. He, again, Reid Ryan at the time was the president of business operations. Jeff Leno was the president of baseball operations.

those two people, along with Jim Crane and maybe the legal counsel, are the four most important people in that organization, that small circle of trust, that when the buck stops with somebody, it stops with those four people. And I don't think the Astros handled it well. And I think Jeff tried to separate himself from that, but Jeff was just as much of that as anybody else.

Yeah, it was completely botched, because the first press release was a complete denial. Correct. Correct. And so that's what they were running with. and they clearly didn't have the information. I think Brandon Tobman had to have lied. He had to have said, I didn't do this, and he did.

Yeah. Because why would the Astros come out and say this didn't happen? Because if, Ross, you and I've worked on it for a long time, and somebody came to me and said, Ross said this or did this. And I came to you knowing you for 10 years and said, did you do this? You said, no, I probably would have gone, okay.

Right. But unfortunately, when it's something severe, like what he did. And there were witnesses everywhere? And there were witnesses. You probably, I just, you just can't take his word. You've got to say, all right,

how are we going to prove that you what you said, what you didn't say actually happened? They completely botched it. They tried to get in front of it really quick. They should have taken their time. They should have investigated. They should have,

it would have taken five seconds to pull, to pull the room of reporters and say, did this happen? And they went probably just to top of it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so they was completely botched.

So just to summarize, and we got some other things to get to, but I just thought it was very interesting. Jeff's a really, really smart guy. One of the smartest people. Look, he and I've done shows together. He would be with us weekly for many years, and then we would do the monthly hour shows

where people would take phone calls. I always learned a lot from him, and I'll always worry. I think Jeff will know we'll get another opportunity to do something in life, and when he does it, he'll be very successful. Yeah, he's really intelligent. He really intelligent.

And so he's got that. I just hope that the way his leadership probably will be different. would think in his next role. And that I would hope that the mistakes that were made from turning a blind eye or trusting people or skimming through emails when you should read them or how you handle people below you and how the culture is, that's got to be different for him. And I would think he would have to believe that. Who wants to read a 15 hundred word email though, Matt?

First of all, who writes 15 hundred word emails? Yeah, like, can you guys, can the skis? Scouts shorten this thing up? Give me some bullet points. Bullet points and dot, dot, dots. Or the TLDR, Too Long Didn't Read. Give me the shortened version. Did you make that up?

No, that's a thing, Matt. What is it? What is it? TL. Semi-Colon D.R. Too long didn't read. I have never seen that. So let's say I write you a thousand word email.

Which I'm TLDR. If I wanted to give you basically the cliff notes, I would put TLDR and give you a quick summary. They should have been putting some TLDRs at the end of that. And then Jeff Luno made have avoided this whole thing. It's probably true. Very likely. true. All right. If you got us want to comment on anything you saw yesterday, let us know.

713212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. If you're out there on the world of email, you may, well, it's hard to email. And if you'd send an email, I'd send them like for five words. If you were on Twitter, Twitter is beautiful in the fact that it's only going to be 100, what is it, 240 on the characters, at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Brendan Riley underscore. 713-212-5-790. Our time is the Twitter. 1228, and I want to take a couple of seconds here to tell you about one of our great 790 sponsors, and that would be TGS insurance. Would you like to save significant money on your home policy?

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hundreds if not thousands from TGS insurance, text money, MONIY to 23, 23, 22, 2323. Hey, it's Craig Ackerman. Your teams, your town, your voice all day. This is Sports Talk 790. Your home for your home teams. 1233 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Brendan, I'm Matt.

Game 1 World Series tonight, raised against the Dodgers. How much of the World Series will you watch? Does your crystal ball tell you? 10% of it. Yeah, I'm taking my daughter to volleyball to practice today. and I will catch whatever I catch when I get home. If it goes to Game 7, I'll watch the whole game 7. I watched all of Atlanta Dodgers game 7.

Game 7s are cool. Absolutely. I told this to the audience of today, and you weren't here. How about how Fox treats Joe Buck? Joe's in the goat life right now. He's doing all, he's an NFL World Series, championship series. I mean, this is his wheelhouse moment. He's doing all the big events.

So it's game seven of the Atlanta Braves versus the Los Angeles Dodgers, okay, for the nationally championship. And the game was on FS1, they also put it on Fox, they simulcasts on the channels. He doesn't do the game. They bring in Joe Davis, who's the number two baseball announcer to do the game. While he goes to Tampa to do Green Bay, Tampa Bay instead, what kind of message, if you're Major League Baseball,

that your signature voice of your network says, yeah, game seven, and that's not a big of a deal. Green Bay Tampa Bay is on. What do you think was higher rated? Oh, Green Bay, Tampa Bay, for sure. So there you go. But how do you, if you're Fox, if you're the Fox, president. And Rob Manfred's like,

Hey, Mr. Fox, I thought Joe Buck was our guy. I thought Joe Buck was your number one broadcaster. Well, then what does Fox say in return? Well, Joe Davis is very good. He'll do a great job for you. And oh, by the way, NFL will beat your ratings three times to one. That's one of the things you just don't want to put out there. It's Fox to Fox, though. They know what's the priority is. It's NFL. But Rob Manford doesn't feel that way.

Well, Rob Manford should know his place then. Well, but I'm just, I would think as a professional, if I was doing both, it would be like me leaving a Rockets World Series game. Or fine, well, Western Conference Final. Western Conference Final to go do a low division one college football game. That's a little different. Well, okay, that's true. Okay, let's put it this way. if I'm calling the play-by-play of Rockets versus, say, Lakers, game seven Western Conference Finals,

or I have a chance to do Texas, Oklahoma football. Yeah. Are they both one and two or whatever they were? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The schedule was put out many weeks ago. They knew Green Bay, Tampa Bay would be in that spot. Yeah. You don't think it's a little weird?

In theory, yes, but I understand the bigger deal. Oh, we do too. I do too. It's just, I would think if I'm Joe Buck, I would be like, here I am in Tampa, Florida, doing this game. By way, it was a blowout. Yeah, 38 to 10-ish. And it was just 38 something.

It was the worse than that. But it was just one regular season game of 16. There's only going to be one game seven of the nationally championship series. I had to told Fox, bro, I'll stay on the baseball side. So he's going to do baseball. Spall World Series. He'll do Sunday NFL on the off day. He'll do Thursday night football. Well, let's see. One was in

where was the Atlanta series? Is that in Arlington? Arlington. So he went, he went, he did Saturdays, game six. He flew to Tampa to do Green Bay Tampa Sunday. Yesterday. Or Arlington? Oof.

That doesn't matter. They're all in Five Diamond. Yeah. The next day, he goes to Buffalo to Kansas City Buffalo yesterday. After that, he flies back to Arlington, he's doing game one of the World Series time. I hope he's masking up. Staying safe. That's a lot of traveling. Yeah, but my guess is they're flying on a private plane.

Yeah, I'm sure he's okay. Do you have to wear a mask on a private plane? I would imagine if there's other people on there. Probably just producer-director. That's about it. Yeah. Or maybe they test you on the way in. So if I ever hit it big on the play-by-play world,

let's have this conversation 10 years. I'll hold my breath. On the raw show. Hey, Matt, so you had a chance to do game seven of this or game one of this. What did you choose? Okay. Well, when your Fox's number one voice. Don't forget us little people, Matt.

I'm going to try not to, but probably will. All right, let's go to Mark in spring at 1237 on Sports Talk 790. Hi, Mark. Hey, how's it going? Good. Hey, quick question on the whole Brandon Toddman deal. I thought when all that came out, it was initially because he said something along the lines of, you know, bleep and love Roberto Zuna and a female reporter took exception to that,

or she took offense to that. Is that what basically started that whole deal? Or was there more to it where he was big, where he said derogatory terms towards a female because of what Osuna had gone. No, it wasn't a derogatory term, I think directly toward her. It was the look at us now, look at our guy.

Thank God we got Osuna. Yeah, it was not like your ugly hooker. I mean, it was nothing like that. I mean, it was something about Osuna situation. Oh, okay. But even then, I mean, to me, none of that. I mean, I don't really know where she would have took offense to any of that.

I mean, we are glad we got him. Oh, I know, but that's not the tone. That's not the context. That's not the context. So Osuna, even in that series, he was not good. And they won, and the reporter he was targeting is one that had complained about Robert Osuna being a female reporter who complained about Osuna being here and saying it wasn't right. It wasn't a good look for the organization. So Brandon Tobman, knowing that and wanting to get in that person's face saying,

thank God we got Osuna, bleeping, thank goodness we got Osuna, was trying to show that reporter up. Yeah. Oh, okay. I got it. Right. And that's why, again, the Astros, it didn't take long. If it was two people in the room, one person's word over the other, you could have a good argument on that,

but it was done in front of several other people that it would have taken about five seconds for the aster's at the time to figure out what exactly was said. Oh, okay. All right. I appreciate the clarity. Thank you. Appreciate it. And I think, and hopefully the Astros have, learn from this. I think everybody has. But it just, he tried the distance himself from everything. And I think, you know, sometimes you got to take the mistakes are made. Do you know the hardest thing in life for anybody to do, Ross, is tell somebody you're sorry and that you had an error in judgment. That's just

a, that's just a product of being human, right? So you would say sorry seems to be the hardest word. I would say that I am, when I fight with my wife, when I fight with you, when I fight with anybody. I'm still waiting for my first apology, I think. I mean, you're just keep waiting for that. Point being is that I shouldn't say fight, disagree, argue, whatever, that sometimes you just have to take the loss and say, I should have thought of that. And Jeff and the organization should have said, why did we jump to Brandon Tomlin's defense so quickly without even doing a little bit of due diligence? And that's where the mistake was made. And that's where the president of baseball operations for the Astros should have said, I got to watch this.

Because let me tell you something. Jeff knows what Brandon's all about. Right? I think he had a little bit of a reputation for being an A-Hole, correct? Yeah. You and I went to dinner with him one. I wasn't there. Oh, you went, okay.

I had went there. And it was, um... Go ahead, Matt. He's fired. No, I'm not... Look, I don't want to pour someone. I came away going like, I don't think I like him. And I like everybody.

And I was like, this Taubman guy, obviously very high. highly regarded the organization was probably on a shortlist maybe to become a GM somewhere else. Just really, really rub me the wrong way. So I didn't, it's not fair for me or for anybody to necessarily decide what a person did right or wrong based on one informal dinner that we had.

But when I had heard what it was said based on the one impression that I had of him and knowing that Jeff had had other people around him that were kind of like that, I was like, you know, this wouldn't be the craziest thing in the world. you probably should say we have no comment at this time until we further investigate. Let's go to David in Aldine on 790. Hi, David.

Hey, Matt, I just, all this stuff that's gone on since they found out about the scandal. And they did Hinch for the fire. I never heard anybody say, why didn't A.J. Hinch just get rid of somebody if they were cheating. You know, if they were cheating. And he told him to quit it. As they kept on, I thought he was in charge of the team. He should have just kicked. him out and made an example of somebody.

I never heard that he did that. No. He heard he. Yeah. And he asked them to stop multiple times, and they basically said, skip, no, we're not going to. And he said to live with that. Well, yeah. If that's way, then he wasn't in charge of his team, you know.

