The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Rockets Grab An Easy Victory vs Wizards, Chandler Rome & Ime Udoka Join The Show

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Rockets Grab An Easy Victory vs Wizards, Chandler Rome & Ime Udoka Join The Show

This is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. 10-1 in H-town. Good morning, and welcome to a Thursday edition of the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. 2145, Houston. How can you not be in a good mood after a rocket victory? with Lionel Richie and the Commodores in the background. Holy smokes!

Jonathan, you got to use that in your girl. You know what? I need to. She'd be like putting in your hands. What a song. Now, apparently, Lionel Richie's in some trouble because he was selling tickets to some event where I guess people thought he was going to be singing and he just read poetry instead.

I don't know the great details on it I just know that if I went out on the Google streets I could find a story about it pretty quick I mean if I'm buying anything Lionel Richie it better be he better be singing all night long you know what I mean you better be singing some of the Commodore hits he better be singing dancing on the ceiling

oh man I did a Sunday morning show in minneapolis for a couple of weeks like as it a fill in on the station i was working at in the twin cities and i used that as my theme song of the show i mean i'm telling you jonathan it just gets you in a good mood does it not and just lifts up all the negative energy from you a lot of negative energy on these these uh these world streets that we live in just feel like you fly you know what i mean that's what i'm saying you need everybody needs some more easy like sunday morning in your life and we're going to play it again a little later on hi everybody

it is, Matt, Ross, he's, I guarantee you still sleeping. He's in a Pacific time zone, so there's no chance he's awake. And it's good he's getting some downtime, hanging out with some friends in California. I am here in Houston, where I'm ready to visit with you today. What is going to be, I believe, a fun, interesting. I mean, the show is usually fun and interesting. At least I tried it, let it be. We've got a couple of interesting guests to join us on the show today, which will include

coming up at the bottom of the hour. Channel Rome is in Las Vegas, speaking in Pacific Time Zone. He's going to be coming back from the base. ball general manager meeting so we'll hear from him about what he heard from dana brown it was the gm meetings that's to be not confused with the winter meetings which will be coming up in a couple of weeks uh scott boris the agent for all the megastars including your favorite hunter brown including your favorite hose al tuve including one of your all-time favorites Alex bregman well he is uh well he held court about bregman yesterday and we're going to play the audio clip

for you. And I don't want to say that a man is getting past his prime because he still has all the megastar baseball players and whatnot. And I respect the hell out of that. But his little attempted humor yesterday, I mean, fell completely flat. I mean completely flat. So we're going to let you hear that. And we're going to play just how awkward was that. And you'll be hearing that coming up on the show. Also, IMA Adoka is going to be with us today at 12 noon as the Rockets. It'll be our news at noon. We'll be E. May Adoka joining us, looking forward at visiting with him. Rockets winning last line over the Washington Wizards, and it was easy.

As the Rockets are now 7 and 3th, their first 10 games. So if you're on-paced guy, the Rockets would be, let's see, there's eight stretches of 10, so that'd be about a 57-win, 58-win basketball team. I'd be okay with that, just saying. Also on the radio show today, we get the latest in the Texas injury news. And if you have not heard by now, C.J. Straude did not partake in any sort of workouts or practice yesterday with the Texans. So the presumption is he is still in concussion protocol, and the presumption is that he

will not play Sunday at Tennessee. I'm going to presume that if you need C.J. Stroud to beat Tennessee, you don't deserve to beat Tennessee. So Davis-Mills, and we trust in you a second week, you should go beat up on Tennessee and let all everybody else who is worried about concussions and nicks and bruises and whatnot should rest up for that, which should be a seismic game one week from tonight in Houston against the Buffalo Bills. There is also late news coming out within the last half hour,

and I don't know how much this necessarily moves the needle, certainly not, maybe more so in Waco than it would be here in Houston, but within the last half hour, the athletic director at Baylor University, Mack Rhodes, announcing that he will be taking a leave of absence for personal reasons. Now, there have been issues, with a player that happened

in a particular incident in September and then apparently what the national folks are reporting there is something else going on that is not related to that interaction with that player so I don't know exactly what is going on everybody is kind of speaking in you know

just relative terms like hey we're hearing something but I can't confirm what it is yada yada and that's kind of how things work but mac roads is not resigning at Baylor, but he is taking a leave of absence. I've known Mack for a long period of time. I would consider Mac a friend. In fact, a chance to visit with Mac a little bit when the Cougars played Baylor for the National Championship a few years or the national semifinals at the Final Four in Indianapolis

a few years ago, but I've not seen or spoken to him since. But he was always a very good athletic director, at least personally, towards me at the University of Houston. I will just say, and I'm not going to speak out of school here, Mac has a little bit of a temper. It can get fired up for a variety of things, and I don't know if that is part of it or not, but it sounds like to me there are some issues,

and clearly the September 20th incident involving a player did involve a spirited conversation, and I'm probably using that term rather conservatively, but, you know, like I said, not for me to get into, let the Baylor folks decide that, If there is something going on in Max's life that he needs to get fixed, I hope he does so, but he is taking a leave of absence as the athletic director at Baylor University. All right, as far as what else is going on,

we mentioned we got the channel room coming up at the bottom of the hour. Looking forward to hearing from him. Rockets last night beating up on the Washington Wizards. I told you all yesterday how bad the Wizards are. They are the worst team of the NBA by far. They are a team that has a couple of recognizable players. Chris Middleton was a star with Milwaukee. C.J. McCollum was a star in Portland and New Orleans.

And then you have Trey Johnson, for those of you that are University of Texas fans. He was the star player for the Longhorns last year, and he was their number six overall pick. And Alex Saar is their center, the number two pick of a year ago. But the rest of the guys are young and not very good. I mean, the Rockets could score on any part of the floor if they wanted to. They shot 53% from the floor, 49% from 3-point range, and they scored 81 first half points. Yeah, I didn't stutter.

81 first half points. So the Rockets did something yesterday that they should have done, and hopefully will do to a lot of the second and third, team tier teams in the NBA and that's take them out and beat them up badly whatever the Rockets elixir was to help out destroy the Wizards the Texans should do the same thing

to the Tennessee Titans this Sunday because it's about that comp. The Tennessee Titans are lucky to have one win this year. They were gifted a victory at Arizona. They are super awful. The Wizards are 1 and 11 I think right now and I'd be hard pressed for them

to win 10 or 50 more than about 12 or 13 games this year. So yeah It was not a dynamic performance in terms of, well, we're going to spend four hours breaking down the Rockets' Wizards game last night, but it was fun. And the Rockets did their thing. Kevin Durant, 23 points and 30 minutes of play, and all four of the five starters and double figures. And I got some news for you. There were a lot of people that were wiggin out about Reed Shepard. And look, the sample size is still very small for him.

But Reed Shepard is turning out at this point to have a much better sophomore season than he had as an NBA rookie. Last night for him, Reed 8 of 11 from the floor, 5 of 8 from 3, had 21 points in 25 minutes of play. Finally, kind of living up to what I think a lot of folks, and certainly the Rockets thought, would be worthy of the number three pick in last year's draft. So on the agenda today, Rockets talk if you want to. Houston Cougars disposed of the Oakland Golden Grizzlies. We've got Scott Boris, Texan's Injury Report, Mack Rhodes taking a leave of absence. And on the show today, we mentioned we've got Channel Rome at the bottom of the hour. I just don't get it.

It's coming up at 1130, and it will feature my friend Chris Gordy. Of course, you heard him this morning on 790's morning show. Of all the tweets in my entire Twitter life, Nothing has gotten more reaction in the history of me being on Twitter, which would now be what I was in Minneapolis for about a year when Twitter first started and obviously here 15. In my 17-year life on Twitter, I have never had a tweet gain as much traction as my tweet was on a retweet of a Chris Gordy tweet.

It blew up more? Oh, I got to look at this. I want you to go read the audience with the number of likes are, comments, views. Right, right here. Let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see, let's see. Where are you at? Building the drama.

Does it say 1.1 million views? Oh, no. Oh, no. Look at it again. 10K likes? Yep. 244 retweets. 63 comments, 1.7 million views.

It's up to, it's up to 1.8 million views. there's no shots what the here's what i'm saving this for 1130 i just don't get it one i have 11,000 likes on just a rando given gaudy crap tweet back 250 retweets 64 comments now some people are calling me terrible terrible names which is fine i i it just once again shows you the people on twitter in life are mean And it's easier to be just mean to somebody. It's compared to, you know, just like passing by. But, Jonathan, 1.8 million views on a rando tweet about LSU and Brian Kelly's buyout of his contract.

Oh, and they're coming after you. Oh, this is good. Oh, they're coming after me. But then I'm, you know what I've decided to do? I'm going right back at him. I can't. I have too much humor in my life. I have to go back at you.

I have to go back at you. Like, for instance, at this guy named. cannot be blank now this person has only 40 followers lives in Utah he says LOL so they shouldn't even look at what the contract says about termination where did you get your degree from Matt and I responded back at F you so I'm embracing this hate from rando people with less than 50 followers on Twitter God I got issues dude I seriously got serious issues It is 1021 of the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

Ross is off. I always think it's mean when he says, it's the Matt Thomas show of Ross without Matt Thomas. Thomas stopped doing that. But you just said it without Ross. No, I said the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ross is off. That's all I said.

Oh, okay, okay, I see. Okay, you went, all right. I can tell him, yeah. All right, so you know, he does the rotten five every Thursday at 1250 when I'm here. You know, when I'm not here, he takes it. You notice that? What a fraud he is. so we're not going to give you a rotten five because that's his bit

we're going to try something for the first time today at 1250 during that spot and jonathan i don't know if it's going to work or not we're going to call it the rotten one rotten one right rotten one and people are going to call in and during that time at 1250 and if they call if they call it they call it not just you and me doing it we're going to name the worst team in the NFL just one

and we're going to tell the reason why Okay. So we're going to see how many people can actually call in in town of takeover Ross's bit with the Rotten One. So we'll see how this goes. So the Rotten One is at $12.50. You don't have to come up to the list. You don't have to have a detail.

If you just want to call and say the Dallas Cowboys are the Rotten One because they just suck in general, I'd accept that. So it's kind of a free, liberating little segment of the radio show coming up in a couple of hours from now. so be ready if you want to tell the city of houston with a decent radio audience who the rotten one is that's going to be for you today at 1250 here on sports talk 790 713212 5779 if you want to join us right now 713 212 5790 again jonathan uh excuse me uh our friend channel chanelam's going to join us at the bottom of the hour he is in los vegas now the question is going to be his

leaves at 11.10 our time. I wonder if his flight's delayed. Now, we have the government's back in action, right? Are we back working? Yeah, we're off and shut down. But it sounds like to me the airports, in terms of the flight controllers, are going to take a couple of days. So I will say this. Yes, I believe so. Thankfully, it will be resolved before Thanksgiving because people, obviously, it's one of the busiest weeks of the year to travel, airplane-wise. Do you know I've only traveled once in my entire life during Thanksgiving week for a family event? Really? Yeah.

Because part of it is that, you know, I always think if you're going to go away for four or five, six days or whatever, you want to have time to do it. If let's say you work a normal job and you don't take the whole week off, you got to work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then if you have

to work Wednesdays, he'll say two or three o'clock you're trying to leave work early, you've got to race the airport. Why do you want to be with thousands of other people? So then you're flying either Wednesday, Wednesday night, then or leaving on Thursday morning, then you're going to potentially miss the football games and, you know, you could have travel issues. And then you got to wind up flying back on Sunday. Now, you could obviously take a day off in front of her behind it, but it just feels like that's a, that's a, it's a really congested time to go travel somewhere. Now, if you have relatives to live in Dallas or in Austin or San Antonio, you get in the car and you don't do it.

But I couldn't imagine going to Seattle for like three days, just to have Thanksgiving. yeah that seems more of a hassle than anything right yeah like in christmas time you can spread your wings you can leave on the 20th you could stay to the 28th you could i mean you could do a lot of things and i guess people could do the same thing about Thanksgiving but i've only traveled one time so i can't really speak to how bad or good it is i remember doing it once and it was fine by me but it just feels like that's a really congested time to try to do it so shout out to all of you that do try to go see your family and uh at Thanksgiving time and uh we wish you the very best and hopefully you'll have very little if any uh flight delays

713212-579 if you want to come in and join the radio program 713 212 570 so the texans injury report is out from yesterday uh those that did not take part in it demico uh denico ottery was out with a bad knee uh kemi fairband remains out with the right quad gil and petrie still out with concussion protocol uh dalton shultz had a shoulder did not take part in practice although he's been doing that a lot lately, but still playing, and C.J. Stroud is still out with a concussion. Limited participation, Al-Z. J. J. J. Hanson, Ed Ingram, and Cade Stover, the positive side of things.

Christian Harris did partake in practice yesterday, although he's not doing much this year for the team. Davis Mills, suffering a little bit of a sore left elbow. He's okay. Obviously, this is the right elbow. That's the most important thing. And Titus Howard, who had a concussion in the previous week, was back at practice. So kind of just giving you an idea of how the Texans are.

And remember, it's not today's injury report. It certainly wasn't yesterday. It'll be Friday's injury report that will ultimately decide. Now, I believe D'Amika was not at practice yesterday attending a funeral of a former teammate. And I think he is set to schedule to meet with the media today. So I'm sure we will get an update on what's going on with C.J. Stroud in just a couple of hours. All right. What's happening with the Astros, at least with Dana Brown at the general manager's meetings?

We'll talk with Chandler-Rome about that next. He is in Las Vegas. It is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Come on and be a part of the program as well at 713-212-5-7-90. Let's spend 10 quality minutes with Chandler. Let's not mess around. He's got a flight to catch. Hopefully he's in first class.

Chandler, let's just knock out the coaching stuff first. Anything interesting about the new hires or still to be determined about how this organization shapes up him. guys behind Joe Espada. Well, I'm an offensive coordinator, Matt, so you're going to have to alter your pre-show tweets now. You can talk about Nick Cayley and then whoever, you can talk about Nick Cayley and Anthony Iopausee, who is going to be the Astros offense. Actually, no, Dan Hinnigan is the Astros offensive coordinator.