Well, he was a film manager. But yeah, but he was afraid that if he would have gone in there and said, this is not happening on my watch, he would have lost the team. And that was a mistake he made. He let the pressure of keeping his guys happy and keeping a cohesive clubhouse ruin his judgment on something he knew he knew was wrong. Yeah, maybe so. But in other words, he was worried about his job. Not worried about his job, per se. And thank you for the phone call.

He was worried about keeping everybody happy. He was worried about winning baseball games. and so, I mean, let's be honest, Ross, that happens all the time of business. There are people that are right now driving around town that work with people that skim the books. And you may go to that person and say, stop, don't do this, it's not right. But then you maybe still let it happen because you need your job. And maybe that's the greatest example of the world. But, I mean, there have been, there's a term blind eye for a reason.

And people do that all the time in life. So that's why I'm saying that I don't, not to justify what AJ did, but we can all be in that situation. And when you're a manager, one of your the biggest, probably the biggest thing that you're supposed to do is have the ear of your clubhouse

and the trust of your players. And it's just going to be, AJ should have done more, but he didn't want to lose his clubhouse. Yeah, it's all about losing the clubhouse. Is that our manager is being a dad instead of letting us handle our own business. All right, 1244.

Matt Thomas show Sports Talk 790. If you'd like to jump in, 713, 212, 5, 790. Rossi, we've got to get a little football in before the top of the hour. We've got feelings at 1 o'clock. Do you know who's leading the NFC East? The Eagles? Try again. Though the Washington football team.

Nope, try again. Wait, is it the Cowboys? It's the Cowboys. They're terrible. I think the NFL needs to take a policy from the NBA. And I'll discuss that in a second. 1244, Sports Talk 790 with a word here for bronze roofing. Look, it's never fun to check your roof.

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That's 281-480-9-0-9-00 and online. B-R-A-U-N-S, Bronzeroofing.com. More Matt Thomas. Now on Sports Talk 790. All right, we got gut feelings coming up in about 10 minutes here on the Matt Thomas show. I don't know where I'm going to go with this this week. I usually have a pretty good feel of what I'm going to go with a gut feeling. Bren, you got your gut feeling locked and loaded?

I think I got something right. were one for one in the most recent gut feelings. Could be World Series prediction. Could be Texans game against the Green Bay Packers. So that really wouldn't be a gut feeling. That would be like an educated guess. And then you've got, you know, who the Rockets coach might be. It feels like it's down to three people.

Steam Silas. John Lucas. John Lucas and Jeff Van Gundy. Interesting, eclectic group, isn't it? it is definitely an interesting group. And none of those names excite me. But that's okay. Who would have been the name to excite you?

Because here's the thing. I'm going to be honest. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes in life, Rossi. I wasn't excited about Mike Dan Tony coming here. I was very unexat. I thought I was like... And they were four really good years. Not great in terms of getting where you needed to get,

but there was no clinical depression. There was no... The Rockets Can't Stop a Nosebleed kind of thing. I mean, this team showed signs and two years ago got as close as they've ever been since the championship years to get to the NBA finals.

I thought, do you remember that off-season? They got rid of Dwight and they signed Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson as that was their, that was the off-season. No, Dwight was still signed

as a member when Mike was hired because he was asked about that. Now, he moved shortly after that. Okay, well, then they went into that season with Mike Dantone, no Dwight Howard, and with Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson. And I was like,

oh, well, they're just going to lose. and Mike Dantone's here to be the Band-Aid, and then he was going to be gone whenever they become good again. And then they won 55 games. Yeah. Well, that's an Antonio game. We don't need to bring that. Thanks. All right. So is there is, was there a name that you had heard that excited you? That's.

Kenny Atkinson? Again, this is kind of all moot now because it sounds like it's down to three. Tailu didn't really excite me, I guess. You know what? I guess Stephen Silas has been a guy who's been mentioned. So I'll say he's the most exciting name on that list for me. You know why he would be the most exciting on that list, in my opinion to you would be that He'd be outside the box.

He's been mentioned with name. He was mentioned, was he mentioned when the Rockets, when Mike Dantonia was up? I think he was, did he not finish like second, I think? The name was up there, yeah. Yeah. That's fine. By the way, you missed a huge week of sports. We had the baseball playoffs.

Daryl Morey resigns. What? I know. Daryl Morey's out? By the way, Chinese television is taking credit for Daryl Morris' resignation. Oh, are they? Yeah. Well, good for them.

CCT, whatever that is, says. that basically there are people in China that are saying, told you, you take shots at us, we will cost you your job. And I'm paraphrasing. Has he ever spoken or did, did he woe, or anybody say that whether or not he was fired or whether he would resign? It was definitely a resignation. Well, yes, but a force resignation could happen.

Well, we argued that point where you were gone. If you really wanted to get rid of Daryl, you would have done it shortly after that whole thing went down. Why would you let him go the entire season, help you find a new coach and then all of a sudden he just let him go? Didn't the season just start when it was happening

when he did that? They didn't have any recourse. They could have fired him then, sure. You don't, but your GM wouldn't have, normally you want your GM to have a full off season. Yeah, but his work was already done. I mean, I'm saying if you want to,

if Daryl was let go or forced to resign because of China, I can, I don't believe it to be case. China. You don't, you don't wait eight months after it happened. I agree with that. Okay, that's what I'm saying.

But I don't even necessarily mean because of the China thing. Maybe just because of the team is not in a good position and they're capped out. Well, that's definitely the case. I mean, they are strapped cash-wise with a lot of money tied up in three players. Is the stock arrow pointing up or is it pointing down for the Houston Rockets right now? Everybody, you know how old and shams and all those guys, they tend to believe that this was just, you know what? This is just a good time to go. Darrell Moore is like, I'm capped out.

We're playing Russell Westbrook, how much the next? few years. And you know, it's funny, it came out. He stepped down a couple days after reports that they were trying to trade Westbrook to the Knicks. And the Knicks said, I'm out. And then, so, Durham said, oh, you're out? Well, I'm out.

Can't get rid of this contract? I feel like the team's got two years to this current configuration before, I'm not saying, you know, suck to get a first pick. But I'm saying it reconfigure. Yeah, you can say, sure, blow it up. Blow it up. I'm okay with that. I think you do want to squeeze a little more out of the James Harden Prime Lemon right now.

But it's easier for fans that don't have an investment in the team financially to say, let's blow it up. Of course. When you're the owner or the general manager or the coach and you had those losses on your record and you're instead of drawing 18,000 to us and you're drawing 11.5, it's a little more difficult to say, let's blow it up. Yeah. And then instead of your slogan being hashtag one mission, it's like hashtag a new age. Hashtag you try to soft sell a rebuild. Yeah. hashtag these boys are coming up or something like that.

Ready to rebuild. I mean, just all that. You don't want to sell. You're not going to sell a lot of season ticket packages with. We'll see you in three years. That's right. That's right. You don't want that.

Let's get to Roger and Deer Park at 1255. Hi, Roger. Hi, what about Bill Jackson or Bill Pitch? To do what? That was a... Yeah, I recognize a number. He's been prank calling this for years. man, get a life.

Let me ask you a question. We've got a minute left in the second. You're a grown-ass man. Yes. He usually calls in as Batman or Superman or something stupid like that. Yeah. You get on your phone, you dial 10 digits. Yeah.

You go on the radio and you want to do that? That's how you want to roll in your life? Let me tell you something. You need to focus on touching a woman. You need to focus on gathering a couple of friends, probably improving your diet. probably not being an awful human being. That sucked.

You know, we are the most interactive show in America. The most interactive. But it makes you not want to be nearly as interactive. At SportsMT. Yeah, slow steady climb to 25, whatever it is. How's the climb looking? When are we getting to 23?

I got the 20, I got the 25-4-10-Unda day and then a bunch of bots drops. I'm now back to under 254. Oh, that's not good. Twitter's doing a good job of cleansing it out. I'm okay with that. We've got to get to 30K somehow, man. Well, you know, I feel like I'll help grandchildren before I get to 30K. That's that.

I mean, what I have a grandchild within next year. Let's not talk about that. What I need to do is, frankly, just do something completely salacious. Yeah, when are you going to break news? You need to pick one of these three finalists and say you're hearing that they're being, that you don't even put that they're going to be in the next coach. You put something that you can deny later. You say hearing that Stephen Silas is the favorite.

Then if he's hired, you say, well, see, I told you guys. And if he's not, well, he was a favor, but something changed. I don't want to do it that way, though. Why not? I don't roll that way. It worked for that little kid who was breaking all the free agency stuff. What was that kid's name? And then he was wrong on everything.

And he said there was zero percent chance that Kauai was going to the Clippers or something. Bert Steele? No, it was good. Bart Steele, but like some Indian kid in L.A. or something like that. Yeah, I don't want to do it. Now, what I want to do is I want, if Tillen's listening, and he listens to show sometimes, if he can text me and who he's going to go with, then I will put it out there. And I won't even call it Tillman.

I'll say sources say. And then I'll get to my 30,000. Ari Abraham. How many followers does that guy have? You can just be like him. He puts out erroneous information. He's only got 22,000 followers. Yeah, see, it's not working.

Yeah, but he's just great. He's like 23 or something. Damn. What am I doing with my life? All right. Let's do this. We start the next hour of the Matt Thomas show with gut feelings. Anything in life.

Sports? Yes. game predictions coaching hires okay politics well do one before the election right oh about who's gonna win

sure that'd be gut feel that's two weeks from now oh how about this you have a gut feeling of how the debate's gonna go there's gonna be one with a mute button apparently put in play

oh they're gonna have a mute button yes where have you been you've been too busy climbing that Joshua tree it's in the desert man there's no trees whatever there are mountains though okay it's beautiful

So if you have a gut feeling about anything, anything, 713, 212, 5, 790, 713, 212, 5, 790. Word now for Hoops Basketball Goals and Sporting Equipment. I have a gut feeling that if you are not shooting baskets on a good goal, then you need to call Keith Tate and the crew at Hoops Basketball Goals. Very simple. They are great people that have been able to install thousands and thousands of goals all throughout the city. and across the United States, and they can also be found in 12 different countries. Their website is easy and navigate. It's produncoops.com, and their phone number is 281-351-9822. ProDunCoop's has four different basketball goals designed to choose from, including their brand-new model of the bear.

It's heavy duty, it's fully portable, and it's perfect for those picky HOAs. So get your goal with professional installation. Call right now, 281-351-9822, and online, Pro dunk hoops.com This is the Matt Thomas show. This is their gut feeling on the Matt Thomas show. All right, 1104, Sports Talk, 790. We're going to give Brendan the honors because Brendan rushed. Now, again, Derek Henry is scoring 150 yards,

playing a second game in five days. wasn't the craziest gut feeling, but it was still pretty good. So, Brendan, it's the honors. I don't know how you're going to feel about this one, because it's not specific to a game. That's okay. It doesn't be at all. Just whatever's in your gut, look, your gut, you know, being vanilla cream and all is rather large. Vanilla cream?

All right. My gut feeling is that we will know who the Rockets next head coach is by this time next week. Not counting that one. Oh, not valid. We've been sitting here waiting for forever. telling you we're going to get it. I don't like it. When you created this segment,

you said it could be big or small. Okay, so how about this? Why don't you add to it? Why don't you have a gut feeling about who the coach will be? That's Jeff Van Gundy. Okay. So you think in a week from today that Jeff Van Gundy would be the next head basketball coach of the Rockets?