He's a guy that's, he's a biomechanics guy, he's a new age kind of coach. He's been in the organization for a year. He's going to be in charge of like game planning and advanced. scouting and kind of a data side of things. Victor Rodriguez is the number one hitting guy. He is the lead hitting coach. Then Anthony Iopossi will work alongside him. So one thing Dana said yesterday is they wanted to have to find roles for these guys.

They wanted to have a clear hierarchy of responsibilities, of duties, of things these guys do. That's something that with Troy Snickr and Alex Centrone, they didn't really have. They just kind of shared the hitting coach title and kind of divide their responsibilities pretty evenly. Let me ask you this, because I've been telling the audience this, and if I'm wrong, please correct me. Was it harder to get really good guys because of the lame duck status of both Dana and Joe? I mean, it's certainly not nothing. But, you know, you do look at the two guys that they hired. You know, Victor Rodriguez, Mike Schilt retired with the Padres, so he needed a job.

Anthony Ioposi was not returning to A.J. Hinch's coaching staff in Detroit, so again, needed a job. you know look they talk to they talk to a lot of different guys you talk to a lot of you know current hitting coaches elsewhere they talk to guys out of the game you know I don't know that the lame duck status had much to do with it I just you know my feeling that is you know the players are the ones swinging the bats the players are the ones playing the game like you could tell me that they hired any hitting coach

Joe Smith John Smith whoever like it's up to the players to go out there and perform now can the messaging and the philosophy and kind of what they're putting in their ears in their eyes could that improve or could that be streamlined sure but at the end of the day this is a players game i read your tweets non-stop from a los vegas i was i don't want to say blown away but i was more than just normally surprised about the health of some really important people namely jordan alvarez and isaac paredes east i did everything he could to come back and at least pinch hit and in dh for this team

but when you said he may not be ready for the start of spring training is there any second guessing of maybe he should have just gone ahead and had the surgery, so maybe he would have been ready for the start of next season? Well, no. Matt, if he'd have had the surgery, they were looking at a six-month recovery for that surgery, so he would have definitely not been ready for the start of the season had he had the

surgery. You know, I think part of it, too, is just, you know, these guys don't, the minute the off-season end, these guys kind of rest a little bit. So a lot of this may just be these guys have rested, you know, when the season did end, and now they're just kind of ramping up activity. And so if you

Jordan Alvarez jogging 65, 70%. That's just his gradual ramp up. You know, Paredes was always going to probably be a little bit behind going in the spring training. I don't think they're concerned that he won't be ready for the season. But, yeah, you could see him maybe a week or so behind people when they get to camp. But that was to be expected. And I think it's even more admirable now in hindsight that he came back and gave them what he could that last two weeks from the season. General Athletic Astros beat reporter with us from Las Vegas at the General.

manager meeting. So for the audience, it doesn't know. Give the essence of a general manager's meetings as compared to the winter meetings, which will be coming up. So it's kind of the same thing, but it's a little bit on a smaller stage at the GM meetings. You know, at the winter meetings, the managers go, the clubhouse attendants go, the traveling secretaries go. Everyone in baseball goes to the winter meetings. The GM meetings is a little bit more low-key. The GMs are there, obviously. All the agents are there. And it's just a little bit more of like a foundation laying thing. You know, this is where you go and teams will meet with all the agencies there and they'll start to say, oh, okay, well, this free agent's looking for this year's and this

kind of money. They'll meet with other teams like, oh, this, this guy's available in trades. So they'll kind of lay the foundation here and then over the next month, keep working toward it. And then, you know, the winter meetings is where you see transactions happen. But, yeah, it's a lot of standing around, a lot of networking, a lot of late nights, some watering holes, because everything happens around the bar. So, yeah, just it's kind of the kickoff of the off season, if you will. Cam Smith finishes 12th in the rookie of the year on the American League side of things. And then your quotes and your story today is about the fact that he may not be guaranteed

a roster spot heading into spring training. Those are not words that you put in the day in his mouth, but I'm curious the context behind it. Yeah, that was probably to me the most newsworthy kind of revelatory thing he said yesterday. You know, it certainly wasn't a situation where Dana was being negative or down on Cam Smith. But, you know, he said, look, this is a production game and he's got to produce and we've got to be open mind. This was Dana's quoting. So we have to be open-minded to the thought that if he doesn't produce and he doesn't have the adjustments that we need him to make this off season, that we could send him to AAA. And that, you know, you watched him last year toward the end.

if that team wasn't as injured as it was and if that team didn't have a lack of options behind him, I think Cam Smith would have probably been in the minor leagues, you know, toward the end of last year, because he really fell off in the second half. It was a snowball effect of a lot of things. What fascinates me, though, is like, if he is not penciled in as the everyday right fielder, and if he's not going to spring training with a guaranteed roster spot, like, you know, they can't just, they've got to have some insurance behind them. Does that mean they're in the outfield market?

Does that mean that they may be, you know, a trend toward keeping Jesus Sanchez instead of, you know, maybe trading them or non-tendering him because they need that some insurance behind Cam Smith? Does this mean Zach Cole is a bigger piece of the puzzle? Just mean maybe they're reticent to trade Jake Myers, who they're getting a lot of calls on because his value's never been higher. It opens up a lot of questions as to kind of how they're going to, to proceed this off season.

Listen to Dana yesterday. It sounded like they have some work to do in their outfield. Here's exact words when they need to firm up the outfield. I'll be interested to see kind of how CAMs status, how that kind of affects what they do on the open market. A couple more minutes here with Chandler. We're surprised that Christian Walker was poo-poohed by Dana about being a trade target. I would read that quote a little more carefully.

Nowhere did he say I'm not trading Christian Walker. All he said was, we haven't talked about Christian Walker in trades, and Christian Walker's our everyday first basement. Most of those things can be true on November 11th. I still think they're going to have to find a way to solve this infield logjam. I personally, barring an injury, I personally can't see how they carry both Paredes and Walker and get them every day at Bats. And for the money you're paying these guys, $20 million to Christian Walker and about $10 million to Esot Paratus.

Those are guys that need to be in the lineup every day. And, you know, Dana was a little more forceful and a little more assertive that they don't want to trade ESOC Paredes. His quotes on that were very, a little more illuminating and a little more, you can tell they had some weight and some heft behind them. I think the Christian Walker one, I think, quite frankly, it was a non-denial denial. It was on November 11th, yes, maybe they haven't discussed Christian Walker in trade. and maybe he is, and he certainly, as of today, is there everyday first baseman, but that certainly could change. Yeah, I saw that too, and I'm like, wait a minute, that doesn't, I don't care who you want to get rid of.

You, Isar Pradesh should be the first baseman of this team next year. I mean, I don't know any other way to say it. And again, the only reason why you would not pencil him in today, obviously, is how his hamstring is, but that's something for down the road. Okay, look, Dylan Seas was on their radar for the Astros of the trade deadline. It did not happen. But you know, in wrapping this up, Chandler, when Jim Crane's got somebody on the mind, on the brain, he goes after guys, i.e. Josh Hater, i.e. Justin Verlander. How serious do you think at the end of the day?

It doesn't mean they're going to grab him, but how intense do you think Dylan C's conversations will be with the Euston Astros? I think they'll check in. I mean, certainly if they had interest in them at the trade deadline, then obviously, you know, they haven't lost interest in the two months since. I find it hard to believe that they'll get to the years and the money that Scott Boris will want for Dillard. and cease, especially, you know, this is an organization under Jim Crane that the most they've ever guaranteed to a pitcher in free agency is $95 million. And that was the Josh Hater, who pitches one inning. You know, the most they've ever guaranteed a starting pitcher in Crane's ownership,

seniors, $85 million to Lance McCullors, it's going to take more than that. It's going to take years. It's going to take money. And I'm here to tell you they don't want to go over the luxury tax, at least not right now. They don't want to go over the luxury tax this winter. So that's another reason why they probably. going to have to trade some of these guys just to get some payroll flexibility to get some arms in here. I think there certainly will show interest in Dillon Csies. I don't see them

going to the lengths that Scott Boris will want for him. I think you mentioned Justin Verlander. I think Justin Burlander is a more realistic target. And I think maybe someone kind of in that middle kind of a two or a free type starter is probably more what they'd be looking for maybe other than Dillen C's. And the very last question, how interested will Hunter Brown be in the amount on money the Astros spent on pitching this offseason? I mean, look, Scott Borris said it yesterday. You know, they'll listen if the Astros come to them. But here's the thing.

Like, Scott Borris doesn't, you don't hire Scott Boris to do a pre-arb extension. You don't hire Scott Boris to do a pre-free agency extension. The Astros, and also, it's not as if Scott Boris won't do an extension. The Astros are just going to have to blow Hunter Brown away. They're going to have to blow the market value away. They're going to have to give him. him a reason to say, I'm going to skip free agency where 30 other teams can bid on me. And the Astros under Jim Crane, and it's worked, but they've never been the team that's

going to blow anybody out of the water with their contract offers. So I see this going a lot like how all the other homegrown superstars have gone, and it's just going to, you know, he's going to play out his kind of final couple years, and then he's going to head into free agency where he can get one of those long, big deals and have 30 teams interested in their services i hope the blackjack players around you played the car as well that's all i'm going to say they were uh six out of ten six out of ten can't have that for you safe travels friend thank you for the time all right thanks matt all right channel rome athletic with us here on sports talk 790 let's get uh speaking of scott boris i don't know him i just know

the reputation i know he is the most powerful uh uh agent today in sports and certainly has been the OG of big money contracts in baseball for the longest time. Is he losing his mind? We'll discuss that next. 1045 on Sports Talks 790. It is the Matt Thomas Show and Ross.

We take this program today until 2 o'clock. I just don't get it in 1130. He may don't get 12 noon. We have the Rotten 1 at 1250. Now, Jonathan, I hope it works out. I hope people can call up and give me one crappy, the crappiest of the NFL teams. It's the rotten one.

No preparation. All right, 1250, we'll have it for you here. 713-212-5-7-90. Brian and Katie with us before we hear from Scott Boris. Hello, Brian. Hey, yeah, this one's going to get Scott Boris to call. Want to throw the idea out there, guys. Did it in the morning show.

Thought about it again after the fact. Paul schemes to Houston. Create that package. And I think it's not as far-fetched as people are making it out to me. I mean, you've got a one-time-time-style Young Award winner. Granted, he's, what, 23 years old. Two-time now. You've got club control, too.

Well, you know, I didn't think you quite got it. But anyway. Oh, you know what? I'm thinking maybe that's Scoop. No, maybe it's Scoobble. You're right. I'll think about that. Are they announcing it already?

Go ahead. Continue on. I'm sorry. Yeah, so you've got club control. Jim Crane loves that type of situation. you've got an outfield that's loaded. You've got a team in Pittsburgh that is not going anywhere anytime soon. They've proved that with obviously the trade of people like Garrett Cole and so on and so forth down the line.

You've got offense, which is what they need. They obviously don't care about their pitchers as much as they ever, you know, since my time when I was born probably. I mean, it's just making sense. You give up some outfield talent, give up some draft picks in the coming future. I don't know, number one's number two. I'm just the armchair GM, so whatever I say. So it starts to bear fruit. This tree that's in my head starts to bear fruit.

And similar to the Rockets, for apples and apples, Kevin Durant, in my opinion, is single-handedly changed the trajectory of the Rockets in 10 games or whatever. it's been, I feel like we're one pitcher away in a guy like schemes from literally changing the directory and the end result of a 162 game season for the Astros. What if that looked like to you guys? Could y'all even play around with this scenario and tell me what you all think it looks like and what the pirates go for? Brian, I want you to stay with me on the line here, okay?

Because I first of all, I appreciate you calling and thank you very much for listening, okay? There is a 0% chance that Paul Skeens is a Houston Astro. Zero. I don't mean to be that. Can I say this? Let me just give you this. The Astros have and have had for about seven or eight years now a bottom five minor league system. Okay.

It's not getting any better right away. It takes time. Sometimes it takes seven or eight years to build. a respectable midway, mid-level minor league system. There is nothing in the organization that, from a minor league perspective, that the Pittsburgh Pirates would want in return for Paul Skeen's. Nothing in the minor league system. You could not stockpile enough players to make that happen.

So that's why, Brian, with tremendous amounts of respect to you, this is a complete and utter non-starter. Well, I mean, and I'm not even looking at the minor leagues. I get what you're saying from the minor league standpoint. But just the other day, I know what outlet created the article, but they said the chopping block started in the outfield. And possibly even there was an article about Christian Walker. Okay, Brian, Brian, Brian.

So major leaguer instead of minor leaguer. Brian. you're going to trade to the Pittsburgh Pirates an aging 30-plus-year-old first baseman who's lost significant slug for one of the brightest arms in Major League Baseball for maybe the next 15 years? And I'm not saying it's just mono-a-mono. I'm just saying there is nothing. The only player that the Pittsburgh Pirates would listen to that are on the current Major League roster, there'd be two of them.

Hunter Brown and Yaron-Avarez. And Jordan Alvarez can't stay healthy for a full 162. So if I'm Pittsburgh, I still don't do the deal. Yeah, all I'm saying is, hey, it's Thursday. It's Thursday trying to have some fun. I know. You must be drinking well. What are you drinking right this second?

What do you drink? I want to know exactly what you're drinking. It's about to open up. We're going to hit the brown water and rocks. And we're going to have a little fun. And maybe this deal makes even a little more sense after a few of those. Guys, thanks. Thank you, Brian.

It's going to make zero sense. It'll make actually less sense. Brian, thank you for calling, but Brian's going to be thinking of myself. Did I really call a major market radio show at 1055 and explain that I could try to see Paul Skeen's, the Pittsburgh Pirates who got the Siong going to the Houston Astros? I mean, I would be all for it, but there is, and I mean this, there's no chance. No chance. No way.

know how Paul Skeins will be attracting serious if again the Pirates decide to make the move which they will because that's what the pirates do. They have their young stars and they move them. But it ain't going to be unless Paul Skeen said I want to play

for the Astros. And why would Paul Skeens want to go play for a team that does pay its players well but doesn't give the mega deals? Paul Skeens is going to be looking for 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years. when jim crane heard the number number eight he almost choked on his breakfast thank you for the call my friend

kind of needed that didn't we speaking of outlandish things i'm going to let you hear what scott boris said yesterday at the general manager's meetings in los vegas and i wanted you to guys to tell me the truth was this funny or cringy or old man or failed to tempt me. I need to describe what you're going to hear from the most powerful sports agent.

And be real with me on this. You're going to hear what he said about Alex Bregman in his time in Boston last year coming up. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. All right, it is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ross is having a couple days off. He's been gone all week. I kind of missed the guy. Not really.

Who, I should clip that. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Paul Skeen's won the Sion this past year. I don't think he's won a second one. Two-time All-Star Syung and 25

Yeah, he didn't win two times So people on Twitter Are making me Question my thoughts Which is probably right No, he's not I'm sending this one to Jose Al-Tube Season

I don't think Jose Al-Tube is sweating me up From his account But that's fine All right, so I got to do this I got to play this audio for you This is, you know This is the, as Chandler-Rome mentioned earlier This is where the agents and the general managers really get to have some good old-fashioned, deep, heartfelt conversations about how their clients are awesome.

So Alex Bregman decided to opt out of his contract, $40 million last year to play for the Red Sox. It was good money spent, but he's looking to get a longer-term deal after signing a three-year deal with the Red Sox with opt-out since he opted out. so scott boris held serve with the media that was assembled at the general manager meetings in los Vegas and uh this is how this is how scott boris basically described alex bregman's time in boston so i want you all to hear this and then after i you hear this you have to tell me if this is funny corny dad joke

cringy however you want to describe it let me know 713212 57790 but here is Scott Boris talking about Bregman at the season last year in Beantown

I would certainly think that you know like in Boston we learned a lot about Breggman in 25 because in Boston prior to 25 they had a they had a lot of lineup

do not holes and certainly prior to 25 Boston has been a kind of a club that's been has duncan well below the playoff line so

I think it was a bad roast in Beantown and certainly and give the owner's credit in 25 you know they went out and spent some Starbucks to

bring in a Bregman blend that led them to the playoffs so I I'm sure the Boston fans don't want this to be just a cup of coffee

and no one wants a of Brexit and the audience. Uh and the audience isn't see his face but this guy didn't smile at once saying this stuff, by the way.

Scott Boris, the guy. All right. First of all, I applaud I applaud the very little and Jonathan you don't know this and we make fun of people that are part of the media that make these

we call awkward media laugh there was hardly any of it there really I heard some let me no let me tell you something I work in a media market in Houston Texas that has a bunch of water carriers for those local sports teams I mean big time

I've heard some of them yeah and they go it's so funny cow It's so funny, Nick Assyria, so funny. Yeah, it's especially bad in Texanville. Because I want to be buddy buddies with Damiko and Cal and Hannah and everybody over there. And that's fine. So I will give credit where credits do.

There was a little bit of, you know, but there wasn't much. The problem with that whole thing was, Jonathan, he was so measured about it. he wanted to make sure every one of his little puns hit he said so many of them like five i don't know but i'm not going i'm not going to go back and recount them but they were all bad he said beans out of the oh i can't even get the joke right i don't even know what he was trying to say breg blend uh he mentioned the starbucks he mentioned there were a lot of donut holes Do you think he was stroking out on front of the media there? I mean, that was awful.

He could have a couple shots before he got on to the stand. And the reality is this, look, I don't mean to do this, but sometimes I catch myself doing dad jokes because I'm a dad. So I kind of get a little room for error on that. But what the hell was that? I mean, was, I didn't realize it was open mic tonight at the general manager's meetings. did you if you all want to listen to that right now were y'all like what in the hell is that we've all done things that have been cringy before or awkward moments hell this this show

between ten and two is largely awkward ehe that was terrible I don't remember him doing that I remember you know what I remember Scott Boris being cold calculated, cutthroat, emotionless. That's why these players go to him. They don't go to Rodney-Borrisfield for their contract negotiations. If I'm Braggs, and I love Braggs, I'd be like, Scott, are you okay? You off your meds?

Or maybe I guess the question would be, are you on some meds? let's play it one more time and then I want you all to really just take a deep breath on this and say hey Matt he was having some fun leave him alone you can say that I'm okay I mean if you have a compelling enough argument that's the thing about me is just because I come on with a show

opinion I'm up for listening to other people's opinions I'm not going to begrudge you on this to me this will be the 75 seconds of the most cringy stuff you'll hear the rest of your day except for the show obviously 10 to 2 here it is i i would certainly think that you know like in boston and we learned a lot about breakman in 25 because in boston um prior to 25 they had a they had a lot of lineup do not holes and certainly prior to 25 Boston has been a kind of a club that

that's been, has Dunkin well below the playoff line. So I think it was a bad roast in Beantown. And certainly, and give the owners credit in 25. You know, they went out and spent some Starbucks to bring in a Breggman blend that led them to the playoffs. So I'm sure the Boston fans don't want this to be just a cup of coffee. And no one wants a Brexit. How many was that, Matt?

I heard two sniffles, which was an attempted humor. And five puns. I'm serious. I know he's the goat of all, he's the OGs and the greatest of all time when it comes to negotiating contracts, at least in the last 30 years. But I'm like, bra, are you okay?

Because if that's, if he's more worried about working on his material for Showtime at the GM meetings, then he's not worried about my contract. I guess the thing is, he's so powerful. Did he have somebody write that stuff for him? and he had just had to memorize it. I'm actually a little bit sad.

Because, dude, that's... Sad. Yeah. That dude is the most powerful man in baseball. He probably just had a couple on the table before he got up and, you know... Oh, is that what you're saying? He said a few pops. Yeah, a few pops.

Okay. You know what? You know what? You know what? Now that you say that, because remember I told you before, I'm willing to listen to other people's opinions, I will go with you on that. The most powerful man in baseball, maybe in sports, was blankface, and he had a chance to go in front of his microphones to work on his material.

So I applaud you, Boston national, or national media. You didn't sit there and chuckle at every one of them. There was a couple of sniffs. Those sniff were kind of like a shock laugh. Like, what do you do you say? Well, you know what? I wonder if, if Boris was mad that he wasn't getting a better reaction. and sometimes if yeah because think about it if you're if you're i don't know if you've ever been

a stand-up comedy before i have not but if you're up there in front of a bunch of people and your jokes are falling flat you're just like i want to look out there and find out somebody that's going to actually laugh and i'll because here's thing if you would have laughed at that maybe you would have gotten a story out of it thank you for laughing at my many puns about coffee during my alex pregnant conversation call me later i'll give you some details on my clients nobody was biting and you know how snarky media can get you know there was some serious rolling of eyes

and that bad boy was done it's got to be no for sure especially how big this news is oh for sure all right so I wanted y'all to hear that somebody a friend of mine Aaron just sent me a text said that was Jack Easterby cringy let me tell you something gang

Jack Easterby would do that in front of Houston media the difference would be we'd have a bunch of media water carriers for him going Oh, that was so funny, Jack. Yeah, it was really good. Thanks, Jack. Yeah, in Houston, that runs it well, especially with the fake media that we have here,

that pretend their media. Oof, that was rough. I never, you know what? I'm so blessed by that. I never have to worry about that with E. May Adoka. Do you think E. May Idoca would come on this radio show, which he's going to do in 45 minutes,

and start dropping puns on me? imagine he's the most serious man i've better be interviewed in my life and i love it i'm okay with it i want my you know what i want johnlin i want my agent serious if i'm hiring scott boris i don't want him working on his shecky shucky boris material i want him getting me as much money as humanly possible all right i just want to play that for you all lordy that was something else Well, at least gave you something to think about. All right, 713212-5-790.

Chris Gordy is going to join us in about 15 minutes for a segment. We have, I just don't get it coming up at the bottom of the hour. And Gordy is a part of what has turned out to be my most... Now, when you have views or impressions, you have... That doesn't necessarily mean people looked at them, but they scrolled through my tweet. It's an all-timer in the history of my 16- or 17-year relationship. with the platform known as Twitter are now called X. So we get gory's thoughts on that coming up in a few minutes.

All right. Let me tell you all of them. I love y'all. Y'all are like my associate producers. And look, I can't watch or read everything about everybody. So that's why I got y'all. Y'all are awesome. Apparently, and a few of you have said this to me, he does this for a lot of his clients.

these horrific puns. So this is not a new bit for him. Apparently he did it with Pete Alonzo. And then he did it most recently with Tarek Scubal. I mean, holy smokes. And the one about Tarek Scubal, it's on a Reddit page, so I couldn't forward it to Jonathan. Are they talking about Little Caesars?

Yes. I think this is the right one. Play it. Go ahead, play it. Here it is. All we know is that the, look, the fans in Detroit want the tigers to build a Terrick Barrick. You know, they, you know, little Caesar's running around town saying, sigh, sigh. So it's a kind of thing where he's built a base. Obviously, everywhere they go, they know it's Scoobel Day. they understand that that that organization is substantially different if he's not there

and you know we when you're in these situations and you go through it all we know is that we hear mostly from the fans and the player hears from the fans and and it's kind of like it should be Scooby-done, right? And if not, I think the fans would certainly think it's a Detroit doy-doin if they don't. Have they approached you about an extension again at this point? I can't do it. I mean, come on. So he's damn lost his mind.

It just seems like he was having a fun night. I don't know. So apparently, you know, see, he must have like two gin and tonics before he goes up on front of the media because he's like, I got it. Now, he does have this, he doesn't have a script in front of him. So I give him credit for having it memorized. It should be Scooby Dunn. I don't know. I kind of like that.

So what was, okay, so let me ask you this. Did you like the Bregman one? Did you like the Scuba one? Did you like both or did you like none of them? That's cringe. Doings! me oh no no i'm doing it oh my god what's the matter with me little caesar's running around town sigh sigh sigh what as compared to saying pizza pizza you say si-sai see okay i don't know

this one's kind of he kind of hit the nail on this one i got this kind of give you oh no you're giving him credit jonathan oh no come on you young and jish let me tell you some you me as an older dude would try should try to find this more humorous than you as a young I just, I think I think it's the context of why I'm laughing at it. It's just like, I don't know. Like, Syside, that's, unless he had that scripted like you're saying,

giving props for remembering that. Did he say Rutt Row at any point during his conversation about Tarek Scubel? I don't think he did. Oh, man, Scott Boris. He says, Scoobble Day. Yeah. Yeah.

You know what it is, though? he has so much power and he has all these great athletes that he just wants to F with us basically that's how he gets his That's how he gets his giggles He doesn't have a lot of fun in his life You know what he is?

This is the thing I think I figured it out at 1124 He is Cutthroat Mean, nasty void of emotion 99% of his day he gets in front of a microphone

he thinks he thinks he's on star search we need to give him a podcast or showtime at the Apollo what i you know what i'm thinking of is how and i when i went and googled his i googled scott boris puns there's a lot of different radio stations in the country that have been saying hey i wonder what they would say about our team guys

do we need to help scott boris right material for hunter brown oh no okay come on come on twitter you guys are bright it's probably with charlie brown in there something let's think about this for a second all right so if you want to help me with this let's help out scott boris

if he's going to go with this bit all the way through we should do this 713212 790 what puns would he use for hunter brown to stay with the astros you got to bring up space city you got to bring up astronomical

yes you have to bring up our food like you know fajitas you got to bring up the traffic come on Houston

y'all are smart people I just gave you all props to be my my associate producers of the show what dad joke slash astro pun would scott boris use when discussing hunter brown's future with the astros it shouldn't take a crane to get hunter brown a new contract what can hunter brown do for you in houston I'm tapped out

let me see if you all on Twitter got something going on here come on y'all can do this for me I don't know what you would say okay what can Hunter Brown do for you that's an easy one that's the lowest hanging fruit out there it would be you don't need to use a crane you shouldn't have to use a crane to get a new contract for him what else

come on y'all devious people you know and i need you out there we'll get gordon to help us out because gordony's gordony's a king of uncomfortable puns bonnie joe says i counted seven uncomfortable coffee puns two were very nuanced that was cringy as you stated he is cold it has no sense of humor and that was ultimately clear in his statement It would be out of this world if the Astros re-signed Hunter Brown. Now, see, you see, that's why he's got people. He has people that write this stuff for him. Wouldn't it be better if it was just him making this up, though?

Like, it was just him. I don't know. It should be Scooby-Dine? I don't know. That's kind of. No, though. That's Tarque, Scoob. We're talking about Hunter Brown.

oh the astros want to hunt for a red october they should get some you know oh okay you know what i apologize let me tell you some i got i know i got i'm sorry's tomorrow i'm sorry for doing this to y'all i got suckered into this i did my bad i this is terrible i am i sincerely apologize to all of you No need to worry, no need to fret. We will discuss the topics to see if we comprehend the things that may confuse our friends. It's time to say, I just don't get it. All right, y'all came through as I knew you would.

Listen to these, Jonathan. It's a no-criner. Ooh. That's from Darren. Robert says you can't take Brown of the Super Bowl, but he can hunt down an MLB championship. Okay. That's kind of good. Pedro says the Astros have a hunter's chance to sign Brian to a long contract.

Okay. See, I knew y'all could do this. They got y'all. All right. Maybe if he stays in Houston, they can get him a big cup of Joe Espada. Oh, Gordy coming through. It is so nice to have you on the show right now. thank you from the bottom of my heart i don't know why this happened we have to talk about this it is an all-time example of i just don't get it okay so i will tweet things and you will quote

tweet me and you will tease me you will quote things you will say things and i'll quote tease you back it's just what guys do right co-workers and friends nothing crazy so you put out your tweet a couple of days ago about all fired college coaches should have to go to an independent an arbitrator to argue why they deserve your full payout. Like an MLB, you present your case and why you deserve it, and the arbitrator decides what percentage you get. And then at the very end, because you were looking to make it a comedic bit, and then we televise it and live on ESPNU.