Yeah. Okay. Go ahead, Matt. I'm not ready. I'm not ready either. Oh. and I'm going to get criticized for my small gut feeling and you guys don't even have one.

All right, you want me to go with one? Hold on, let's get a phone number out first. Have you guys got a gut feeling about anything? Way more generic than I believe there's going to be a coach by next week. I personally believe. Hold on, yeah. Come on, what do you all believe? What's your gut feelings?

713. I'll give you one. I'll give you one. I'll give you one. 713, 212, 5790. 713, 212 5790. All right, what you got? World Series has not go more than five games,

and the Dodgers won. Would my gut feeling be that this is going to be the lowest rate of World Series ever? Would that be a gut feeling to you? Not really juicy. It's probably accurate. I cannot believe I was criticized. You're right. It's fair. What do you mean?

I got something for you. How about this? This is a long down-the-calendar gut feeling. I have a gut feeling that the NFL is going to have to extend its season by at least one week. They have tried everything in their power not to do so. But I'm telling you, they're going to have to extend it because there's going to be some more COVID test issues around the NFL. As tough as they have been, as tight as their protocol. has been this disease, this disease, this virus still has.

What is a virus disease? Yeah, sure. This virus has no signs of slowing down in the world of sports, frankly. Maybe in life, but not in sports. I think it's surging in Texas. I think hospitalizations are up. Well, it's funny because I don't think Texas is one of them. The last one I saw, they were 38 states, and Texas was not one of them.

I don't know. I just saw it on Twitter. Twitter never lies to you. All right, so Rossi, I'm going to go with short-term lowest-rated World Series. ever will be Tampa Bay versus Los Angeles. Okay. And I will then go long term that we will have to see the NFL season extended one week to catch up on some teams. What do you think? Sounds good. You got five for the World Series. And Brendan's gut feeling is one week from today that there will be a rocket tech coach. Brandon also saying that he expects the sun to shine six the next seven days as well.

You just predicted that a Tampa Bay Rays World Series is going to be the lowest rated ever. No, no, Dodgers are involved in that too. L.A. is very sexy team. Just telling you. Yeah, if the Braves were in it, I don't think we could count it. I totally forgot game won us tonight. I didn't even know until you mentioned it. That's what we're here for.

We are at the Sports Center of America. I have been traveling, you know, Matt. I'm in a malaise, a haze. So you were in L.A.? Was Dodger fever crawling all over the place? Yeah, absolutely. I didn't really know. I was wearing rocket stuff in the airport, and I did hear from Lakers fans, unfortunately.

People, one person said trade James Hardin and keep Russell Westbrook. I'm like, all right, go back to checking people's bags, TSA agent. You don't know, you don't know basketball very well. I feel like TSA agents just have a real difficult life. They're always grumpy. And they have terrible sports takes, apparently. But they had terrible sports takes. And then I was at a Korean barbecue place, and the table next to us was Dodgers fans,

and they were yelling at me about calling me a cheater and stuff. I love Korean barbecue. Eat? Why are you yelling at me? Korean barbecue, Hawaiian barbecue. I love it all. Korean barbecue is amazing. Yeah. We were outdoors and distancing, so we were being safe. Good.

All right, let's find out what everybody's gut feelings are. And again, we make fun. We may make fun of your gut feeling, but the time that you took the call this show means everything to us. Let's say hi to Jimmy and Tom Ball. Jimmy, what is your gut feeling, please? I got two of them to go together. The Dodgers will curse Sean Billinger will revert to their previous postseason for him, and Bellinger's going to set a new World Series strikeout record,

and Kershaw will give up over 10 runs in his two starts. Tampa wins, 10 runs combined. Tampa wins and six. That is a gut feeling right there. Thank you very much, Jimmy. We'll see you later. Tampa and 6, huh? Who are you rooting for?

Nobody. I don't care. I guess Tampa? I'm rooting for Tampa. It'd be funnier if they did. Well, you know what? Those Dodgers fans were pissing me off. Yeah, they're so arrogant.

They're so arrogant. And the Dodgers are arrogant, too. And I tried to, I was like, okay, well, they just did it from May to September. I was trying to argue the points. And then these Dodgers fans were just drunk and just saying, cheater, cheater, cheater, cheater. They probably got mad at you because you had your wall in the back of your pants, too. What?

The TSA. Oh, no, I'm talking about it. Oh, okay. TSA, they were all Lakers fans. Screw that. It's awful. All right, let's go to Trey and Crosby. Trey, what is your gut feeling, please?

So I'm a Texas A&M, class of 18, Aggie. And the hogs are looking good. I think they're going to beat Texas A&M number seven. I just, I don't feel good about Kellamond back there at QB. Wait a minute. Your squad just not ran over the competition the last two weeks? We have, but I mean, the hogs are rolling, man. So an Aggie calls his show to crush his own Aggies?

I'm not crushing. I hope they win. I just, you call me a 2% of it. I just, I don't know. I hope we win, but they're looking good. Are you wearing your Aggie ring right now? I am. Take it off. People in A&M hate you now.

We'll see you later. Thank you for God. You're probably right. He just called himself a 2% or right. What's a 2% Texas fan? Don't you have a little catchphrase for yourself too? No, there's no really. The 2% are in A&M means they don't buy into the cult, right?

Cult's a strong term. It's a cult. Hi, this is Ross. I'm saying this. You don't have to take. You seem scared because you don't want to see. Well, I cult's a strong term for me. Well, you're a closet aggie.

That's okay. It's a cult over there. I'm sorry. You know how to be involved in the cult to go to A&M. I mean, well, 2% of them aren't, but there are some who are. Okay. Worshiping dead dogs and whooping all over the place and being obsessed with Texas sports,

even more than Longhorns fans. occultists. Are we your home for Aggie Sports? No, we're not. A damage of relationship right there. We are your home for Texas Longhorns, football, and baseball. I mean, a basketball. And tomorrow, Cougar Sports Magazine from 7 to 8 right here on Sports Talk 7.

Very busy. How many you got seven interviews on that or what? It's always four. Okay. I don't take any calls on it. You pack as many as you can. Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to talk Cuba Sports, so yeah, I get it. No, people love to talk about Cougar Sports.

It is rather just listen to great information to come. from that. Jim and Spring Branch, what is your gut feeling, please? Well, before I get to that, I got a gut, I mean, a Cougar sports take. I was at the game, and I think it was 76, 78, when U.S. beat the Aggies at Rice Stadium. There were 70,000, one people there. I let you think I was the one person that was sitting in the middle of the Aggie section when the Cougars vanquished them. Also, the same year they took out Texas, 30-0 in Austin. but my gut feeling is that Sheila Jackson Lee will win the 18th congressional district again.

Isn't she a huge favorite at time? Yeah, who does she go again? Is she even running a post? Jim, thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Let me put you back on. Jim, who's she running against? I have an or thing like this.

She wins every year. Okay, so I'm really not a gut feeling. It's just basically a foregone conclusion. Pretty much. All right, thank you very much. And somewhere Missy the Ultimate Spurs fan is very upset. I think she's in that. She does not like, she has been, she has been,

adding Sheila Jacksonly on Twitter and getting no response. She lives in Sheila's district. Yeah, I know. All right. Last one. Garrett and Cyprus. You got a gut feeling? I do. I do. You know, the November 3rd trade deadline is looming. And if the Texans get another

loss against Green Bay, which could definitely happen, you know, standing at 1 and 6, I have a gut feeling that they're going to be active in the trade deadline, even without a full-time GM. Oh, okay. I like it. Matter of fact, you weren't listening to, would you listen to the show yesterday?

What show? My show. You have a show? Yeah, it's new to three. Well, I was in the, I was in air, man. I discussed who they should trade. It's a no-brainer. If this season is a complete wash, there is one player you can get in value for in return. I'll tell you who that is. Ross is like, hmm, what is this? Professional radio teas. I think I know who you're going to say. It's easy. We've talked about it before. he has much value. Oh, I think he's got more than you think he does.

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To find the location near you, big city wings. com. Big Citywings.com. Matt Thomas continues. On Sports Talk 790. Okay. Rossi, I mentioned this in the show yesterday, those who didn't catch it.

If this season is really going to implode, meaning like four and 12, 3 and 13, can't beat anybody because Green Bay is going to come in here and win by two touchdowns, Why won't you see what JJ Watts is available in trade value? Why don't you kick the tires on it?

Because, first of all, multiple things happen. One, you get his salary off your books. Two, you're going to get some sort of draft return back. I don't know what it will be. It probably won't be a first. But you get something back. And third, JJ ain't going to bitch and moan about it. He wants to go win.

What if you trade him to the Jets? You're not doing that. The Jets wouldn't trade them. You're training to a contender. Of course. I would imagine. You know what? Yeah, I think he'll have some value. You're right. The first couple of weeks, he was not playing well. He's been playing very well, and I thought he had his best game of the season. Even though they gave up, what, 36, what are you, 42 points?

Yeah, 42 points. 36 is what it was into overtime. But yeah, you gave up 42 points, but it wasn't necessarily his fault. I thought he, what he used to always do when he was his defensive player of the year is you go, wow. You look at that, and you would pop, which you just see you pop off the screen. And he did that a couple of times on Sunday, and he hadn't seen that from him much all year. So that's what I'm saying. Let's do that.

And look, I'm not a fan of moving guys out away because they need to go win a championship. He signed his contract. He wanted to stay here. I'm just saying this helps out both sides. This isn't being bitter. This is being practical. Because I'll be honest with you, I don't think it's, I think JJ is pretty miserable right now. It's what it should be.

He had an A-hole coach who eventually got rid of because he went to Cal's room when he was eating lunch. and said it's me or him. Yeah, Calhead chicken salad on his... And trisketes and grapes. Apparently. And sliced cheddar cheese. Matt thinks Cal McNair is a six-year-old, so he had him in there. And who was feeding him?

His wife. Hannah, yes. She's quite attractive. Yeah. She put a napkin over his tie, so he didn't get any stains on it. Did J.J. asked her to leave, or did he... Did he social distance and wear a mask when he was in there? No, no, no, no, no.

J.J. walked in. he stormed the room. And he's like, oh, I didn't realize you guys were having lunch, my bad. And Cal's like, no, sit down. You want some? Hey, Hannah, bring over this Trisket box. Let's give him some chickens out. And Jay J is like, no, I had a great lunch.

Thank you, though. Bill O'Brien is a miserable SOB, and he is a terrible head coach and a terrible GM, and you need to fire him. And Cal's like, okay, sounds good to me. So he did it. And then he went on about eating his triscuits. And then JJ left. Like, then that was quick.

I didn't have to do much work there. J.J. needs to have the same conversation and said this time around Ross, JJ will knock on the door. And Cal will be like, who was interrupting me at lunch again? Hannah? It can't be Hannah because he had to pop his barbecue brought in.

Okay. He's not supposed to be eating that, but Panna was like, she ain't there. Yeah. So he was supposed to have like broccoli for dinner or something? So he's got a plate full of ribs in front of them. Mm-hmm.

and tell me this isn't a possibility. Oh, it is a definite possibility. You know I'm right. Jay J.J's like, what are you having there, Cal? He's got a face full of mac and cheese and ribs. The Papa's barbecue mac and cheese. Yeah, very good. So he's having lunch and it's like,

JJ, what do you want now? I already got rid of your coach. Look, you don't have a first or second round pick. And Cal's first response is, we don't? Yes, Cal. Is he watching SpongeBob on the TV? No, he's got CNBC on to make it look like he's watching a site market. Fox business checking on a, yeah.