Yeah. Okay. No part of that should read, this guy's serious. So, doing what I like to do, because we're pals, I respond back to you, you offered me a contract. I signed it case closed in five seconds that's how it works even at LSU so you and me go back and forth couple people that follow us have their comments about it it's just a nice little give and take right

well that was a few days ago since that tweet at 557 p.m. on November the 11th which is two days ago almost three to two full days ago Gordy It's been viewed by 1.9 million people Oh I've got over 2 million now 66 comments 261 retweets

11,000 likes and 164 bookmarks I say to you Chris Gordy about our tweet our interaction

and how the X-Ply platform works. I just don't get it. Well, I can get, I don't get it either, but I think it's from this angle. Matt, everybody wants to be an expert. And when something comes out that's very divisive and people are split on, yeah. People want to let, oh, I know this. Oh, I know this. And people want, and Twitter is the king of it. It used to be message boards. Now it's Twitter. People want to jump in and go, ha, let me tell you, from my years of studying law and contracts, this is a contract you cannot fight it's like bro we were having fun like we didn't need your seriousness to step in i have lawyers jumping in my mentions matt tweeting at me this isn't how contracts work

thanks mr contract appreciate it didn't really ask for your expertise i would call your law office if i wanted that advice i have not been ratio so i'm happy about that but i have been told what an idiot i am mine has gotten i'm i'm at 57 comments 481 likes so there are more people who are liking my tweet as opposed to wanting to hate on it. But I just, I mean, again, of all the stuff I tweet, I wish some of my sports takes people would jump on. This was just a joke that people are misinterpreting as, oh, you're an idiot.

You don't know how things work. Let me tell you how things work. So, Gordy, we have to figure this out. This is pretty me and you. No one's listening except us. We got to monetize our takes now. We just have to. We have to be able to get these ones.

We've got to turn our number of view. Now, how many of views do you have on yours by yourself? You have two million views on yours. Yeah. Am I piggybacking off of your views? Is that what I'm doing? I think so. Yeah, my, oh, look.

Okay, I'm looking at my total. Oh, this is my total earnings on Twitter. Yeah, my last couple payouts for Twitter monetization has been $28, $13, $12. So this is probably a $12 tweet. I don't monetize my Twitter. Should I do that? You got to do it, yeah.

You should have been on that. Now you missed on it. So the only way I can do that is if I have to pay for the blue check mark, right? Yeah, but I make that. made that back in like the first couple of months. I mean, you know how many McRibbs you can buy with $12? Guess who brought McRibbs of the Kingwood Studio today? Who's that?

Mrs. Thomas did. Wow. For the entire family. She knows the key to your heart. She does. Well, that and other things, but that's a different issue for a different time. So, Gordy, if I'm picking backing off of your, I have, because I have 1.9 million views on mine. You have two million?

Look, look what we've done. yeah unfortunately i wish twitter would would raise the amount of of incentivizing those because again like i said probably about 10 or 12 bucks so what i'm going to do for is every time you have something halfway controversial i'm just going to i'm just going to quote you because i can gravy train off of you

i got zero problem with that you're locked on SEC well i realize why i rarely tweet thoughts because again they get missing turrets almost everything i tweet is always kind of a joke or you know like not even joke because i said it's a joke and guys like, good joke. I'm like, okay, like, it's tongue and cheek. It's not, it wasn't meant for you to laugh out loud at.

No, there's, it's, it's very hard to interpret humor. Now, you've got to go back to your regular job, but is there anything else you don't get in your life besides this for me? Because I sincerely don't get how this became such a thing. Yeah, I don't get how, um, how YouTube TV still hasn't figured this thing out. Um, I have a bunch of friends who had not been able to watch sports because of this stupid holdout between Disney and YouTube TV,

and apparently Google is involved somehow, some way. I just, nobody cares. The consumer doesn't give a bleep. Figure it out. It is crazy, crazy, crazy. It's gone as long as it did. We should have had a contest. What goes longer?

Government shutdown or the Rooooop TV versus ESPN fight? I'll give you two more, or two quick puns here, because I know Aaron wants to get in on the way out. The Astros could use... I didn't know if carrots were in coffee, but you could get a carrot, you know, souffle carotini with a cup of coffee. Oh, my God.

Hit the... That's terrible. Jonathan, hit the next buzzer. That was... And then, you know, if the Astros... I can't monetize that, Gordy. I can't monetize that tweet. I know the Astros were, you know,

they were looking for an extra hitting coach. Maybe they could bring in... Jose Barista. Bautista. Barista. I kind of like that one. I don't know. I can't like that one.

It's all crowd. Jay says the hunter is now the hunted. Oh, God. Did you know Scott Borister this? I guess I have, I diversify my life beyond watching agents speak to the media. I had no idea he did this until yesterday. And I didn't realize he did it until a bunch of people said that he did it for his other clients, too. I knew he did jokes.

I didn't know they were this bad, though. Oh, yes. I mean, super cringe. And he's like digging deep in the back of his mind. What was that line I had memorized about Bean Town? But am I right? If this would happen in Houston, all the fake media would have been laughing their asses off. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, if he could get some Tex-Mex jokes in there, that'd be great. All right. Gordy, thank you for coming by. I appreciate you. And thank you. And I have now made the decision. I'm going to go get the blue check mark.

Because if I'm going to get 1.9 million impressions, I need to check out of this. Yeah, again, it doesn't pay well. You would need about 35 of those tweets to go viral to make any kind of money. All right, well, let's make this up. You and I collaborate once a week. Let's do something so obnoxious so we can get 1.9 million views per tweet. I disagree, Matt. I am on this side.

I am on this side. And people all come out. And you suck. And where's your law degree from? So I say mine degrees from. F you. That wasn't very nice. And one guy that said I was a terrible talk show host, he had two followers.

He doesn't even live here. You don't even know if I'm a good host or not. Yeah, I mean, you might be your actor, but you don't know it, for sure. One guy was like, I went to your sports channel, and you don't have a ton of subscribers, so that's good because it takes like these. I'm like, all right, bro. Yeah, bro. Thanks for your interaction. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Gordy. All right, Aaron wants to get something he doesn't get. If you have something in your life, you just don't get. Let me know. 713-212-5-7-90. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. All right, time to judge this one, Jonathan. The Astros don't want Union Station running out of diesel.

Ooh. I knew y'all could do this. I think that's too good for Scarborough, so. That was nice. That may be the best one. Just saying, let's talk to Aaron on 790

1148 Aaron what's a good word Hey are you hot and ready because no matter how you slice the pie it's going to make some crazy bread Detroit but with regards to Houston we

you got to keep the communication going with fans of men don't want to brown out and brown nose as well not a fan not a fan the best part of that call was aaron just saying all what he said and then he hung up he didn't want to

he didn't want a reaction from us you want to brown out that wasn't bad yep didn't want you don't want to brown out God I feel you know what here's the thing John that unfortunately this Scott Boris

are going to be a part of the future of this show. Oh, most definitely. Because the Astros have Scott Boris Clients. All right. You know what? I ask for this. And when you ask for something, you get them. Who's the client's in Brown, right?

It is brown. It is Altuve. Oh, I've got Altive. I believe it is also Lance McCullors. There's a few. Pena. Oh, my God. Oh, you guys.

You'd hate for Jeremy to have to go find his taquerias somewhere else. Oh, my God. What have I done? I'm sorry, Houston. This is going to be the rest of the show for sure. You know why this is? Two reasons. Ross is gone all week.

And two, I'm still trying to fight this cold the last. I mean, this is the problem I have to go through. You work a Rockets game last night. You do the show. you're going to get a little a little bad blank crazy and i've just done that for you all i've made my show scott boris uh quips puns this is my fault not yours i'm taking the blame i'm sorry it's too late dwayne on 790 hello dwayne hey bud uh your clip it uh for tomorrow is going to be like all this morning

entire show. It's exactly right. You're right, Dwayne. You're exactly right. You are one of my associate producers for a reason. Thank you. Oh, man. If I got paid. I don't know. We don't pay around here. Ask Jonathan how much we pay. You'll be, you're like, I get the hell out of here. Leave me out of this. I'm in oil, man. Just chill. Okay. Well, you know, on the contract, doesn't it say the last name first, then the first? right so instead of brown hunter it could be green hunter stay in oil

yeah I mean I love you doing but stay in oil it's easy for you you're just talking about all these guys that are Boris clients on the Astros yeah well well are we talked about the past or like seriously

it hasn't been that bad I know he's a goofball but he's damn good at his job he's amazing at his job Dway that's the thing that's the thing that troubles me is he uses this as his comedic relief do you think he smiles more than three times a day oh hell no i love it i have family in boston and trust me they don't need drink as much coffee as his stupid joke went you know well here's the thing is that dwayne even when he smiles i mean even when he gets a new deal done for his client he's moving on the next client he doesn't he's like nick sabin when it was college football and he won a national championship he's not worried about celebrating the national championship he's worried about recruiting for the next year's class That's how Scott Borris rolls. Yeah, he's like one of those gangsters, not with a golden tooth, but the golden rim tooth, you know? Exactly.

That's exactly what he is. He is looking for. Thank you, Dwayne. There's no celebration. When Pete Alonzo gets new deals and Targ's Scoobble gets new deals, and I don't know if Paul Skeens is a client, Alex Bredman clearly is. They're not, he's like, okay, got you all. Gotta go to my next guy. Bye.

he uses money for toilet paper just think about this he's getting all these ridiculously huge contracts for these guys and granted he's not getting 10% but he's getting three four and five depending on who the client is and three percent of you know, a seven-year, $220 million deal, or an eight-year, $2.40, or a $9, $2.70, or a $10,300. I mean, he's got like 30 of those guys that he gets those mega deals for. You want mega deals. You want cutthroat. You go to Scott Morris.

And you know what, gang? If I was a player and I was elite at my position and I was about to go to a new contract, I'd want to do the exact same thing. James incline before we talk to Eme Adoka, hello James Yeah, I hope he starts pitching this new contract It doesn't strike out and the Astros hit a home run You didn't like that Say it again, man

Say it one more time I hope when he starts pitching this new contract That he doesn't strike out and the Astros hit a home run James leave the puns the professionals my man okay thank you thank you James we appreciate your effort but

you know what I'm going to have to I think Jonathan I think we're going to have to put a moratorium in these things this is probably one of my favorite shows for sure because

James wrote that and I feel bad that he probably wrote it on a piece of paper he's like i got to call matt and see if this this jams scott i think at least has he must have writers that did this because again he had it measured he wasn't just talking off the top of his head when he was doing all that stuff

with uh regman in the coffee bit all right that's it we're done we're never doing this again until scott borough speaks again and then we're going to do it again who lord all right uh we will not do the news at noon today

because we got e-may ad doca coming up in a manner minutes because he is the news at noon we'll talk to him we're going to do the rotten one at 1250 and you're like what the hell's a rotten one well ross does the rotten five we're not going to make you do that much work you have to call in and tell us who the worst team of the NFL is now if it makes any sense and you have logic behind it that'd be great but if you just want to just crap on a team that you hate just because you hate

them? It's the rotten one. It's your contest, not mine. 713, 212, 7190. 713, 2190. Ime Adoka is next here on 790. This is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. It is 12-0-1 on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Ross off this week. M.T. with you here until 2 p.m. We're going to spend 10 minutes right now with the head coach of your Houston Rockets, who picked up his 100th career victory as the head coached in the Houston Rockets. E. May Adoka with us here on the show. Coach, thanks with time.

Congratulations. A pretty fast run to 100, my friend. It's got a lot more to go, unfortunately, for us. Yeah, it's a nice little milestone to hit, but, you know, with the team we have and our expectations, I think that was kind of foregone conclusion, but we're looking for bigger things anyway. You ran some youth teams when you were still playing the NBA, correct? I mean, so this coaching bug was part of your assistant for a long time, right? Yeah, I sponsored an AAU team out of Portland, Oregon, or some of our guys on staff, Mike Moser, Garrett Jackson were part of the team.

So I started way back then, did some coaching clinics with the National Basketball Players Association, three, four summers in a row, and got the it's early. Who was the coach? Who was the coach, Ema, that was the guy that said, all right, I'm going to follow this guy's path. I want to be a head coach ultimately at the highest level. Who told me that? Who was your biggest influence?

I'm curious. Obviously, Pop. You know, Pop offered me my first job, you know, when I was still finishing my career and kind of expedited the process. I wanted to play a few more years and he gave me a great opportunity. So spent seven years coaching. with him before I went to Philly, Brooklyn, and Boston, and then played two and a half years from him. So the longest playing career with him, playing team I played with, and then

coaching, obviously. So he's been the biggest influence on me by far. You may have docker with us here on 790. Coach last night, Washington, we knew defensively, just not very good, giving up the most points in the league. 81 you'll take all the time. Doesn't happen a lot, but a combination of, you took advantage of some their deficiencies on the defensive side with some hot shooting. How did you see how the first 24 minutes in particular win for you against the wizards it was good obviously you got off to a great start a 40 point first quarter is always nice and then 41 in the second so we were consistent there but you know we didn't just want to get in the shootout go up and down we wanted to defend at a high

level as well and so to hold them to 54 in the first half was great as well I think a lot of times you play an inferior opponent a lot of times you relax and and just getting to that up and down open gym style game but we wanted to maintain our discipline on defensive end obviously share the and only three turnovers in the first half, 20 assists in the first half. All those are great numbers. The turnover number has been something that you've talked about on a semi-regular basis, and sometimes they're influential in games, i.e. in San Antonio and maybe against Oklahoma City. Do you feel like things are getting a little bit better that we're going back to more of the norm?