Yeah, it's all for show. And he's like, don't you think me best in my best interest to go somewhere else? You can get maybe a second and a fourth, maybe two thirds. You know, I make a lot of money. I'm going to make a lot of money. You've got to, you know, you got to start worrying about your cap down there. I don't know how cash strap they are from a cap standpoint. You don't have a first second round pick.

You need to replenish the draft. This is a rebuild. And I'm playing my balls off and I can't help you win. I played my best game of the year and we give it 42 points. I'm not making that big of a difference. I think it would be a win-win for everything. I really do. And I'm not trying to be glib about this.

I'm being serious. I think you're right. I think he could be traded. I think it could benefit both sides. But I wouldn't do it. You're not contending for a super while now. But I'm not doing it out of the goodness of my heart because JJ deserve a Super Bowl. I want to make sure I'm very clear on that.

How far out are they from the third wild card? Well, I would assume it's, I mean, Jacksonville has one win, Houston has one win, the Jets have zero wins. Is there anybody worse than that? Steelers, Titans, Chiefs, and Bills are your division leaders. And you have the Colts who have four wins, right? Ravens Brown and Colts have four. Yeah, they're not making it. They're not making the blouse. They're out.

Yeah, trade them all. Please get behind me on this. Trade them all. I think you would also kick the tires on whether or not Whitney Mercils could be traded. You might get a tire, literal tire, when you can get a bang, but that's okay. I'd probably keep Zach Cunningham. Yes. You'd just sign him a big deal.

I'd keep Justin Reed. What about their other linebacker, Matt? Oh, he's... Benardrick McKinney. Oh, you're a close. Benardrick. Who is having surgery and has zero trade value. And by way, will be released at the end of this year.

Hmm. Yeah. Does that already been said? No. That's just like a nine-star Nostromous prediction. Okay. Hold on, let me go to my Nostromest. You should stop worrying about that file because the file is full of accuracy.

It's full of inaccuracies. Because I don't save anything you get right. Okay, I'm just telling you, when this hits, when JJ eventually gets moved, I want my proper credit. Why? I didn't say, there's articles all over the internet. Will J.J. Watt be traded? Where? Name one.

Google search it right now. You can't have a... I'm the only one in America that. saying that JJ Watt should be traded. Sports Illustrated. Are the Texans trying to trade J.J. Watt? CBS Sports. Will Texans trade off key pieces ahead of deadline? I mean mainstream political sports sites. Sports Illustrated? It's not mainstream?

No. CBS Sports? Fake news. Steelcurtain.com. Why Steelers need to trade for JJ Y right now. Definite fake news. You know what they're doing? They're listening to this show and they're taking their notes off of that. That's fine. I can accept that. All right. Let's go on the Texans beat next. 126 is our time. It is the Matt Thomas show. am I crazy or as Andy would say, am I on something or onto something? I believe I'm on to something.

Trading JJ Watt? I think you're on to something. There's no reason not to. Is there anybody that you would not trade? The answer to me is Deshawn Watson and that's it. Everybody else could be moving. Laramie Tunsell. He's just signed him to a big deal.

I think you take a gigantic dead cap hit if you. Well, yeah. And as I don't think, as good as Laramie is, I don't think people are going to spend that kind of money to put him way above where he has in terms of his, or he is in terms of left tackle. He should be the highest paid left tackle or one of the highest paid, but the Texans made sure he was among the super, super highest paid of all. Yeah, based on timing, it's whatever.

All right. 713-212-5-790. Matt Thomas Show continues with Aaron Reese after a word here for Oops, steam cleaning. To get your carpets professionally cleaned, it takes one simple phone number to 281-8220561. The folks at Oops have been taken care of Houstonian's needs for a couple decades now, providing true steam cleaning done a fair price by trained professionals.

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Heart and open for 3.80 headsets! This is James Harbour. Wowing the crowd here at Toyota Center. Sports Talk, 790 is your home for Rockets basketball. Every Tuesday at 1.30, we spent 10 quarter minutes with our friend Aaron Reese from the Athletic. That's a fantastic job on the Texans. All right, Aaron, let's get it out of the way early. What was your take on Romeo Cornell's decision to go for two points?

I thought it was totally the right decision was without question. The defense is really bad. The defense benefited already from, you know, two turnovers. I think that the chance that they were going to realistically make another stop was pretty low. And so you give, and I'd rather Deshaun Watson get me two yards and trust that defense to stop the Tennessee Titans. You know what? The end of the day and people try to over discuss it, I'm sure, and talk ready the last couple days.

This show certainly has done it. If the two-point conversion is made, the Texans win the game. And look where we've been, Aaron. they win the game, they've won two straight in the division and confidence with a new coach, at least on an interim basis, is high. Instead, it goes from that to a loss to Green Bay is coming in here, and Green Bay will probably be pissed because they play so poorly against Tampa Bay. The pendulum swings massively off of the decision of what happened on the game on Sunday.

No, it totally does. But I still, again, I just think like Tennessee, is obviously the better team. Cornell had had that the Texans and inferior team and a chance to win on the road. And it came down to basically letting your best player get two yards. I would take that every time. And when I was watching the game

and they were starting to make this comeback in the second half, at that same time, I think Indianapolis is still losing to Cincinnati, or at least it was close. And I was thinking, you know, not only if they win this game, or the 2 in the division, all the things like you mentioned,

but also that if Indie loses, suddenly they're right in the thick of it in this division. And so that would have been pretty remarkable. But, you know, with this loss, obviously, the playoffs now are totally out of the picture. Aaron, we were concerned about the Texans defense going into the season. And I don't remember, was the run defense what concerned you most or anything else? I always thought it was about pass rush and the secondary. Are they even underperforming even more than you thought would have been than you would have originally thought with their run game so far?

Yeah, you know, I thought they would at least be a little bit better on the run game, because they have McKinney and Cunningham, who, you know, kind of could at least limit a lot of explosive runs, you know, kind of keep things from getting to the second level. But, you know, those guys have, I mean, McKinney's obviously out, but also, you know, I think that coming in Ham is kind of underperformed a little bit. You seem to be out of position on that 94-yard run or whatever it was that Eric Henry had. So, you know, I think kind of those things combined her and, you know,

not choosing not to find DJ Reader and instead give Whitney Mercilus, the big contract that Mercilus got. That seems like a bit of a mistake now. too. And the new general manager is going to have to clean this up. The Texans, I don't think, have done this yet? And maybe you know, have they given any sort of timeline about when they're going to start talking to people? Do they want to wait at the end of the season? Do they want to start kicking the tires now? When do you think we'll start hearing some names pop up? You know, I mean, I know from that they kind of said it will start get going here in a few weeks

rather than, but I mean, realistically, the search won't really, really get going until the season is over. and then, you know, they can obviously interview all the relevant candidates, you know. And, I mean, GM will come first, of course, like Kyle McNair said. What do you think about this search firm again being in charge of it? Yeah, it's interesting. I never understand the search firm side of things. I guess they find out, you know, they can find out some more things that could be negative or, you know, things that you want to find out now rather than down the line.

But for the most part, it's like, I mean, are they going to tell the Texans about some coach they haven't heard of? You know, I just, I don't really kind of get the point of it. And there's been, like, good stories I've read about kind of the way the industry has set up. It just seems kind of like all a bit of hogwash. But that's what the choosing to do again. Yeah. Again, I have a problem with the name of the firm, Corn Ferry. I mean, it just didn't even sound right.

Yeah, yeah. Not that I should really be worried about search firms. Let me ask you this question. And if you don't know the answer, that's okay, too. Who is the smartest football mind right now in the Texans front office? Oh, man. I mean, I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

I mean, they would seem to think it's Jack Easterby, right? They're letting him kind of run the whole thing. And he had his hands in so many departments, so they think he can make a difference in a lot of other areas. You know, I mean, I imagine from a personnel side in terms of someone who's considering one of the moves they could make at the trade deadline or guys that could pick up and try to find some gems to the future, that would be the director of player personnel, Matt Bazargen.

those are kind of the two guys at the top now. Do you know much about either one of those guys? Do they make them public available to the media occasionally or not at all? Or what do you know about those guys? I mean, Jack has talked to the media a little bit, yeah. And as you know, he's never been made publicly available to media. He worked with the Jets for a long time, and he came over here under Brian Gaines. So, you know, how even after game left?

He survived, obviously, and then now he's dealing with another regime change. Because I'm very curious if Jack Easterby, we already know, has very limited in-house football experience. He may be the greatest deacon in the world. He may be a character guy. He may be able to sort through that. But I think you need a real good football mind. And I don't know if Jack Easterby has the case. As a matter of fact, I don't know.

I know for a fact he doesn't have the capability to decide whether or not the guy coming in here knows his real football acumen. I think he probably knows what he's like in terms of a people person. but to have such an inexperienced football guy trying to hire a football guy, I don't like this recipe. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I do think there's probably, sometimes I've wondered and based on things I've read, like does the character coach title not kind of explain everything he was involved in in New England because people say, you know, he was doing a million things and working with Belichick.

So I don't know, you know, if you're just around the environment, you pick up on a lot, you know, working under the greatest coach ever. Certainly the Belichick tree has generally not been very fruitful. But, you know, I do, what I will find curious about kind of this hiring and the influence Jack has on it is, you know, he obviously was kind of part with O'Brien and a lot of these team-building philosophies that got them to where they are, right? So are they going to continue to kind of value running backs in the way that they have? Are they going to continue to think, you know, trading for picks is the move, you know,

those sorts of things. I just, I'll be very curious to see kind of what the value, the priorities. are placed in the search and how that might connect to Jack. A few more minutes here with Aaron Reese and the Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter, Aaron and Jay Reese. Aaron, we've been spending a couple days kind of goofing around about the trade deadline coming up in early November. I think they should absolutely see if there's any interest for JJ Wad. Do you think that's preposterous or do you think that's a relevant name that could be out there in the next month or so, especially this team really continues to fall the way they are?

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think logically from like the reporter perspective, yeah, I kind of totally think they should do it. You know, I mean, his value is going to be higher now than it would be if you traded them in the offseason when, you know, it's just more time left on the contract, right? A team could, that wants to go get the things that can win this year, be a good guy to pick up at the deadline, you know, even his hometown Green Bay Packers who needs a defensive line help. But I just think that realistically, that probably is not the guy they move at the deadline.

A few factors for that. One being, I think that that's probably just something that Cal McNerra is. to sign off on and maybe would feel more comfortable signing off on it with a new GM who has full leeway and kind of a long leash with the fan base. And additionally, I just think it's kind of an unceremonious way to part with the face of the franchise like that. So I would imagine they probably wouldn't do that mid-season, not to mention the uncertainty with the draft coming up and so what the value of the pick they got would be now versus

next year. So to me, the guys who are more worth watching the trade deadline are probably Will Fuller and Kenny Stills. Hmm. Will Fuller and Kenny Stills. How interesting on that. Will Fuller has had a really good season. I'm surprised that you brought that name up.

Well, he has, right? But, I mean, I think that it's kind of curious because obviously the position he's in to be in a contract year is tied to the fact that he's had all these injury issues, right? They haven't wanted to commit to him long term. You know, maybe if you're Jackie Stewart, you feel like it's worth holding on to him because you're at least probably going to get a third round

compick for him if you walk in for agency. assuming the next thing don't want to retain them. I think if Jack Easterby at least saw those really good move to retain them, they maybe would have done so before this season. Maybe the next GM feels differently. But I think if you could get more than that third round compick or like a third round pick plus maybe some conditional, if he stays healthy with the next team or something,

that's something I would consider. And it's not just a matter of getting the third round pick. It's that you could get the third round pick in 2021 when they won't have first and second round picks because of the tuntle trade versus in 2022 when your coverage is more full and you have your full-o-sormant picks. Okay. Lastly, Green Bay played an awful football game against Tampa Bay. You were busy writing the story for the athletic.

What are your thoughts about Aaron Rogers coming to here with a bad attitude after a very poor performance? Oh, I mean, I think it's going to be really ugly for sure. But I do think, you know, we have a chance for another shootout. You know, Deshaunson's numbers over the past three weeks have been incredible. I would argue he's playing with best football is great enough the record doesn't reflect it. And, you know, the Green Bay defense has not been tremendous. So I think there's a chance that the Texans can, you know, can stay with, hang with them. But I think ultimately it's going to be a really big day for Aaron Jones, really bad day for the Texans run defense.

We'll leave it that, my friend. Thank you very much the time. Look forward to reading your stuff on The Athletic. It's a great subscription. You should buy it and follow him on Twitter, Aaron and Aaron J. Reese. Thanks, we'll talk again next Tuesday. Thanks, Matt. You got it.

It's Aaron Reese from The Athletic with us here on the Matt Thomas show. 713-212-5-7-90. Will Fuller. What do you think about? Will Fuller being traded? That was an interesting name coming up. That would get you a return. Brandon Cooks and whom?

I don't know if you get, what would you get in return for Kenny Stills? A sixth maybe? I mean, if you're looking to, I guess, relieve yourself a little bit of money on the books, but I can't imagine it being much. We'll find out. 143.

Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-79 if you want to get in. 7-13-212-5-7-90. There is a website out there that has put out a story about which NFL fans complain the most. I'll give you the results of that survey next. First, a word for bronze roofing. If your roof is in bad shape and you've had no one check on it yet, and you're thinking about, well, who should I call?

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It'll be for free. If you do need some repairs, the folks at bronze roofing will give you a fair and honest estimate right on the spot. No matter what kind of roof you have, whether it's a shingle roof, steel, asphalt, tile, bronze will have you covered. They've been doing this since 1987. And remember, free estimates within 24 hours in most cases. 281-480-9900, 281-480-9900 or online, bronzeroofing.com, B-R-A-U-N-S, Bronzeroofing.com. First of all, he's a great guy.

He's a hardworking guy. It's Matt. He's back. Brings his lunchtime, Houston Sports Talk. The Matt Thomas Show on 790. Ross, are you familiar with the website, MIBets.com? My bets?

It's men and black bets.com. Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith running. Did they do men in black two? They did a three. And how was it? And they might have done a four. Well, they did the international one. I saw that one.

It was okay. And then I think they did three men in blacks. I can't remember the two and three kind of blend together to me. All right. Well, my bets. My bets. Me bets. It's a Español.

Has a survey out. Which NFL fans complain the most? Which, again, how do you figure this out? It says we surveyed football fans from around the country to find out. The top five fans, who complain the most at number five, excuse me, number five, I didn't mean hiccup there. Were you drinking some hooch in the break during the break or what?

I might have had a little sip of Balconis. The Philadelphia Eagles coming at number five. Okay, I could see that. A bunch of winers. Number four, the Chicago Bears. Definitely. Oh, my goodness. Joe Georgia sits in here whining about the Bears.

The number three team, the Buffalo Bills, I didn't realize there were many Buffalo Bills fans, period. What would they be complaining about? You know what they're complaining about living in Buffalo. Well, Bill's Mafia is. complaining about their injuries from breaking flaming tables with their back, right? That's true. Number two, the New England Patriots.

Hmm. And the number one is... Dallas Cowboys? That's correct. A bunch of whiners. So basically, they give you the reasons why they complain. Mulsome is using victim mentality. How are the New England Patriots victims?

All they've done is one like, I don't know, six Super Bowls. Oh, the NFL's got it out for them because they keep investigating them for scandals. Mostly the argument is using victim mentality. Other reasons why people complain about their own teams is, or other people complain about them is complaints on social media. Ooh, Pittsburgh's dealer fans complain about bad officiating more than anybody else. This has to be a made-up. Mabetz must be a made-up website. This is just ridiculous.

Is Mabetz one of your favorite websites? I've never seen in my bets before. Okay. The least complaining NFL team is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at 32, followed by Jacksonville, Tennessee, Indianapolis, and Rams. Basically irrelevant teams. Guess where the Texans are in the mix? Where are the Texans in everything?

They're in the middle. I'll say 17. 18. Okay. Their biggest complaint is using the victim mentality. We are victims. We've been subject to Jack Easter being Bill O'Brien. Yeah, victims of...

Bill O'Brien's hostage plot. All right. Next. Who complains the most in the NFL? Quarterbacks. Five quarterbacks that complain more than anybody else. Based on what? I don't know.

Tom Brady's a whiner. Tom Brady's number one on the list. Phil Rivers. No. Wow. He complains all. Have you seen Philly Rivers get all fired on the sideline? I don't disagree with you.

Okay. So on this list, Nick Foles is number five. Nick Foles shouldn't be complaining about anything. He just should be happy as a job. Aaron Rogers, that makes some sense. Yeah, okay. Josh Allen is a complainer. I don't.

Who made this list, Matt? My bets. Okay. Well, I'm going to not go there. Number two, Cam Newton. And number one, Tom Brady. Yeah, okay. The five biggest complaining coaches.

Ooh, Sean Payton. not in the top five What? Okay, Bill Belichick Number one Bill O'Brien was up there Here's number five You have no idea of a sample size Matt Rule the Carolina Panthers

What Matt Nagy, you don't have much of a sample size He's number four Okay Sean McDermin of the Buffalo Bill is number three John Harbaugh Number two And number one

Bill Bealeck Do you guys notice Mbetz doesn't like Chicago? Do you think M-Bets is a fake website? You say it's M-I? M-I-B-E-T-S. M-E-T-S. Are you sure it's not My-Bets?

It could be. This is Michigan. M-Bets is Michigan Online Gambling. Would explain why they don't like Chicago. So the very last page of this report that I received, it says from September 22nd, October 8th, 2020. We surveyed 50103 people to determine which the NFL players and coaches complain the most. 57% of responders were male 43% were female

That's too many females Is it? 43% of females don't want football What percentage of football watches are female? It's more than any other sport, I think. Yeah, but I wouldn't put it to the third. Now, there's a difference in going to the game and getting dressed up or hang with your buddies at the house.

I'm talking about a female football fan that sits down like we do on a Sunday and watches the noon, the three, the seven o'clock game, and we watch some of the Monday night game, we watch some of the Thursday night game. There's no way a third of women in America do that. No chance. My wife is a diehard sports fan. She could care. The other night, yesterday Kansas City was on, was on.

She could care less about that game. She loves the Houston teams to watch the Houston teams, but she has no interest in watching something else. I have very bad news for you, Matt. And women are not going to be happy with you. Why? Reuters.com. women comprise 45% of the National Football League fan base.

I call BS on that. Not done a man-time woman. I'm just saying, I don't believe. It's a little anti-women here. No, it shouldn't. We might have to play hell and ready at the start of the two, Matt, just to make up for this. Play it now. We've got three minutes left.

The song is, I am woman. You should play it right now. I think when it comes to NFL especially. Do you really think 45% of women watch football? I think hours a day. No, not 45% of women. 45% of people watch. are women.

For hours. Maybe their team. Maybe not for hours. But there are a lot of people who just watch their team who are regular NFL fans too. Tell them, Helen. Tell them, Helen, right now. May she rest in peace.

Women comprise of 45% of the National League football league fan base, according to an NFL spokeswoman. Oh, there you go. It focuses on attracting more young women to the sport. What did Oprah Magazine do this? This is from another study in 2013 estimated that the number about 45% of NFL fans are 44% of NFL fans are female. Okay.

I have to ask a question to the male audience that listens to the show. We have great female listeners. I feel like you always watch with your lady. That's what my question is. When you're watching football on a Sunday. And Ross, let's set this up, okay? Let's set this up as the entire Texan game. Okay?

So it's three hours. And let's say you watch an hour of either the game before the Texans or after. Here is my question. Does your woman in your life watch at least as much football as you do? And I say at least meaning four hours per week. I do not believe. And again, this is my own very unscientific poll. that 45% of men

have their ladies watch the same amount of football they do. 2018 Super Bowl, 49% of the audience of the 108 million plus people was women. Hashtag parties. That doesn't even count. I'm talking about a normal all Sunday. Well, what do you think? You said less than a third.

I think 30% of women will sit and watch four hours of football. And again, that's just me just throwing a number out. I have no evidence of this. Yeah, I'm going with the, the ones with evidence. Yeah, but everything can be skewed depending on whatever poll you want. It's women or men.

What's there to skew? That you're trying to get a desired response. And you know I'm right. I don't know what you're talking about, Matt. I support women and they're following of sports. I love women that love sports. I had to marry a woman who loves sports. I wasn't going to marry someone that didn't like sports.

You know, Kim. She loves sports. Of course. But she's not sitting down and watching Philadelphia, Pittsburgh with me. Why not? Because she's not going to do it. Well, does she have a fantasy team? She's got fantasy.

She's got fantasy. It's been on a fantasy team. Well, I wasn't going to say it, but you did. Okay, so you, okay, we got 30 seconds left. Do you really believe that 45% of women? I will say the number 45% surprised me a little, but 6040 seems about right to me. Okay. Well, why don't we go to a sports bar next Sunday?

Okay. Watch games. And let's see what, let's see what that. Because when you go to a sports bar, you're pocket a minute for several hours, you would think, right? Well, it's true. You can drink some beers, eat some wings. get some appetizers, whatever, have a little dessert, whatever. Okay.

I think the number is, that is a skewed high number. Well, Ashley Snyder says she agrees with you. She calls BS. Thank you, Ashley. And Ashley's one of our great female listeners. Yes. So, all right, dudes, guys, I don't, I hadn't, dudes is a strange turn. Fellas.

Fellas. Bras. Broskees? Broskees. All right, broskewoski. Does your wife watch as much football as you do? Listen up, Brosky, Woski. Or does she watch?

you watch 50%. Because here's the thing, if you're, if you're going to go watch a Texan's game, is she going to jump in in the second half? No, she's not. She's going to be there on kickoff just like you are. That's why 30% it seems more appropriate to me.

So you're saying she should just be washing dishes and making sandwiches while you're watching football. Nope. That's messed up, man. No, I would like her to sit with me and watch the game. I'm surprised. I'm a little shocked. Okay, you're putting words in my mouth and I hate you for that.

713-212-5-790. Does your woman watch as much football as you do? Or half as much. or none at all. I'm telling you, I like my 30% number. Let me tell you right now about the Shell Federal Credit Union. I'm going to give you another number. 1.99% APR.