Because especially that first half, as you're not only scoring all those points, but you guys took tremendous care of the basketball. Yeah, it's been an emphasis since they've been. I think when you look at the Oklahoma City game, you know, giving up 28 points on 25 turnovers in a double overtime loss that really stands out. And then to your point, 33 points in San Antonio giving up off of our turnover. So we know what we can look at when we lose certain games, specific things, and taking care of the ball is one of our main points of emphasis. You know, you're scoring 81 points and us being the best offensive rebounding team in the league,

we're almost like just gets shots up and we'll have a good chance to get it back if we miss, but that's not turn it over and field teams in transition. I may, this has been, I don't know if it's a four or five game stretch now for Reed. He's come off the bench for you and has really provided some nice offense. He's also very active in terms of stealing the basketball. Turnovers have been okay. Did the light bulb just turn on or is this the midges making the most of his opportunity you've been given to him, especially now that Fred's gone for the season?

It was going to be a little bit of both. You know, he gained some experience last year, but getting this opportunity to play now, It's always going to help a young player and just being aggressive and confident. Those things are going to show up in the stat sheet. Offensively, we want him to take those shots, make the right plays, and, you know, be a back of point guard and play some off ball off of Alpi and KD, but also defensively take on the challenges, and he's done that. You know, we stick to the assignment to the game plan,

and he's just a really good spark plug for us. Every team has that, and we want him to be that for us. Then the offense in this league, just in your game last night, league in general, we are seeing some incredible performances. And you and I've talked about this at least once before about usually sometimes the offense is ahead of the defense, but it feels like

I mean, we're talking about most teams have played at least 10, 11, 12 games. These offensive production numbers are incredible. Are we going to see this for a full 82 or do you think it's going to regress a little bit at some point? We would think it would come down and teams would be a little more stingy on defense

eventually, but you know, teams play towards their strengths. And a lot of times, you know, a lot of those teams are really gifted offensively. Try to get in those shootouts. And like I said, our team, like I said, quite often, we can do it on both sides. And so we're scoring at a great pace, but we still want to not to get our identity and what gave us success the last two years. So improve defensively, continue to cut out, communicate in our zone specifically

and start to hold teams down to those lower numbers. And when we're scoring, you know, 110, 120, we should win easily. If you and I were talking during the preseason, and I said through the first 10 games of the season, and the Rockets would be the number one team in three-point percentage. Would you have said, oh, that's nice, a pleasant surprise, or would you have said to me more, we better be? No, it is a great surprise. It's not unexpected that teams are going to guard Alperin and Kevin the way that they do,

and that's going to lead to some wide-open shots. And so credit to our guys for putting in the work in the off-season. Obviously, our numbers weren't where we wanted them to be last year. But when you're getting these wide-open looks, the percentage is going to go up, confidence is going to go up, and you continue to work off of Kevin, and outperin with those double teams. Guys are going to be a recipient to those open shots.

It even feels like to me, you may, please tell me if I'm wrong, a lot of teams, guys will use a slide step to get a little bit of a better angle. It feels like to me this year it's a lot of catch and shoot from your guys, that the guys are positioning themselves well, that once the ball reaches their hands,

they're letting it fly pretty quickly. Yeah, our spacing has gotten much better. Anytime we have success, it's been a large part due to that. And when we haven't, guys have kind of been out other spots, but we're really encouraging guys to be aggressive, not pass up any shots. And like I said, we're such a great offensive rebounding team that we know teams are going to double. They're going to be in scramble mode, and it's going to lead to some mismatches

on the glass as well. And so get the shot up, not pass up shots. So guys are kind of learning on the fly as far as that. You've got some guys early in the season pass up some shots, and you don't always get a better look. And so we're encouraging them to be aggressive and then hammering the glass like always with Stephen Alpi and Clint. minutes here with I May Adoka. I don't remember much about Stephen Adams early in his career, but I've obviously watched intently the last four or five years and last

couple here in Houston. Is he playing the best in terms of just not only getting his fair share of offensive rebounds, the putbacks, the pick and rolls, and then he's able to now hit some free throws. Is he even exceeding what you thought he could bring to this team

when you first originally brought him here? No, I wouldn't say I'm surprised at all if you've coached against him or played against him you know what he's all about um you know he does a lot of the things that don't always show up on the stat sheet but one of the best screen setters in the league um defensively really smart has a high cue and then offensive rebounds is one of the things he's been great at throughout his career so um more of the same guys that played against him or played with him no um he attracts all the attention on the boards and frees it up for other guys but he's going to get

his five six a game himself it feels like and those are obviously boosting our numbers but um i think more than anything to put back to some of the things you mentioned is due to health and rhythm, getting back after being out for almost two years, and you can kind of see his legs, and him and training camp, he was just a different player than started last year. You have a huge sports performance department that monitors just about everything

about these guys do in terms of eating and resting and working on and playing and how they do during the game. The Rockets have kind of caught a break. We've played some of the least number of games so far this year. It's going to eventually catch up, so how do you kind of manage that knowing that we're going to be in a spot here not before long where there are

some back-to-backs, and there's going to be some three games and four-night situations. Yeah, we'll discuss that and take a look at, you know, scheduling and then who we need to play, who we need to rest based on that, based on that schedule and matchups and things of that nature. But for now, we haven't had any early. I think it's helping us out and getting guys' legs and rhythm and conditioning under them, but that's where our depth comes into play. You know, you brought Clinton here for a reason, and Josh and Dorian, they'll be back eventually. And so when guys do have to rest, some guys coming up,

injuries or surgeries. We have capable bodies, as you've seen in the past. I feel like we have a 3-deep roster at every position that can come in and contribute. Last question for EMA, the loss of San Antonio stung because that was a game you felt like you could have won. It was also an in-season tournament game.

You got one of those coming up tomorrow night. Now we've done this a few years. Are you sensing any extra juice in the guys and maybe even more of an importance on tomorrow night's game because obviously you guys enjoyed being in that tournament last year and having to go to play in Vegas for the chance to win it all.

Yeah, it's something we don't really talk about, but guys know it's there. And obviously to lose that game to San Antonio, being it the first one, I think, was something that we want to get back on the right step regardless. It's a Western Conference opponent and trying to maintain a certain standard regardless of what the implication is. But everybody knows about the end-season tournament. We got that last year, and we want to take another step this year by winning it. Well, I'm all for that.

Thank you for the time, as always. We'll see you tomorrow night against the appointment. Portland trouble. I appreciate the visit as always. Thank you guys. You got it. That's E. May Adoka with us here on Sports Talk, 790. As the Rockets take on, Portland, that is a tournament game tomorrow, and that'll be a 7 o'clock tip time, and then the Rockets will conclude their three-game homestands Sunday against the Orlando Magic.

All right, 713-212-790, 7-1-3-212-5-790. It is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. We've got some other headlines to get to when we come back. We'll do that. We'll do our news at noon at 1220. that we'll do that and give you an up then of what's happening in texans practice plus an athletic director in the big 12 is taking a leave of absence and it has implications of the college football playoff we'll tell you what that means in a moment all right mad and jonathan with you today on the show rob grinkowski by the way uh officially signed a one-day contract today

with the New England Patriot so he could retire as a Patriot. And he will be at today's edition, I believe it or not today, at 150. So there it is. Rob Grancowski, a one-day contract. He says, I'm a New England Patriot for Life. My career started here. 100% needed to end here. It was an absolute no-brainer to come here and retire as a Patriot.

There you go. By the way, did we ever, Jonathan, I don't know, we've got to look this. Did JJ Watt ever sign a one-day contract to come back to a, retire as a Texan. You had to tell me, I thought he retired as a Texan. I don't know he got, I don't know he ever left. I thought he retired. But he went to the Arizona Cardinals, so yeah.

Oh, actually, yes. I don't think he did come back. I don't know. Let's see here. I'm looking this up. No, the last thing I see about this is June of 20203. Says J.J. Watt won't sign one-day contract with Texans, hasn't filed retirement papers yet.

Now, remember that, was a couple years ago and people thought that he might come back, especially the Texas and needed him in the middle of the year. I remember that. Yeah. So that's the last time that ever been talked about with a JJ Watt one-day contract was during that. So you know the Texas will ultimately do that. All day.

I mean, that's the only player you can think of you think Texans, you think JJ Watt, you know. I'll make a little gut feeling here right now. I will say the next time, J.J. Watt, does a game in Houston on CBS. They will, because I know he knows who Gronkowski is. I mean, they work in television. Now, different networks, but, yeah.

Ryan Gutfielink says he is going to sign a one-day contract the next time he comes to Houston for a game. Now, it may not be this year, because hell, the Texans lose this game against Tennessee. I don't see JJ Watt doing any Texans games the rest of the year. And I think he's going to do a Texans game coming up in a couple weeks on the road, but I don't know that for sure. I'm just presuming that because the Texans are going to have some decent matchups

between now and the end of the year with their opponents are playing. Just something to think about. J.J. Watt, the greatest defensive player in Texans' history for sure. And I guess you could have a decent argument is, is he the greatest player of them all? I would say no, because Andre Johnson's in the Hall of Fame. Now, JJ will be in the Hall of Fame ultimately. but I think it depends on, you know, what stage of Texans fandom you were.

Were you watching them when the franchise first began and that you realized that Andre Johnson had touchdowns throw to him by less than spectacular people, i.e. David Carr, Tony Banks and the like. Or do you go, you know what, pound for pound, who was the most feared player on the Texans team for a longer period of time? It was JJ Watt. I mean, you're a three-time defensive player of the year. That kind of speaks volumes to it.

All right. Now, as far as what's happening with the Texans today, our Texans reporter. Now, Wex is... Yeah, that's where I forgot about the news at noon, didn't I? You were done in the news already, guys, you know, might as well. Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you did that. That's good.

We like a little production value. Now, Adam Wexer is our Texas reporter, but as you guys know, I'm the Texas insider. There's definitely a difference. Okay. Jalen Petrie, not out today at practice. Kymie Fairbairn, not out at practice today. C.J. Stroud, out at practice today. So those three guys, Petrie and Stroud are battling concussion issues.

Fairbairn has the quad. Those are among the people you would care about. Also, Wex were putting out 16 minutes ago. Dalton Schultz, not seen during the media portion at practice. he was at practice yesterday says texas reporter not insider adam wexler but did not participate there are two tight-inch practicing today luke lashy or lachet i don't know how he pronounce it lacky i don't know who many cares or can kate stover kate server will get the primarily mostly playing time

so there you have it so there's your update on the texans no dalton sheltzer practice today working out no jalen petrie no kami fairbairn and no cj stroud The Texas Injury Report will be coming up in just a few minutes, or actually a couple hours probably later this afternoon. Mention to Rockets last night. Thanks again to email Adoka for joining us on the show. The Rockets are now 7 and 3 on the year as they disposed of the Washington Wizards last night in a game that was not as close to the score might not indicate it.

135 to 112, Rocket scored 81 first half points. Reed Shepard off the bench last night was fantastic. In fact, the Rockets bench last night was really good. Both Tari-Eason and Reed Shepard north of 20 points in the victory. As Houston is 7 and 3, they'll take on Portland tomorrow night. Baylor Athletic Director Mack Rhodes. You're saying that name sounds familiar. Well, Mack was a former athletic director at the University of Houston for six years.

He then went to go to Missouri, and he was there for like one year, and then he took the job at Baylor. he is taking a leave of absence and he's also doing this for the college football playoff rankings he is a member of the committee and he is stepping down as the AD temporarily could be full-time you don't know at Baylor and he's also off of the CFP for personal reasons he declined to explain why he's leaving

Baylor officials know they're not telling us but it is a very, very odd situation that Mac Rhodes who gets an opportunity to be on this college football committee to help determine who's going to play for the national championship in college football would have to leave.

There is a previous report about Mac having an alleged confrontation with Baylor tied in Michael Trigg about the color of the shirt he was wearing against Arizona State Unspeople. September the 20th. The school had issued a release saying the incident was, quote, thoroughly reviewed and investigated in accordance with university policies.

Appropriate actions were taken, and the matter is now closed. Now, you have to understand, Baylor being a private school, they're not going to be overly forthcoming with what's going on with their employees. But it is interesting to happen there. There are two gentlemen that will be the interim athletic directors while Mack is gone. It has not been determined whether or not this is a full-time resignation or a stepping away for personal reasons. But not only are you losing an AD at a Power 5 school, Power 4 school at Baylor, but you are also losing a member of the CFP. The name that is being talked about to potentially replace Mac Rhodes on the CFP is a guy that Mac replaced at the University of Houston.

Hunter Eurecheck, who is now the athletic director at the University of Arkansas. question there is there's a lot of heat on a hundred euro check and whether or not he's going to be the long-term AD at Arkansas because they had to fire their coach earlier this year and they don't seem to be very pleased at how things are progressing with the athletic department. So a lot of turbulence in the administration world of college athletics and hopefully everything with Mack is okay

but he is stepping away from both the 80s role and the CFP role due to quote unquote personal reasons. And that is the news at noon. Or the news at 1226. I'm about the hell. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. If you want to comment on anything you saw from last night, the Rockets game,

want to hear what E. Mae Adoka had to say. If you want to discuss the Texans and the fact that probably C.J. Stride is not playing on Sunday. Does that give you pause for hope that he's going to play Thursday against Buffalo? Or do you say, well, if he's not in clearing concussion protocol on Sunday, is all of a sudden you're going to clear things up by? Monday or Tuesday so I can play that game on Thursday. It's not a great time to be playing Buffalo first and foremost, especially if your quarterback's hurt,

but it especially doesn't help that you're doing it on a short week. Also, if you want to get in, if you were at the college basketball game last night between the Cougars and Oakland, I was calling so I did not see it. So let me know how that went as the Cougars continue to dominate the non-conference late. They're going to be playing Auburn this weekend in Birmingham, Alabama, and a little non-conference neutral site tilt. and what else we got going on?

College football, the rankings, and Thursday night football tonight, featuring the Jets and the Patriots, and I'm a Drake May guy because he is on my fantasy team. So Drake, please throw over 425 yards and five touchdowns. Matt and Ross today. Well, Ross not here. 713-212-5-790.