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The final hour of the Matt Thomas show is underway with Ross and with Brendan. I'm Matt. 713, 212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Headlines of the day, really nothing new, except that if you had a chance to watch the Jeff Leno 30-minute conversation with Channel 2 last night, or were your overall impressions of that. And I'm going to assume that we shouldn't assume that a lot of people saw it,

but some of you saw it. And if you do have any reaction to it, do you think Jeff Leno gets a job in baseball again? If he wanted to go after a general manager's job in baseball. Do you think that some of the things he said towards Major League Baseball about basically extending their investigation two weeks so they could find something on him. Do you think that did himself any favors in terms of trying to get back in the score? Maybe not. I mean, but the baseball, as far as Manfred in the organization, they wouldn't be able to do anything with that, right? If a team says we want to hire him,

he's not. I mean, he's key, is he reinstated? How does that even work? He's not. He's ready to go right now. Okay. So then tough nookies, I guess. If Rob Manford doesn't want him in there, and Jeff Linot says it's a fact, and I would imagine if it is true, then Rob Manford knows it as a fact. And he wouldn't, be able to come after him for that. And in Leno's defense a little bit here, the report said that he didn't do anything, correct? Correct.

Well, they said they could not prove that he didn't. It couldn't prove it that it might have been, there's the might and possibly you could have. And you know what it did? Remember we talked about there was after the report? We talked about it seemed a little personal with Luno because they brought up the culture, they brought up the Tobman incident. They said that this was something that was fostered

by Jeff Luno and that's why we're holding him responsible. I don't think he's back in baseball. I think he is in something else. I don't know I mean, if he wants, I think it's a matter of if he wants to. It's up to Jeff Luno. Well, he said yesterday. Yeah, he mentioned yesterday, football, hockey.

He said he don't know much about hockey. Texans GM, Jeff Luno. It's funny. Darryl Morey resigns last week, and everybody's calling about whether or not he should be the Texans GM. And now you've got Daryl Mory in a spot. Not Darrymore. You got Jeff Lino thinking, well, maybe you should apply for the Texan spot. I'm with it.

Let's go. I think the biggest thing that probably Jeff has to do is he has to change his leadership style, would that be fair to say? That the stains of the Topman situation, the thought that he would have something this big happen on his watch and him have no idea about it? That has a stain to it a little bit, wouldn't you say? Yeah. I don't know.

I think it's a matter of whether or not, where he wants to be. Well, no, I think it takes two to Tangle. I think if he wants to get back in and who wants to give him a chance. Because Jeff Lino's name is still very well known in sports. I think he would get a chance where if he wanted to be back in baseball, I think he would be a top candidate. Absolutely. There's no reason he shouldn't be.

I mean, there's a reason he shouldn't be. But that's that reason is PR. From a pure baseball, are we going to be building a team? And we want to win and that's what we're worried about more than anything else. You should sign Jeff Lino. And as I said earlier today, I think part of the reason why he's so upset is because they were trying to figure out ways to get him out of the sport. And then Jim Crane fired him. And then he's like, wait a minute, this team's still very good.

It's still got a lot of core pieces left. I know there's a chance I may lose George Springer. They might lose Michael Brantley. But those are guys, well, in Michael Brantley's case, I brought in. And look what I did. Look what we did in terms of resurrecting his career. I still want to be a part of it. I think he is, I think there's, it's bitterness with anything like that. If you think you've been unjustly fired and you are bitter about how. it happened, you're going to want to say, I should be there for that. He should have been there. And that while he said that James Clicks will do a very good job as a general manager

of the team now, he kept saying we a lot and us. Yes. It felt like to me that he still thinks he's very connected to the team. And it showed all his memorabilia and his bobbleheads. And Vanessa asked him if he was still rooting for the team. He said, of course he is. And those are his players. I'm sure he's rooting because he likes to keep tabs on things that he.

built. He was doing it with the Cardinals even when he was not with the, when even when he was with the Astros. So he said he'd been a part of five World Series teams in 16 years in baseball. It's pretty good. Yeah. To me, I was more bothered by Brandon Todman's, that half of the show than I was about this. It was weird how he was so defensive of that situation, but I understand where he's coming from to where he didn't put out the thing that it didn't happen. It was, you know, He threw some people under the bus. Didn't name names, but he did. The poor video guys, who were those dudes are?

They got completely destroyed. He threw a lot of people under the bus that were not him. Maybe he wasn't involved. Well, let me ask me this. If you call Channel 2 and you call Vanessa and you say, hey, come to my house. What's up, Vanessa? How does that get started? Did he call?

Why does he go to Channel 2? I think there was a relationship built between Vanessa and his family. Okay. Because obviously... I would figure he would want to go national. Like... AJ did. We talked about that yesterday.

My guess is that Jeff is so mad at Manford in the way that the investigation went down. Why would he want to give the network that helped bring him down, or at least the perceived notion that eventually got him fired? Why would he want to help that network? Maybe he's mad at Buster only, too. So he wouldn't go to... I would be mad at Buster. Yeah, there's no outlet he can go to, right? without smarmy a-holes

who'd been crushing him this whole time? Well, Fox, I think Rosenthal would probably treat him pretty fairly. That's true. Now, again, I'll say this. But he's with the athletic, and maybe he hates Evangrelic.

Going to the athletic, well, let's talk about, let's talk about electronic media. Okay. Fox, you could go, Rosenthal's there, ESPN, you're not touching with a 10-foot pole because it would sick,

you know, the douche passing on them and all that kind of thing. Because here's the thing. When you get to control the narrative of the interview, you can kind of go and, you know, clearly there was a, the point of the message yesterday was, I didn't do any of this stuff. I can't believe I got fired. I know there were mistakes made, but I should be still with this baseball team. And if that was his mission before the interview aired, it certainly was accomplished by the time it was done. He should have tried Oprah then.

No, I don't think so. No, but people did ask, and I asked to Vanessa, you know, of all people, I mean, why would you call Vanessa? And then it said, well, because I think, again, he wanted to show a softer side. He wanted to say, hey, I'm the victim in this. I should still be running this baseball team. Have I made mistakes? Did I have lack of institutional control? Yes.

But at the end of the day, Major League Baseball spent lots of extra time trying to get me, and they couldn't get me because they didn't have anything on me. I think, yeah, after watching all that, I wouldn't call it eye-opening, but it's a little more into the window of what Jeff Luno's perspective. And it does seem like he got railroaded. It seemed a little bit. the problem again is I think the way he conducted his department

probably didn't do him any favors with this. Yes. For instance, Reid Ryan, president of the baseball arm, the business side of things. If something would have happened on the baseball,

the business side of things, Reed Ryan is affable. Reed Ryan is very, very, uh, kiss the babies, high, not by politician, but just,

it's just a very friendly, easygoing, willing to just do whatever he can to help you to help the, I mean, terrific PR image with the team. I think he gets the benefit of the doubt over his culture in his side of the operation than Jeff would have received on the baseball side.

I mean, well, Jeff did bring that up. Because metrics. And Reed and others and how they didn't, nothing happened to them. Yeah. Well, basically what he's saying is that why isn't, why didn't Jeff and Craig get the same things asked of them if they were underneath my wing and my wing

in my department. True. I was a little shocked when he brought those names. Well, but it is. What he did again, he said, look, why am I the one being the skankment? Now, whether that's right or wrong,

again, when you are the president of the baseball operation side, everybody under you is still attached to you, correct? Yes. Even though Jeff and Craig are these iconic baseball players,

if they're involved in any sort of operations, the baseball team in terms of talent, evaluation, drafts, coaching, who do they report to? In theory, it would be to Jeff Leno. And it may not be, maybe just a, you know, wave some hands out there and pretend that you're a specialist, but I think Craig likes to be involved. I don't think Jeff does, but I think Craig likes to be involved around the team and be able to, you know, lend the guiding hand. Remember, he was an instructor during spring training a couple of years back. So, you know, that's what he's

saying is that why am I the only one on my side of the operation that's having to be the fall guy for this. You know why? And I sympathize of them. I do. But how does the president of a guy, of a side of a team that has such intimate details of everything going on, not see that happening? And if that's in the case, which I believe it is to be the case, the next time he takes

a job, he'll have to watch every single thing and make sure every email is read. And that anything in terms of open and honest communication, because you know, I believe him. I do. And maybe I'm naive, but I do believe him. I believe that he didn't have you know, really, really solid knowledge of what was happening inside. But I don't like how that operation worked with not only him not knowing, but the Tom and thing probably didn't do much favors either. 214. Sports Talk 790. What is believe it or not today coming up in 35 minutes from now? It's all things to a tongue of a law. He'll be the new starting quarterback of the Miami Dolphins. 213. Sports Talk 790. 719. 713-212-5-790. Let's take a second here for Woodhouse

Day Spas. I'm so happy that Woodhouse Day Spas let me speak for them because I have been there four or five times of the last few years and every time I go I feel so much better. You should too. If you've had a stressful day at the office, if you've had a stressful week, a stressful life where you're bouncing kids from volleyball to church to other civic activities, get with the Woodhouse Day Spas. Walk in and put a robe on, get some slippers on and say, please take care of me. 70 different spa services are available for you at Houston OneHuspaws.com. If you live in the north side of town, you'll go to the Ventures location. If you live in the south area of the city, you can go to the location in Sugarland. They will take terrific care of you. They've got special packages for not only yourself, but that loved one.

And it's never a bad idea to start thinking about some early holiday shopping needs. Houston One. Houston Sports Talk for lunch. Matt Thomas returns on Sports Talk 790. It is 219 on Sports Talk 790. 713-212-5-790. Did your opinion of Jeff Leno change for the better or worse after you watched the conversation last end on Channel 2? Your calls are certainly welcome.

7-13-212-5-7-90. Let's go to Carlos and Huffman at 219. Hi, Carlos. Hi, how you doing? Well, thank you. I listen to you guys. all the time. But anyway, my opinion, this is just my opinion, I think that he, you know, you've got to be accountable, but I think he put itself a position where everything went through

him. And when you do that, you get all the blame as well, as well as all the credit. I think what he should have had, he should have had checks and balances along his system where, you know, other people can be held accountable for some of that stuff too. I think most operations work that way. But at some point, though, Carlos, doesn't somebody have to be the head pooh-bah, so to speak? Yeah, that's true. So the only person, frankly, can check his balance

is the owner of the baseball team. Yeah, but if they're keeping up, I believe that he really didn't know that. But I think he trusted too many people, and they kept it from him, even though he was going to take the fall for it, they kept it from him. But he has to be able to have, I think he just trusted too many people.

You know, you still have to do, you know, you still have to put, you still have to go into all the departments every now, man, and kind of check to see how everybody's doing. I don't think, I think he felt to do that.

You know what? And thank you for the phone call. Could you really hide something like that? I guess the answer is yes. You have video people, you have coaches. It's not like Jeff is spending hours a day or was spending hours a day in the clubhouse. This is another thing, though, too. You're talking about all the people that have to be involved, the video people, the people in the dugout, the players, the coaches.

That's already a lot of your organization. And then on top of that, Matt, is we know that from what? AJ Hinch has said that there were confrontations about it. So AJ Hinch tried to stop it multiple times. He's in their breaking monitors. Apparently they had team meetings where Brian McCann is telling Carlos Bell, trying to stop, but he's an unstoppable force. So if they're having team meetings about it, TVs are getting destroyed.

It's this whole controversy, and all these players and coaches and staffers are involved. And Jeff Luno doesn't know about any of that? That's a little difficult for me to believe. So now you're making me waiver. Well, I think he knew about it, but I think he said, I'm not involved. Like he said, you guys are doing this. This is your thing. I'm not involved.

The league said, don't do this. Keep me out of it. I think that's the way it was. But he's not saying that. Oh, well, that's not what he's going to say. That's why it's called plausible to my deniability. So that he can plausibly deny that he was involved. Nothing in emails, no text messages.

Keep these talk to be referenced the 22,000 text messages where they said, keep this away from Jeff and all these times. types of things. There just seems like there's no way he could not have at least had some little bit of knowledge about it. He meets, didn't he talk about how they, he and AJ would meet or talk daily? They're talking daily and AJ Hinch is in there breaking, he's in there breaking monitors with a baseball bat and that doesn't come up in their conversations at some point. Oh, damn it, Ross. Just saying. I don't know. Again, I'm trying to wrap my mitts around the fact that Jeff had, because Jeff sounded like,

and he said this originally and he certainly said it here, that he had no idea this was happening. No idea. That I don't believe. I could definitely believe he wasn't involved. Then under your situation saying that don't ask, I know about it, I don't want to hear about it, that puts him in the same vein as A.J. Hinch. Although that's actually different because A.J. could have stopped trying to. I'm not going to believe that.

Okay. I'm going to go to the full 100% naive card. And believe that he was so busy in analytics, so busy with scouting, so busy with assistant GMs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that he doesn't have time for the video department. But, man, isn't optic? Isn't the metrics big part of video, too? Mm-hmm. His underlings are doing the code breaker thing. He says he didn't know anything about that.

I don't buy it. I buy that he wasn't involved, but he knew about it. Then why wouldn't he just say that? I think it looks worse. Because if you knew about it, then you should have done something about it. Because would that have changed his punishment at all? Would he have still been fired? I guess my point is that he still got fired.

He'd have been super fired before. I mean, he claims complete innocence and it still got fired. but now you're thinking about if he's lying if he lied yesterday on television that he's never going to get a job again where at least a j said yeah i knew about it i feel like crap for doing it and a jays up for two jobs you know what's the benefit of completely saying i had nothing to do with it and no idea as compared to doing what you're saying is that yeah i knew about it but i didn't want to be a part of it i wasn't mastermining this this was not part of an undermining this was not part of umbrella of things that I wanted to do.

That's what I'm trying to remember. Yeah, it's a matter of how insulated was he from the day to day of what's happening on the field. If he was he, was he just that insulated where there were so many people in between and he was just not in the clubhouse and he wasn't worried about it at all? It's possible. All right.

713-212-5-790. I'm just further confusing. I'll have you back in studio with me. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Let's go to a Colin and Clear Lake. Hey, how are you guys doing? Good. So I'm kind of with Ross on this one. First, my take from Al-Luno yesterday, if he was lying, he's a really good liar. But I look at this from two angles.

One from a CEO of a company standpoint and a athletic director-statt-slash-head coach, let's say a major university. So let's look at it from, say, Ken Lay-In-Rom. When something goes down with a company, a major company like Enron, the CEO is ultimately responsible, whether they're involved or not. And so then when you look at something like a major university and there's recruiting or there's major violations, lack of institutional control comes from my mind. And so that's kind of what happens here. And so ultimately, Chaflino, whether he knew it or not, I think he knew it, or whether he was involved or not,

I don't know. To me, that's still, there's some gray area there. I think he knew it. Ultimately, he's responsible. So he's the Ken Lay, and he's the athletic director of the major university that got busted for major recruiting violations. And that's just kind of how I love.

And that's not only how you saw it, but it's also how Jim Crane saw it, that if Jim Crane gave him the title of President of Baseball Operations, that everything that happens there is on your watch. And because you did not control your side of it, you're going to have to take the responsibility of that. That's exactly how Jim Crane saw, how you saw it. And if I could say one more thing, I don't think he did himself any favors by throwing Jim Crane under the bus. I think he should have taken the high road. Yeah, I'm guessing that. I think he only mentioned Jim's name by name one time, I think. But he said Astros management at the end when he said something along the lines of,

he was disappointed that they didn't, I don't know, I'll paraphrase, but that he was disappointed that they didn't have his back or didn't support him more. I got you. I got you. I didn't think he did himself any favors. Okay, good stuff, my friend. I appreciate you dialing in. Do you want to add something else?

No. Okay. I'm going to quick time out and at 228. We got a half hour left to go. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. If you want to visit with us through Twitter, it's at SportsMT,

at Brendan Riley underscore and at SportsRV. Believe it or not coming up at 20 minutes. Right now, I think Ross, after a long, hard trip to California, climbing that Joshua tree, you've got to get some energy. Well, yes, man. And I think if some of you out there are like me, maybe you're not feeling like yourself you did a few years ago and you're saying to yourself, what is it?

Is it something I ate? Is it because I didn't sleep? Is it because I'm doing this or that? Or do you need to work out more? Do I need to work out less? And guess what? It might not be your fault. It might be low testosterone. If you want to regain the strength and stamina used to have and pump up the libido, it's time to call synergenics and experience a life-changing result of testosterone replacement therapy. Don't ignore the symptoms of low tea. You're feeling weak, you're sluggish, you're moody, maybe things. Things aren't going the way you want in the bedroom. A free low-tie test from Centrogenis can put you on the path to feeling and looking great again. F-R-E, free low-tie test. There's seven Houston area locations, so there's one near you. Call 833-fix-LOTE now to schedule your free low-tie test.

8-3-6-T treatments are also typically covered by most insurances. Get back in the game of life with Cinergenic, Houston's premier men's health clinic. 833 Fix-LOTE or go to 833 FixLOTE.com. Sports Talk 790, your exclusive home for Houston Rockets Basketball. 2.33, Sports Talk, 790. 713, 212, 570. That's how you reach our show. 713, 212, 5, 790. Tomorrow, Joel Clyde will be on the radio program.

The Joel Clat? The Joe Clat. Nice. You know how this funky college football schedule is happening. We'll go with some more phones a second. He had to wind up doing Kansas, West Virginia on Fox. What happened? there was another

I know that Florida had a COVID thing. Oak State Baylor got postponed. They had, what happened there? See, I've been out of it. Test. Baylor had, here's what happened. Baylor had a false negative. False positive?

No, no, no. False negative. That ended up being a positive. Oh, no. Spreading all over the place. Now, I do, I did see while I was on vacation. Is it true that Dan Mullen said we want 90,000 packed at the swamp? Yes.

Then like a day later. zero. Oh, man. That's funny. Can I ask real quick before I go to the phones? How in the world is sports going to make any money anymore? These stadiums are empty, Ross? I don't know.

Now, U of H, BYU had probably about 12,000 people. What happened in that game? Because, you know, I've been on vacationing. I don't know the result. The Cougars won? The Cougars did. The BYU Cougars or the U of H Cougars? I don't remember, but it was a vacation.

Some set of cougars won the game. Was there a lot of bad officiating? Duh. Big 12 crew. Oh, well, that's true. Dana was not happy with the big 12 crews. I did see that. So I did sidelines last week.

Oh, you did? What did you wear? Was it hot? Where was it? It was 60 degrees at, no, a little warmer. It was about 64 at kickoff. Okay. I wore jeans, collared shirt.

Yeah. And like a light fleece. What kind of shoes? Tennis. I walk like 8,000 steps. Oh, nice. I'm a serious walker. in sidelines. That's true. Did you get any inside information? Did you talk to the trainers?

I have just talked to the trainers. They are doubtful to return. Chicken Knowles is doubtful to return. You know only one football or basketball player ever in the history of the University of Houston. You go chicken knolls at the end of the day. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Ed Oliver's younger brother, Steve, is doubtful to return. His older brother play, not his younger one. Well, I imagine he's moved on, so I had probably as a younger brother. The whole Oliver family went. That's the only reason you got a five-star recruit. No, he wanted it because he wanted to get a great education, and he got it. He said he regretted going there and he wished he went to LSU. He was literally on record saying that.

That's not true. Yes. You're literally paraphrasing. Okay. Let me just go and Google it. I want you to go Google. You won't find it. Ed Oliver still hates he didn't go to LSU. It's the first thing I found.

Okay, but he didn't say I regret going to University of Houston. Look, he misses LSU, but he's got a better education at U of H. They asked me, what's your dream school? My answer, LSU. I was almost a Louisiana. I still hate that I didn't go there, but I can't be in two places at once. I might go get my degree from LSU just to say I went there. Now you're made, that's part of made out.

It's a literal quote. I can't read that. I don't read that at all. Why would you go tier one as compared to like Louisiana State Community College? Well, that's a question for Ed Oliver. 713212-5-790. Do you think my LSC got anything downstairs on the third floor? We've got the Louisiana Mafia.

there. So are they listening to them? They realized it just took a veiled shot at their institution. Chris Gordy over there. Too many Louisiana animals around here. Too many LSU tigers around here. By the way, they're not bragging too much this year. Things are not going their way.

They lost in Missouri like two weeks ago. Missouri who sucks. Missouri is Missouri and Arkansas are like the plumber's butt of the SEC. Chandler Room must be beside himself. Is that the most famous Missouri? No, I mean, he's LSU. Oh, okay.

But Aaron Reese, you should have brought up the... He's just right. I forgot about that. Aaron, I was going to say, somebody in the journalism world that we deal with. And Ben Dubos as well. Wow. Ben DeVos getting a graduate degree in officiating hate.

All sports. He's well-versed in all of them. Let's go. I can't see who's online, too. Tell me who that is. Brian. Brian on 790. Hello, Brian.

Hey, what's going on? What's up? You guys doing today, man? Amazing. the Ludo interview. Please. First of all, I don't think he did himself any favors by trying to throw the organization under the bus by saying that everybody was still employed.

That was involved in the, that was in the... Secondly, though, I think the guy is a genius, and if the Texans duo was smart for him, they'd try to hire him as soon as possible. I'll shut up and listen. All right, thanks. You don't have to shut up. You're more than to speak. I want Rasa shut up sometimes, but not you.

Well, people say, I hang up and listen. He just said I'll shut up and listen. Or shut up and listen. or shut up and dribble. All right. I believe AJ Hinge will be a manager in baseball next year. I'm going to have to backtrack off what I said. I said at the beginning of this year that his name would be so toxic

that he wouldn't be able to be anywhere for a couple of years. But he came out, he got in front of it, he did the interview. And then went away. Well, another thing is good. There's been so many distractions. COVID, and it just feels like this year feels like it's been five years. But it's so crazy. The Chicago White Sox, what was in manager's name?

former major league. I'm staring at him right now. I can't remember his name either. Whatever. White Sox? Yeah. Ozzy Guienne? No, no, no.

After him. I don't know. I know that the Padres manager is Jace Tingler. Why is that? You lost in the weakest link. It's stupid weakest link I hate it. So when they released the latest White Sox manager,

they said, we want somebody that has World Series experience, have been in the postseason. I'm thinking, what is Dallas Keikel, in this release. Ricky Rinteria. Rick Rinterea, who was also with the Cardinals too

for some time, right? I think. Yeah. So, yeah, that felt right. Detroit looking. I don't know how, if AJ is the best qualified guy out there and you feel like these paid his dues,

you go get him, right? For either one of those two jobs. Yeah, he was like on January. Doesn't that feel like two, three years ago? It feels like forever since it's been. It really does. Can I let Jeff run my scouting department? and not my baseball operations top to bottom.