7-1-3-1-2-5-7-90. Tomorrow on the program, I'm sorry. And I feel like I should apologize for this entire week. Now that I go viral, not at viral, but I went crazy on my tweet. Let me see how, let's check on my old tweet here that I had with my buddy, Chris Gore. No, you went viral. You got 1.9 million views on that. There's no way.

Are you sure I'm not piggybacking off of Gordy's tweet? Well, you, like, it's, you kind of are, but in a sense, it's like your tweet that you quoted, tweeted it, like got more. So he's gravy turning off of me. No, it's your guy. You took his, like, you racialed him, so you took his tweet and, like, made it more popular, basically. All right. Because I'm thinking I need to monetize this, right? You know, we put it towards charity.

The Thomas Family Foundation. Okay. Oh, my gosh. I got another tweet that came in about our puns that were, it was inappropriate. Let's see if I can find it here real quick. I don't know. Let me go to the phones a quick, and I'll look for it. 713-212-5-790.

7-1-3-2-5-7-90. If you want to join us, you may do so. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. Let's go to Carl on the northwest side at 1234 on 7-90. Carl, thanks for waiting and good afternoon. Well, good afternoon to you. I wanted to ask if I could do a shout-out to my doctor. I just had my second hip surgery this year, and I'm going to do it anyway.

Dr. Stewart has been wonderful. They messed up my first surgery at a different hospital, and my leg one inch shorter. Now I'm back to normal today or yesterday I started walking without a cane, so things are looking good. Wow. Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. Let's get the shout out again.

We got to shout out the guy. So it was the same surgery or you went to a different surgeon to get this thing? No, no, a different doctor, different hospital at Methodist. So he did. I call him Dugie Hauser because he looks real young, but he really takes time to explain things to you. And I did a full, full hip replacement after I had four screws put in the first surgeon by, which I found out was actually a hand surgeon in the emergency room. Like, what are you doing, doing a surgery on me, a hand surgeon doing a hip, doing four screws my leg.

But it's all good now. So I'm walking without a cane today, so things are good. Nice. So anyway, his name is Dr. Stewart at Methodist. And two other things. I was calling to thank 790. I have a birthday that's coming up on about three or four days. I'll be 71.

And I won some ACDC tickets last week. I'm pumped about that for next year. The main thing is I was calling about how much fun it is to listen to the I'm sorry, to watch the Rockets play, you know, it's like they, sometimes they get a little sloppy on defense and, you know, mispasses. But, man, that's a bunch of tall 611, 611, 611 with the most athletic guy on the, on the court, 6, 7, I'm in. And it's so much fun to watch these guys play. And I've got very high hopes for him. I like the fact that I'm in, I saw something where he told Reed Shepard, if you take one of the,

extra dribble next time I'm going to punch you in the mouth rather than shoot I just love watching it's a joy to watch the Rockets play so that's all I had I appreciate you listening thank you and I hope you start to feel better I'm glad you're without the cane because cane suck I get that thank you Carl for the phone call

now that's not me trying to artificially brag on the Rockets that's that's a guy that just called the show that did so and I look I understand you're 10 games into the season, it's going to be hard for a lot of you to kind of jump in on this. But I'm going to tell you, if the Texans are going to let you down, and they've got a lot of

work ahead, they have to go six and two in my mind for them to make the playoffs. I don't think a 9-and-8 team gets in the playoffs in 2025. I just don't. A 10-7, probably. 9-8, going to have a difficult time. so if they don't get there you're going to need something to hold you over until the start of the baseball season

and that's why I'm going to tell you the Houston Rockets can do it for you you have one of the greatest players ever to play the game is on your floor and even though he's 38 years old or whatever he is

he's and you hate to go to this often cliched term but he's aging like fine wine he's shooting 50% about 38% from three, knocks out about 85% of his free throws, is chill as all get out. I mean, he is, now look, Katie and I are never going to be best friends, but he's very pleasant.

Now, if you go out on him on social media, he's going to find you and attack you, and that's just part of who he is. But generally speaking, he is super, super chill. And I've had nothing but pleasant experiences being around him the few times that I have. he's a star Alper and Shingoon continues to get better and better a man in Thompson continues to get better and better Reed Shepard me and y'all are dog cussing him

and I know it was fair the criticism for Reed Shepard last year was fair but he's got he's starting to put it together now don't worry about him being the number three pick and whether the number three picks are supposed to be franchise turners just say hey did the Rockets go to the draft last year and get somebody good that's in their rotation that can play and help and win?

The answer so far right now is yes. This year he's hand, doesn't so. Jabari Smith is scoring at a higher clip. Tari Isan is playing very, very well as if is your first forward off the bench. Stephen Adams is playing like he's 25, not 35. And by the way, that man still scares me to this day, but I love him for some reason.

This is a fun basketball team that I cannot under any circumstance, guarantee you a Western Conference Championship or an NBA title. I can't do it. The competition in the West is sickly good.

Oklahoma City has lost one time. They beat the crap out of the Lakers last night. The Lakers are good this year. Minnesota is good. Phoenix is playing better. Denver is awesome.

Golden State. you know, wins, games. They beat San Antonio last night. And San Antonio is a surprise. It is going to be the most anticipated. And just trust me when I tell you this, even though if you may not be the biggest NBA fan, trust me when I tell you this,

this might be the most anticipated NBA playoffs from a conference perspective that I've ever seen in my entire life as either a sportscaster or a sports fan. It would be like, if you're a NCAA March Madness fan having on one side of the bracket having you know instead of you know

each bracket is 32 teams right it'd be like one side of the bracket having 16 teams that legitimately could say I could win the whole thing on that side I can tell you right now even though we are in the early portions of November that the eighth seed whomever that may be in the Western Conference playoffs

will have a legitimate shot at playing for the NBA championship. Now, as I say that, you've got to dethrone, you've got to slay the dragon, and the dragon had it only lost one time this year. We're talking about Oklahoma City. They're cruising. But everybody else, just like it was last year, it was a dogfight of the finish, 2 through 8.

So stay with me on this. It's going to be fun. And take it for what it's worth. I don't need you to give me deep analytical breakdown. You know, if you are the old-school NBA fan that just says, I miss the days of my team of Ajean being the center and playing the low block, and I miss the two-point shot. I mean, okay, I'm never going to convince you.

But if you like two-point shots, you like mid-range, Kevin Durant's been making a living doing it. So there are guys on the rockets that have old-school two of them. But passing Big Man, an operating Shingoon? Yep. A guy that can play more than one position like Magic used to do back in the day. Now, Magic was an all-timer, but my point is that you got one on the Rockets and a man, Thompson. You have one of the greatest scores ever to play in the history of the NBA on your squad right now.

And you got some dog, you got a coach that will dog cuss his players even when they're up by 25 points. It's a good group. So enjoy it. Or at least not necessarily, you know. You don't have to enjoy it or go buy tickets. They like for you to go. But turn the game on. Put the game on radio.

I promise you, you'll be entertained. And it's kind of nice to have. Because I was watching, it was calling the game last night with Washington. The Wizards team, they score a lot of points, but they give up a lot of points. And they jack shots up, and they don't care where they are. They don't care about their spacing. That's a team that is going to lose at least 65 games. that's not fun.

That's depressing. That's like 2011, 12, 13, 14, Asteros baseball. That's what the Washington Wizards have been doing for a better part of about 15 years now. We got it pretty good around here. Can't guarantee a championship? I can't even guarantee the West Finals. I'd love for it to happen.

But man, it is such a competitive Western Conference race, which then means to me that every regular season game is going to mean a little bit more. than perhaps it has in seasons past. All right, John, we're going to try something for the first time on this radio show. I don't know how this is going to go. Every Thursday, when Ross doesn't forget,

basically I have to remind him, we do the Rotten 5 at 1250. Today, it's going to be the callers on the Rotten 1. Who is the suckiest, worst, awful football team in the NFL? And I'm going to let you, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this on the air, even I'm on television. I'm giving you a wink, wink. You can choose anybody you want because guess what?

It's your rotten one. Who is the worst team in the NFL? Tell me right now. It's time for the Ross's, not Ross's, rotten one next. 713, 212, 570, 7190, 713, 212, 570. If you want to tell the city of Houston, Tell your neighbors. Tell your best friend at work who may be listening at the office.

Who's the worst team in the NFL? And I will not judge you for who you choose. They've gone bad. Hey, they draw flies. Ooh, it's Ross's rotten five. This don't smell quite right. All right, Ross is not here. We can't steal his bit.

It's not the Ross's rotten five. It's the Sports Talk 790 audience Rotten 1. All you got to do is call up and tell me who the worst team in the NFL is and why. Can I go first, Jonathan? Go ahead. My nominees for the Rotten 1 would be the Dallas Cowboys because they're arrogant and their general manager is seen now. My nominees would be, what else? The Arizona Cardinals, because they allowed Tennessee to win a football.

game this year after the Tennessee, the Arizona guy dropped the ball before he got to the end zone. My Rotten 1 candidate would be Aaron Glenn, who is just getting all cranky because the Jets reporters are figuring out who's

healthy and who's not, and he got mad at him during a press conference. But M.T.'s Rotten 1, Amy Kronkstrunk and her sucky Tennessee Titans. I hate you. I've never met you, Amy Crunkstrunk, but I hate you. I hate you took my team.

I hate you took them to Nashville. I hate you change their colors and their stupid logo. And I love the fact that your quarterback is mid at best, and you fire coaches and you fire general managers, and you fire PR people for your mistakes. Amy, you suck. Your team sucks. You are the rotten one.

God, that felt good. Jonathan, who is your rotten one? My rotten one, there's a lot of things I could pick, but, man, the Cleveland Browns, top the bottom, front office, all the way down to the practice field is the most suckiest team. Suckiest. And I've watched cut the football since I've been a little boy. I've never seen someone tradeaway their starting quarter.

back, then put up the backup that wasn't even better than the other draft pick they got. And then it's a whole, it's just a mess. And they have actually a pretty good defense, which is another reason why they're at a bottom for me. You did all this, especially the coaches and everything like this, y'all can't even win a game because y'all can't decide what's going on in the locker room and behind the scenes. And it just, I don't know. That's my rotten one, man. I think they're just the worst team ever. I'll do the sign effect.

You lose! Good tacer! Now, if any of you pick the Saints, I can't do the Gordy line because he just speaks in Louisiana Babel. Who is your rotten one? 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. My rotten one will always be the team I used to love.

So instead of never to have lost in love before or love or lost, I just say, Amy Crunk-strunk, I hate you. I hate your dad. Period. It's a strong word, man. It is a strong word. I hate them. I hate everything about them.

I hate they got a new stadium. I hate that the Texans have to play them twice a year because I don't have to bring them up twice a year. If they were playing in a different conference, I could live with it, but I got to see them twice a year. I hate they bring in Oilers heroes, and they go to Nashville and they get honored when people in Nashville couldn't even name four Oilers.

they're my rotten one Jacob on 790 Jacob who's your rotten one my rotten one is the Dallas Cowboys because they suck the Dallas Cowgirls it's been their year for like 30 years they still suck

we have more playoff wins in them since we've been a franchise yep they don't win playoff games I hate hearing that say here we go here we go another losing season in the playoffs I hate Jerry Jones, he's stupid.

How do you trade Michael Parsons? I think he just hates the cowboys. Yeah, they're My Rotten One because they suck. Jacobs, Rotten One, the Dallas Cowboys. That is perfectly executed right there. Who is your Rotten One? 713-2-5-790. Jason and King One, Jason, who's your Rotten One?

My Rotten One will be now and forever the Tennessee Titans. Yes, sir. The fact that they hired Jeff Disher at any point is laughable. But, yeah, the Tennessee Titans and the Adams slash Strunk family. And also, hot take before I go, if the Oilers never left Houston, there would be a more popular franchise than Dallas Cowboys. I put that on everything. Between the colorway of the jerseys, very identifiable.

The following we had in the 80s, in the 70s, the oilers would absolutely be the most popularly team in Texas. But it's not even a thing anymore. Thank you for the phone call. I think I like this rotten one. It's kind of nice, huh?

You know why? Because it takes a very little minimal preparation. And even if the Titans were like seven and five, I'd still hate them. They'll always be my rotten one. I mean, I could be mad at, I mean, who else? There's nobody else I don't, like, I tolerate the Colts.

I tolerate the, I mean, the Jaguars. I mean, the Jaguars are rotten one because they keep trying to sell us. They think that Trevor Lawrence is a good quarterback. But that's their own misery. The Titans, you'll always be my rotten one. And the Cowboys, you'll always be my rotten, too. I just feel bad for the Saints. I can't even feel bad.

I can't even really hate them. I like their colors. I like their uniform. Stadium is pretty cool for being, you know, almost 50 years old or maybe even 50 years old. But they suck, too. But man, oh man, oh man. Anything about Tennessee, and I guarantee you on Sunday's game, they're going to show lots of video of the Texan of the Titans' new stadium in Nashville.

They've gotten two new facilities since leaving Houston. You know who's going to be mad about the Titans' New Stadium in Nashville. facility you know this is going to be Hannah she is not going to be pleased when she has to go and look at that thing because that's what she's looking for ultimately all right nicely done guys my two callers you gave us the rotten one all right let me tell you about the next hour of the show we got the uh one o'clock start of the program we're going to uh play some more of our friend lino ritchie and by way i found the story about lano richie that about his poetry thing i got to tell you about that coming up.

We're going to put some rocket highlights behind some of this stuff because it was easy for the rockets to win last night. If you missed my conversation with Chandler-Rome at 1030 this morning, we're going to play that for you at 120. And today's edition, believe or not, is all things Rob Grankowski, because he is retiring today officially as a member of the New England Patriots. 1257 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. If you want to chime in, we are welcome you right now.

713-21-5-790. That's 7-1-3-2-5-7-9. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. The Rockets now with six threes in the first half alone, 61.45, Houston. Oh, the great voice, one of the all-time goats. Lina Ritchie. I don't know if I was ever thinking that Easy would be a song with a song. rocket highlights behind it, but it kind of fits,

does it not? You know, it fits very nicely, too. Thank you very much. Remember, you go home and play this to your song to your girl? She's yours forever. Like, I should be giving advice like that, right? It is 105 on Sports Talk 790, and again, if you miss our conversation with Channel Rome,

that's coming up in about 15 minutes from now here on Sports Talk Seminary. So I did a little bit of checking about this Lionel Richie Bay. apparently he had a concert in September of this year's it was called truly at the town in hall in New York City it was billed as quote truly an evening of Lionel Richie and Friends so if someone said to you Jonathan if I called you and said hey Jonathan I got tickets to see truly an evening of Lionel Richie and Friends what would you think it would have been? What kind of event would it have been? I'm thinking like we have the whole hits, you know?

Yep. And he probably probably some famous performers with him, right? You know, somebody, you know, yeah. Like, maybe Diana Rosh has showed up accidentally or maybe a Mariah Carey drops fire for a couple of songs. You know what I mean? It would have been one of those ultimate collaboration of all of the people that are big

in his life and his life, right? Star. Yeah, he's well, we're now. So, many attendings, attendees I should say, this is according to Fox 5 New York, says people who bought tickets on the secondary market believed it was a musical concert and were angry when it turned out to be a moderated conversation and book talk. So if you bought the truly an evening of Lana Ritchie and friends, you bought it from the legit websites, you knew exactly what it was. If you bought it from the secondary market, the secondary market had no interest in telling you that it was not a concert. So thus, if you went to the, you know, the different ricket rasters and all that are stuff that were selling this stuff.

So apparently once people started getting there and settling down and he wasn't singing, some fans, according to this story on Fox, yelled insults. threw books at him and demanded refunds. They threw books at him? Let me tell you something. I'm not throwing a book in anybody. I'm sure he's telling a book at Lionel Richie.

Now, maybe they threw it in the stands or something like that. I don't know. Again, I've never been to this town hall place. But you've got to have serious stones if you're going to throw a book at one of the greatest singers of all time. one person apparently during this fox five uh news new york story said somebody stood up and said shut up and sing how did ritchie respond if you're looking for a concert you came to the wrong place whew so yeah uh-huh so yeah uh not real great there i'll be brutally honest with you if i was even on

the secondary market i found out that lino richie's in new york city and it's an evening of Lionel Richie and Friends, I'm not thinking he's reading Dr. Seuss to me. I think he's singing all night long to me, right? Singing you are, singing Brick House. I think I'm running out of Lionel Richie songs. Easy. But I'm sure as hell not. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not going to see any more Paul McCartney songs because he's lost

his voice. but if Paul McCartney 10 years ago was having a concert I'd go like I've done before but if Paul McCartney was going to you know read some some stuff out of Wikipedia I wouldn't go do that I don't care how much I love Paul McCartney

I want Paul McCartney to sing I don't know I don't know who gathers who is owed the most responsibility on that because here's the thing you have to know what you're paying for do you not

yeah that's yeah it'd be one thing that they said truly in the evening of Lana Ritchie and friends he might sing that's one thing

but I don't think anybody off of the PR campaign tried to hide the fact that Lana was just going to read some poetry it was a moderated conversation in book talk now I wouldn't personally do that

because if I'm going to go spend money on Lana Ritchie I want him to sing the songs but to me it comes across is maybe that when you go to the secondary market, you don't always get what you're supposed to be paying for. So there you have it.

Lado Ritchie, thank you very much for your service. Easy hit with the Rockets. The most important thing is Rockets won last night. They are 7 and 3, and we'll take on the Portland Trailblazers tomorrow in the in-group game number B. They've got four opponents in there. The winner from each group goes on to the knockout round,

and then the winner that will go on to play in Las Vegas for the semifinals and for the championship, which is coming up in about four weeks from now. I went last year, and I loved it. I can't win for the NBA to go to Las Vegas. I'm thinking I'm going to have to take like four days off before each game the Rockets playing, and probably four days off after.

Because Vegas, even though it's got no soul and it's expensive as hell, and they don't treat you very nice anymore, and Las Vegas has made a lot of mistakes. There's still no place like it. Now, so I'm sticking to that. 713-21-2-2-5-7-9. 713-212-5-7-9.

I got a Lionel Richie story here from Brent McAllery. I'm very curious about this. Brent, the floor is yours. Good afternoon. Mr. Matt, how are you, sir? I'm well, thank you. Outstanding, yeah, so Lionel Richie is on tour in 1983. He just came out with the Hello album.

Obviously, you left the Commodores and is, you know, everywhere, you know, mega star. And I'm seven years old, and my mom takes my son. myself, my brother, my older brother, my older sister, and her boyfriend, we all go see Lano Ritchie, and we're rolling up to the summit. We make the exit right there off 59 and 610. We're rolling to the summit. The marquee, which is still there, says, tonight only Lano Ritchie, and right underneath it, and very small lettering says with special guests, and my mom goes, oh, Tina Turner's the

opener tonight. I didn't know who Tina Turner was. And anyways, though, we get to our seats and the lights go down, and the, music comes up, and Tina walks out on stage. I'm seven years old, mind you, man. She walks out on stage, and it's that hair and that, those legs, and she's wearing this leopard print thing that no seven-year-olds should ever see a woman wear at that age.

I didn't know what I was looking at, man, but I knew I was going to remember it for the rest of my life, and I'm 49 years old now, and I remember it like it was yesterday. It was life-changing, and, of course, you know, Lionel comes out, and he does his thing, and it was just an absolute life-changing, So it was actually the first concert I could actually remember a significant detail from. And I was seven. That's my line out with you story.

Brent, that is an outstanding story. My first ever indoor concert was at the summit. I went and saw Chicago in 1984. So I always will always hold a special place for the summit in my mind because that's the first place I went. Plus, that's where the Rockets played their games. And I was a kid growing up where they won their championships. But it's funny that you have vivid memories of that. And I remember I went with a bunch of kids in my school.

We were at the sixth grade, and we had a really great time except for one of the girls that went with me. It was like six of us. She got her purse stolen at the Chicago concert. I felt terrible for her. Somebody just snatched it right out of her hands, walking on the concourse of the summit. Yeah, we went to go see Iron made me and my buddies fast forward a few years later. and one of my buddies had his shirt stolen from the Iron Maiden show. And, of course, we were young kids, and it was cold.

He was just out there with no shirt after. But that was later. But my first recollection of a true concert memory was that show. And I think later in life, I actually got to understand what the saying is, you know, darker the berries, sweet of the juice. And I give it all credit to the queen herself, Miss Tina Turner. That's my story. Thank you very much, Brent.

Appreciate that's good stuff right there. Thank you for the phone call. So Tina Turner, huh, was the opener for Lionel Richie? I wonder if any point, maybe you guys are music historians, would have ever been a time where it would have been the roles would have been reversed? I mean, Tina had some hits. Don't get me wrong on that. But I'm wondering if just because of Lionel's solo career plus his career at the Commodores,

that he would always have the top billing. I guess it would be. I don't know. I don't have Tina's music library in my mind like I have Lionels. But, yeah. Okay, there you go. Thanks for that story. Good stuff there.

All right, let's get to some baseball chatter. How did Dana Brown address a lot of topics at the general manager's meetings in Las Vegas? We'll get the perspective of Chandlerone for the athletic next. 114 on Sports Talk 790. 119. 119 on Sports Talk seminar earlier today. Before Chandler jumped on a plane, Mr. Rome, great baseball writer for the athletic, joined this radio show

to discuss what he heard and saw from the general manager's meetings from the Astros perspective, namely what Dana Brown said to him and others. We first talked about Joe Espottis coaching staff for 2025. Well, they have an offensive coordinator, Matt. So you're going to have to alter your pre-show tweets now. You know, you can talk about Nick Cayley and then whoever, you can talk about Nick Cayley and Anthony Iopausee, who is going to be the Astros offense. Actually, no, Dan Hinnigan is the Astros offensive coordinator.

He's a guy that's, he's a biomechanics guy. He's a new age kind of coach. He's been in the organization for a year. He's going to be in charge of like game planning and advanced scouting and kind of the data side of things. Victor Rodriguez is the number one hitting guy. he is the lead hitting coach, and Anthony Iopossi will work alongside him. So one thing Dana said yesterday is they wanted to have defined roles for these guys. They wanted to have a clear hierarchy of responsibilities, of duties, of things these guys do.

That's something that with Troy Snickr and Alex Centron, they didn't really have. They just kind of shared the hitting coach title and kind of divided their responsibilities pretty evenly. Let me ask you this, because I've been telling the audience this, and if I'm wrong, please correct me. Was it harder to get really good guys because of the lame duck status of both Dana and Joe? I mean, it's certainly not nothing. But, you know, you do look at the two guys that they hired. You know, Victor Rodriguez, Mike Schilt retired with the Padres, so he needed a job. Anthony Iopausee was not returning to A.J. Hinch's coaching staff in Detroit, so again, needed a job.

You know, look, they talked to a lot of different guys. He talks to a lot of, you know, current hitting coaches elsewhere. They talk to guys out of the game, you know. I don't know that the lame duck status had much to do with it. I just, you know, my feeling, Matt, is, you know, the players are the ones swinging the bat. The players are the ones playing the game. Like, you could tell me that they hired any hitting coach, Joe Smith, John Smith, whoever. Like, it's up to the players to go out there and perform.

Now, can the messaging and the philosophy and kind of what they're putting in their ears and their eyes could that improve or could that be streamlined? Sure. But at the end of the day, this is a player's game. I read your tweets nonstop from Las Vegas. I was, I don't want to say blown away, but I was more than just normally surprised about the health of some really important people, namely, Yordon Alvarez and Isok Paredes. Issaac did everything he could to come back and at least pinch hit and DH for this team. But when you said he may not be ready for the start of spring training, is there any second guessing of maybe he should have just gone ahead and had the surgery, so maybe he would have been ready for the start of next season? Well, no, if Matt, if he had the surgery, they were looking at a six-month recovery for that surgery.

So he would have definitely not been ready for the start of the season had he had the surgery. You know, I think part of it, too, is just, you know, these guys don't, the minute the offseason end, these guys kind of rest a little bit. So a lot of this may just be these guys have rested, you know, when the season did end. And now they're just kind of ramping up activity. And so with Jordan Alvarez jogging 65, 70%, that's just his gradual ramp up. You know, Paredes was always going to probably be a little bit behind going in the spring training. I don't think they're concerned that he won't be ready for the season. But, yeah, you could see him maybe a week or so behind people when they get to camp.

But that was to be expected. And I think it's even more admirable now in hindsight that he came back and gave them what he could that last two weeks from the season. General Athletic Astros beat reporter with us from Las Vegas at the general manager meeting. So for the audience, it doesn't know. give the essence of a general manager's meetings as compared to the winter meetings which will be coming up so it's kind of the same thing

but it's a little bit on a smaller stage at the GM meetings you know but the winter meetings the managers go the clubhouse attendants go the traveling secretaries go everyone in baseball goes to the winter meetings the GM meetings is a little bit more low key the GMs are there obviously all the agents

are there and it's just a little bit more of like a foundation laying thing. This is where you go and teams will meet with all the agencies there and they'll start say, oh, okay, well, this free agent's looking for this year's and this kind of money. They'll meet with other teams like, oh, this guy's available in trades. So they'll kind of lay the foundation here and then over the next month keep working toward it. And then, you know, the winter meetings is where you see transactions happen. But yeah, it's a lot of standing around, a lot of networking, a lot of late nights, some watering holes, because everything, everything, everything,

happens around the bar. So, yeah, just it's kind of the kickoff of the off season, if you will. Cam Smith finishes 12th in the rookie of the year on the American League side of things. And then your quotes and your story today is about the fact that he may not be guaranteed a roster spot heading into spring training. Those are not words that you put in the day in his mouth, but I'm curious the context behind it. Yeah, that was probably to me the most newsworthy, kind of revelatory thing he said yesterday. You know, it certainly wasn't a situation where Dana was being negative or down on Cam Smith, but, you know, he said, look, this is a production game and he's got to produce

and we've got to be open mind. This was Dana's quote. He said we have to be open-minded to the thought that if he doesn't produce and he doesn't have the adjustments that we need to make this off season, that we could send him to AAA. And that, you know, you watched him last year toward the end. If that team wasn't as injured as it was, and if that team didn't. have a lack of options behind him, I think Cam Smith would have probably been in the minor leagues, you know, toward the end of last year, because he really fell off in the second

half. It was a snowball effect of a lot of things. What fascinates me, though, is like, if he is not penciled in as the everyday right fielder, and if he's not going to spring training with a guaranteed roster spot, like, you know, they can't just, they've got to have some insurance behind him. Does that mean they're in the outfield market? Does that mean that they maybe, you know, a trend toward keeping Jesus instead of, you know, maybe trading him or non-tendering him because they need that some insurance behind Cam Smith. Does this mean Zach Cole is a bigger piece of the puzzle?

This means maybe they're reticent to trade Jake Myers, who they're getting a lot of calls on because his value's never been higher. It opens up a lot of questions as to kind of how they're going to proceed this offseason. Listen to Dana yesterday. It sounded like they have some work to do in their outfield. His exact words when they need to firm up the outfield. I'll be interested to see kind of how CAMs status, how that kind of affects what they do on the open market.

A couple more minutes here with Chandler. We're surprised that Christian Walker was poo-poohed by Dana about being a trade target. I would read that quote a little more carefully. Nowhere did he say I'm not trading Christian Walker. All he said was we haven't talked about Christian Walker and trades. and Christian Walker's our everyday first basement. Those of those things can be true on November 11th. I still think they're going to have to find a way to solve this infield logjam.

I personally, barring an injury, I personally can't see how they carry both Paredes and Walker and get them every day at Bats. And for the money you're paying these guys, $20 million to Christian Walker and about $10 million to Esot Paratus, those are guys that need to be in the lineup every day. And, you know, Dana was a little more forceful and a little more assertive that they don't want to trade Esauk Paredes. His quotes on that were very, a little more illuminating and a little more, you can tell they had some weight and some heft behind them. I think the Christian Walker one, I think, quite frankly, it was a non-denial denial. It was on November 11th, yes, maybe they haven't discussed Christian Walker in trade.