There's a way to get yourself back in. I'm welcome with open arms back. I mean, James Click, I'm sure he's going to do a fantastic job. Well, I hope he has got a very interesting office season ahead of him. Big off season coming up. Got to fill two outfield spots, got to figure out this pitching staff, which I think is going to be a little easier than probably originally thought of. And then he's got to talk about getting Carlos Creil locked and loaded before he becomes a free agent at the end of next year.

And the tremendous uncertainty in our industry is what he used his quote yesterday, which meant, oh, so you're not spending any money this house. He's not doing any favors. The impression everybody got from that is he didn't spend the damn dime. Yes. Well, is what it is. So the question is, I will hire, but Jeff doesn't want to come back anything less than what he was. No, no, of course.

He wouldn't take any sort of. Now, he could be a number two if the number two job is general manager. Like if there is a president of baseball ops above him, I bet he could probably accept that. But I don't think he'd ever come back as in a... I mean, like I said, he mentioned yesterday. He's got a lot of different options and things outside of baseball. What did he making, like, probably $4,000 or $5 million a year or something? He did very well for himself, yeah.

I mean, he seems like he'd be a smart investor. Real estate and Houston ain't costing that much. Yeah, a nice house looks like in a pool in the back. Yeah. A lot of bobbleheads. There's a clean pool. Nice carpet. Well, he probably got all those bobbleheads for free from the marketing department.

Yeah, but do you put the bobbleheads in the living room or do you put him in his office or something, right? That was his office? It looks nice. He's very cozy, good couch. Yeah, he got to do a lot of thinking in there. He's had a lot of free time. He's been playing like Command and Conquer in there or something.

Well, he said he's been reading a lot of books. Could you imagine being, because my schedule is extraordinarily hectic. I don't think I can go from what I'm doing now to zero. It's not bad. I might like to try. I did it during COVID coronavirus. Yeah, I know you do. I was sleeping like 12 hours a day, watching TV.

Wasn't bad. Hmm. I'm just saying. That's like if I ever was to win the lottery. I have this app that tracks my sleep. It's like the most peaceful two weeks I've ever had on this app. Because you're not a very deep sleeper, are you? Correct.

Okay. And I found out it must be because of the stressors of hanging out with Matt Thomas. Oh, wait a mean, you're... You see all this orange, you see all this yellow and red? How do they know if you're sleeping hard or not? Here, look at the two weeks of green. That's coronavirus. But wait a minute.

How does the phone know? It's from my Apple Watch. I was going to say. So the Apple Watch can tell you how restful night you're getting. strictly by tossing and turning? Yeah. And your heart rate. I think I need to get me in Apple Watch, figure that out.

Yeah, it's been helpful. It's told me that I don't get sleep. Do you take melatonin? No, I'm thinking about it. See, I'm a big when I get on the road taking Tylenolp. But then it makes me a zombie. Yeah, I don't like any of that. It's not something you want to get on a regular basis.

All right, Rossi, we've got time for, believe it or not. What is the topic today? Tua, Tunga, Tunga, Tunga. Do you see what he did after he threw his first pass in the NFL? I didn't. After the game, he goes right back in the middle of the field and just sits on the field. He's like, I've made it. It's beautiful.

And the dolphins kick the Jets' ass. Well, they are the Jets. They are going to be in the Rotten Five. You know, we've missed the Rotten Five. Have you? Do the Texans make the Rotten Five? That is on tomorrow's show. What's their record?

One win, five losses. They might be in there. Okay. That's tomorrow's part of it with Joel Clyde. Among other things, on a Wednesday edition of the Matt Thomas show. Right now, a word for oops, steam cleaning at 281, 8220561. I had the number memorized. You're saying, well, Matt, why?

Because if you need carpet issues and you see me at a bar, a restaurant, you see me a church, you see me in a sporting event, I want to be able to give you that number so you can put it in your phone right away. So I can do it right here on the radio. 281, 8220561. For true steam cleaning done at a fair price by trained professionals, 281, 822. You want your carpets clean? They'll take care of that. You got tile and grout issues.

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Sports Talk 790. All right, before we get to believe it or not, let me squeeze another Jeff Leno, call in. A lot of people on Twitter today think that Jeff knew. God, I wish we really knew. This is going to be one of the great mysteries in the history. If Major League Baseball did, let me ask you this. Ross, if Major League Baseball did the investigation

and did not believe that Jeff knew, then why are so many people not believe in the investigation? Well, the investigation said they could not prove that he didn't know. Oh, okay. I guess that's simple. It's one of the preponderance of the type of things, I suppose. Let's go to, uh, I can't see better here. Hi, Susan, you're on 7.90. What's going on? Hi. Well, maybe I'm just naive, but I don't think Jeff knew either. I really don't. I mean, the emails said, don't tell Jeff and they didn't put that in there for later to clear him. You know, and they certainly wouldn't allude to don't tell Jeff. You know, and they certainly wouldn't allude to

don't tell Jeff if they thought Jeff knew about it. Also, you know, half the time he wasn't even at minute made because I think he travels with the team on away games, right? Well, that would make him involved with the team in the dugout in the clubhouse more than, I mean, using your example. So, yeah, he would absolutely, if he's traveling, that probably doesn't help his cause. Oh, I thought it would help his cause because he's not there to be like, you know, wandering around and see this stuff.

I don't know the details specifically of it. But, you know, I've been a nurse for like 25 years and a big hospital. And the CEO doesn't know what's going on, what's going on a daily basis in radiology. You know, I mean, it's a big, I don't know if you can really compare. No, I understand. Yeah. It would be like, it would be like, I mean, and thank you for the phone call, Susan. I mean, there's anything.

I mean, if we did something here locally, would Bob Pittman, the chairman of A, IHeart Media, have to get fired for something we did here in town? Probably not. I would think so. Kind of crazy stuff are you planning, Matt? Nothing, I'm just saying.

I mean, it'd be more like Michael Barry, not me. To my point, he's had issues. Well, the problem is how many layers, how many levels do you go up before you go your countable? The baseball infrastructure isn't that bit. It goes from general manager to manager to players, and then you've got the scouting department. You have the analytics department.

And you have the video department. You have the public relations. I mean, it's not that big of a group. It's not 200 people, right? What is he managing? He doesn't manage the players. I didn't count the players. He's managing the coaches.

He's managing the manager. He's managing the analytics. He's managing the scouting. He's the president of baseball operations, right? So how deep is that? I mean, that's, I don't count scouts. I mean, I'm talking about literally in the Minutemade Park building, 50 people. Probably.

Now, probably the whole department's probably 200 because you've got scouts and you have other coaches and you've got other things going on in different minor leagues and international waters. But I'm talking about the building itself because nobody's worried about what the director of international scouting did to this situation. It was what was happening in the video room at Minutemate Park. So can a person that runs a 50-man shop in one stadium should he have a better grasp of what? Jeff had during that time if Jeff is pleading ignorance to that. That's what everybody has to decide. Five minutes left to go on the show.

What should we do? We should play America's fastest-growing sports game show. We simply call it Believe it or not, and here's how it works. You'll call 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Today's edition of Believe-N-N-N-A, brought to you by our friends in Houston-Woddhouse day spas. print out your gift car for the gift of relaxation at Houston Woodhouse Spas.com.

Category today is all things about Tua Tagabalala. I'll read you a statement about Tua. The statement is completely utterly accurate. You'll say this. Believe it. Even it's erroneous, full of bunk and made up, you'll say this. Two, believe it or not in a row. Win your prize.

The prize today is a four pack of tickets to see the new exhibit. South America's Pentanol. Pentanol! At the Houston Zoo. Explore the tropical weather. wetlands of Brazil right here at the Houston Zoo. The lush habitat highlights animals we are protecting in the wild

including giant ant eaters and more. With on-the-ground conservationists, the zoo offered visitors the chance to see these animals in the immersive and engaging trail that gives guests the opportunity to view jaguars, giant river otters, dart frogs, howler monkeys, anacondas, closer than ever before in Houston.

That is quite a prize. That sounds wonderful for all. all the nature lovers out there, Matthew. All right. That's Pantanol at the Houston Zoo. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. Let's start with Rick.

Oh, now we'll go to John. John on 790. Ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. To a tagaboloa is naturally right-handed, but his father taught him to throw left-handed. Believe it or not. Believe it.

Believe it. That is correct. Statement number two for the win. Ding, ding. Tua Tagavala was a communications major at Alabama and went back to school to get his degree this past summer. Believe it or not? Not. Oh, how do you not know that's in paragraph two of Wikipedia? 713-212-5-790.

Let's go to Jeremiah on 790. Jeremiah, are ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Tua Tua Tata Golaolaola, committed to the University of Hawaii as a sophomore in high school, But he decommitted after getting offers from schools such as Alabama, Crimson, and UCLA. Believe it or not? Believe it.

No, he never committed to Hawaii. That seemed almost phony from the get-go. Rick on 790, Rick, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. To a Tiger Voloa, finished second to Baker-Mayfield in the 2017 Heisman voting, his only time in the top five. Believe it or not. Not.

That is correct. He was also second in 2018 behind Kyler Murray. Statement number two for the win. Tua Tagabolo's Twitter handle is At Tua. He has about 350,000 followers. Believe it or not. Not. Oh, how do you not follow a starting quarterback in the NFL?

Is it just At Tua? That's it? Yeah. Why don't we think of that like five years ago? You had Matt. I tried to get that one. It didn't work. Al on 790. Al, you're ready to play, believe it or not?

Yes, sir. Tuatagavaloa is musically inclined. He can sing and play the ukulele. Believe it or not. Believe it. Believe it. Statement number two for the win. Two Atagavaloa has a number of major endorsement deals with companies such as Adidas,

muscle milk, and wing stop. Believe it or not. Not. Yeah, he does. Get a large glass of protein with your 14 chicken wings. Last one belongs to James. on 790. James, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it.

As a youth, Tuaahagawa was beaten by his father with a belt. If he threw an interception, believe it or not. Believe it. That's awful, but true. And you win. You're going to be two on that. What a horrid way to end, believe it or not today. Let me give you a better way to do it.

You know how weird... Aren't you glad I'm back, man? You see how nice and friendly, Brendan Min are? I was debating whether or not I should play applause after that. That was awful. What a terrible, believe in or not fact. It's true. Let me rally the folks of Big City Wings.

I know we can do that. Delicious wings, great salads, awesome burgers, and today is the day you got to go. Buy one, get one free wings. You buy 10, get 10, buy 20, get 20. You get the drift. Get you some waffle fries, maybe some tater tots, maybe some fried Oreos and fried Twinkies for desserts.

I've given you basically 3,000 calories, but it's the best 3,000 calories of your entire. life at Big City Wings. Find a location near you and to enjoy the Big City Wing treatment. Go to bigcitywings.com. We'll remember today it's buy one wing, get one free at big citywings.com. On the show tomorrow, Joe Clatt, Ross is rotten five. You never know what else we're going to do. We're going to start getting ready for this massive Green Bay game. And Massa may be a relative turn. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Adam Clinton, Adam X are next. They are the A team, and they're going to entertain you between three and six on Sports Talk. Seven.