And maybe he is, and he certainly, as of today, is there everyday first base? but that certainly could change yeah I saw that too and I'm like wait a minute that doesn't I don't care who you want to get rid of you you start pretty should be the first baseman this team next year I mean I don't know any other way to say it and again the only reason why you would not pencil him in today obviously is how his hamstring is but that's something for down the road okay look Dylan Seas was on their radar for the asteros of the trade deadline it did not happen but you know wrapping this up Chandler when Jim Crane's got somebody on the mind on the

brain he goes after guys I e. Josh hater, i.e. Justin Verlander. How serious do you think at the end of the day? It doesn't mean they're going to grab him, but how intense do you think Dylan Sees' conversations will be with the U.S. and Astros? I think they'll check in. I mean, certainly, if they had interest in them at the trade deadline,

then obviously, you know, they haven't lost interest in the two months since. I find it hard to believe that they'll get to the years and the money that Scott Boris will want for Dylan Seas, especially, you know, this is an organization under Jim Crane that the most they've ever guaranteed to a pitcher in

agency is $95 million. And that was the Josh Tader, who pitches one inning. You know, the most they've ever guaranteed a starting pitcher in Crane's ownership tenure is $85 million to Lance McCullors. It's going to take more than that. It's going to take years. It's going to take money. And I'm here to tell you they don't want to go over the luxury tax.

At least not right now. They don't want to go over the luxury tax this winter. So that's another reason why they probably going to have to trade some of these guys just to get some payroll flexibility to get some arms in here. I think there certainly will show interest in Dillon. East, I don't see them going to the lengths that Scott Boris will want for him. I think you mentioned Justin Berlander. I think Justin Berlander is a more realistic target.

And I think maybe someone kind of in that middle kind of a two or a three type starter is probably more what they'd be looking for maybe other than Delancey's East. All right, that again, Chandler Rome, joining us earlier today from Las Vegas. The next thing will be the winter meetings, whereas Chandler brought up a little while ago, it's everybody from organizational wise meet up and that would include owners general managers managers scouts and that's when the real conversations get going curious to see when the jv deal might strike if it is a case if delin cease is really on the radar and really whether or not christian walker will remain an astro for two thousand twenty six all right you want to get your thoughts

in on that you may do so at seven one three two one two five seven ninety seven one three two two 5790. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'd greatly appreciate that. At SportsMT. And, of course, our station address is at Sports Talk 790. And a reminder coming up in 20 minutes, it's going to be, believe it or not, all things about Rob Grankowski, who retired today officially as a member of the New England Patriots. 7131, 212-579, 131, here on the Matt Thomas Show with Ross, right here on Sports Talk, 790. 135 on Sports Talk 790. It's really been a weird year.

Weird month for me because there are two people that I've had professional dealings with have made some pretty decent news headlines here. We talked about this a few weeks ago when Damon Jones, a former University of Houston Cougar, a longtime NBA player, part-time coach. As a matter of fact, he did U of H games with me on the radio about 14 or 15 years ago before he went back to coach with LeBron. You know, he got in trouble for being a part of those fake poker games

that were rigged up that Chauncey Billups involved with. And also there were some allegations of point shaving and giving out information about LeBron James Health to betters. So that guy got into some serious hot water. And then now, Mack Rhodes, who is the athletic director at the University of Houston, went to Missouri. Now he's been at Baylor for quite some time. He's taking a leave of absence. He is removing himself from the college football playoff committee.

And now, again, rumors are coming out about exactly what's going on with him, and nobody's been able to confirm anything. And that's good. I mean, you don't need erroneous information out there. but apparently there was an allegation of you know impropriety or whatever on November the 10th it does not involve student welfare and NCAA rules under the title 9 does not involve the football program so apparently this is coming from Adam Rittenberg of ESPN this is a separate incident from the previous reported Michael Trigg incident Michael Trigg was a I believe it's a

hide in for Baylor. He was wearing a different colored shirt than the rest of his teammates. Mack wrote Solomon on the sideline and voiced his displeasure to it. And when they ever said a few weeks ago was that was internally handled. Yeah, I don't know what it is.

Foolish to speculate, so we won't. But whatever it is, it's pretty serious. I mean, Mack has been a college administrator at, you know, multiple Division I places. You know, helped with the financing through the Dray McLean Foundation, the building of a new facility for football, a new facility for basketball. I do have some Baylor friends that like to whisper things to me,

and they are not happy with Dave Miranda at Baylor, obviously. There's been disappointment there. They are not happy that Kim Mulkey got cash whipped to go to LSU as compared to staying at Baylor, where she was building a powerhouse program on the basketball side. So I don't know if the internal pressures of running an athletic department had better got to him. Again, personal demons, who knows? But Mack's always been very good to me.

As I said before, and I would be worth, I would say this public land I did earlier today. Mack had a little bit of a reputation for having a little bit of a quick fuse. And it's not privately. It's been seen publicly. If you've gone to games over the years, he has never been afraid to show. his displeasure towards officials and while that's healthy in some regards, if you're an athletic director at a

high-end university, for that matter, athletic director at any position, it's probably something you shouldn't do. And if you're going to be mad at officials, you go in your suite at your stadium or your arena and you shut the door and you yell at somebody, but you don't do it on the court where people can see you publicly do it. Again,

whether that has anything to do with it, I don't know. But, um, so Mac gets this opportunity to be a high-end D-1, athletic director and he gets to be intimately involved in determining who gets to play whom in the upcoming college football playoff so I don't know what his future entails whether I mean he's off the committee for sure and the committee is going to be done in a few weeks anyway we'll have well you know they're only down a handful of weeks left ago in the college

season but bigger picture is what's going to happen to his future as athletic director because he was a hot name for a long period time when soon as he got to U of H I mean I can tell you this, gang. UH, that's a tough job. The University of Houston is an incredibly difficult job. I think Eddie Nunez is starting to feel it right now. Certainly his predecessors felt it. It's tough.

It's tough to fundraise. It's tough to get people in the building. It's tough to compete in a town with so many pro teams that if you show any assemblance of success, and you make the right hire. made the hire for Calvin Sampson. That was his get. And I want to say Mac hired Tom Herman, too, if I'm not mistaken, too.

So you're only going to be known, frankly, as good as your hires are. That's what I think 90% of the jobs are in college administration is you hire good coaches. You're set. Now, in 2025, it's a little bit different. is obviously still trying to balance Title IX. Obviously, it's still trying to hire the right coaches. But the reality is, if you don't bring money to the table to pay these athletes now, you're out. I don't think that's the case of why Mac would step aside for personal reasons.

Because if you don't believe that schools are going in a good direction when it comes to its fundraising, then you can just flat out say that. You don't have to hide that. This is Max decision, not Baylor's decision, although I'm sure Baylor said, you know what, maybe you take some time away. But the athletic director role, it was always a tough job in my mind.

I think it's even more difficult now because not only you try to fundraise to fill your stadium up and to have really cool facilities, but you're not also trying to put together a bank role so you can pay your athletes. And that's not just football. That's basketball.

That's, you know, trying to get some money for the females, the women's sports some jobs are easy texas balear i mean uh ohio state uh alabama georgia i mean all the powerhouses i thought for a short time of my life i wanted to be an athletic director kind of run an apartment but i want no part of it and i'm not trying to to say that the the the pressures of being an ad got to mac i'm just talking about in general that mac had a little bit of success hire the right coaches and he left to go to Missouri where he was there for a year and he was like man this place is a tough place to win

we're in the middle of the SEC where we're not going to be able to compete with the Alabama's and Auburns and LSUs and Florida's and so he went to banner and was able to carve out a nice little career there got the stadium built and at the time orangna was a good hire had some success but you know they've kind of fallen to the middle of the pack in the Big 12 conference

I'm telling you every time I see an AD on a new contract they get, they're usually worth the money the schools are spending on them because those schools are giving very little grace period. Not that many of you care, but it's interesting I saw that today

there was a woman that was the athletic director in Washington State. You know, up in Pullman, Washington, I mean, a really tough place. Not a grand alumni base. The big state school is Washington. That's in the big city.

Huge stadium, huge TV deal, mega conference. Washington State, Not in a major conference. It's going to be part of the new Big Pac-12 next year, which is going to be based on the Mountain West. She got let go after being on the job less than two years. She had worked at Washington State for like 20 years.

Finally gets her one chance with the AD, and they let her go less than two years into the job. ADs not only have to massage coaches, they got to massage the egos of alums, they got to massage the egos of their high-priced coaches, and oh, by the way, you've got to start finding ways to get money to these kids, hands or they're going to leave.

And that's why ADs now, like football coaches, when they have some success, they go to the bigger spots. And if they go to the bigger spots, they don't produce right away, they're normally out of work. Let's play, believe it or not. It is 144 on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. If you want to play, it's all things about Rob Grancowski.

Grankowski, 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-79. We're playing for Jack Johnson tickets. All right, wrapping up a Thursday edition of the program tomorrow. Jonathan, we usually give a half hour to them, I'm sorry. I feel like I owe like an hour with an apologies to people for a variety of things. You do, yeah. No, no, don't back that up.

I'm saying, no, man, you've been good. You're not supposed to do that. I'm supposed to have my side on that. It's terrible. I got apologize to all those LSU fans I got mad for saying that they're going to have to pay out the contract to Brian Kelly. How do my view? I don't, I've not checked my view count, only. How am I doing on my view count?

two million now you definitely have two oh two million let me check right now oh lordy you're gonna keep blowing up though this is gonna keep going I gotta monetize I'm gonna have to I'm I've decided today I haven't told my wife this yet I'm gonna pay $112 to get my uh the blue check mark

because hell I can get that back if I just do a couple of crazy ass tweets at LHU fan getting all mad at me and legal people out there I mean you're not wrong yeah you're at your style two million I don't know I can't see the actual like yeah but that's right I can't see

either but it usually says two minutes all right well good two million two million views or are they called impressions or views uh i guess impression of views because i don't think two million people saw it i think two million people may have scrolled by it but they didn't two million people didn't necessarily times this post was seen this is like what it says oh god that's so good i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna this will actually help me and so ross won't give me crap up with this this will actually help me pay for hibachi you think about it so thank you Thank you, X platform. Five minutes left to go on the show.

What should we do? We should play America's fastest-growing sports radio game show. We simply call it B, 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 it or Not is all things about Rob Grancowski. Grancowski.

I always get his name butch but it's Gronk. I'll read your statement about Gronk. Statements completely utterly accurate. You'll win this. You'll say this, I should say. If the statement's erroneous,

full of bunk it made up, you will say this. Not. Two, believe it or not, it's in a row on all things about Gronk will get you a prize. That prize will be tickets to see Jack Johnson Live

on the Surfilmic, Sir Phil Music 2026 tour. By the way, if you're going to name a tour, make it easier to say than Sir Phil Music, Sir Phil Music, August 28th, Woodlands Pavilion.

Tickets go on sale this Friday, 10 o'clock, at Ticketmaster.com. Let's play, believe it or not. Blaine on 790, Blaine, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Blaine, Gronk is a New York Times best-selling author for his memoir titled It's Good to Be Gronk. Believe it or not? Not. Believe it.

I can't make up the name for it. Bill, what is your favorite gronk moment as a lot? a Patriot. Oh, when Bill Better Chick, uh, cooked up with a girl. Gronk shot of pilot episode for a reboot of the TV series Saved by the Bell. He played the role

of Principal Belding. Believe it or not. Hey, man, I believe it. No, I mean, I did a... Oh, I love that. I love when he loses. Kelly on 790, Kelly, what was your

favorite part of today's 10-2 radio show? all of it along with randy orton gronk once helped the wwee tag team titles for 55 days in 2022 believe it or not believe it

no he was a 24-7 champion for a tag team champion duh Brandon on 790 brand you ready to play believe it or not believe it Brandon good luck to you Rob played his college football

at Arizona where he was a pre-business major. Believe it or not? Not. That's a believe it. Believe it. Jonathan. Four answers. In a row. In a row. That's what we call a mini skunk. We've got ten questions today, though. I've got to get all ten. We're going to get all-timer. We're going to get it. We're going to get me a no-hitter here. Paul on 790. Paul, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Paul, Gronk was the first tight-end in NFL history to lead the league in receiving touchdowns. Believe it or not? Believe it. Believe it. That's right.

Statement number two for the win. An erotic novel inspired by gronk called A Gronking to Remember was published in December of 2014. A gronking to remember. Believe it or not? Not. That's a belief it. I couldn't make him a title of that book. Jonathan, do you read erotic novels? No. All right.

Colin on 7.90, you ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. Colin, in 2024, Gronk was asked to run as a city councilman in his town of Foxborough, Massachusetts. But he politely said no. Believe it or not. Not. Yeah, he never went to his run for office. Statement number two for the win.

A horse named Gronkowski ran in the 2018 Belmont Stakes. It finished second. Believe it or not? Believe it That's it Congratulations Finally The end is near

Let's talk to Bradley On 790 Bradley What was your favorite part Today's send the two radio show All of it, Mike My name is Matt, thanks Gronk is like

Yeah, that's fine Gronk is like me He hates guacamole Believe it or not Believe it No, he loves it And my name is Matt Ron on 790, ready to play, believe it or not?

Believe it. Gronk has two dogs, Brady and Belly, named after Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Believe it or not? Believe it. No, he's got one dog, his name is Ralphie. Imagine he named his dog's that? Jonathan, I give myself an A for today's questions. Oh, this is good, actually.

Doing the show by myself and writing those questions? Oh, my God. I'm going to give myself a pat on the back. I'm going to put a buck eye on my helmet like they do in Ohio State. Up next, two guys that always deserve those applause and rewards. It's Adam Wexler. It's Adam Klan. They are the team. I'll talk to you tomorrow for an anything goes Friday.

Tomorrow at 10 on 7-9. Woo!