The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Texans Hosting Ravens On Christmas, Add WR To Roster, Rockets DOMINATE Hornets

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Matt Thomas and Ross Villarreal of "The Matt Thomas Show with Ross" preview the Houston Texans hosting the Baltimore Ravens for a Christmas Day matchup broadcasting on Netflix. Cordell Woodland of 105.7 The Fan joins to provide key insights for the game and discuss the Texans claiming former Ravens wide receiver Diontae Johnson off waivers. Matt and Ross also:react to the Rockets dominating the Charlotte Hornets in a 114-101 winreview Christian Walker's first comments as a member of the Astrosgive their latest "Gut Feelings"recap Week 16 in "Ross' NFL Rewind" and more.

Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas Show. 102 in H-Town. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to a Tuesday edition of the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. Rebound has picked up left with the free-fell line of Van Vleek. Cross court left side to Jalen Green. Lamp attempt is up and in, and there's 5,000 NBA points,

and then some for Jalen Green as a Rockets have a 4-0 advantage. Jalen, a couple steps beyond mid-court. Met there by Salon. Shocked lock at seven. Screen set by Jayshan. Jalen goes three point line right with three, with two. Got to put something up. Here comes the side pocket for Van Bleep.

Three-pointer as a buzzer goes off. And it makes it 62 to 31. My goodness. Underhand flip over to Fred Van Bleet, met there by ball, lobs it to his left for Shangoon, gathers it back out to Fred. Euro steps his way. Now hands it off, up and under layup.

for the left hand as sweet off the glass for two more points for fred van fleet and a rebound of stephen out left side here comes a man thompson thompson down the car the lane euro steps is weighing and jams it down good gracious what a hammer that time as he went over de quond jeffreys for the deuce ten seconds left to go in the contest cam whitmore brings it across the timeline two pre-christmas road games before a little break and ladies and gentlemen two straight. Road wins. Final score, Houston 114 and Charlotte 101. In a game that frankly, would never be as close as the score would indicate. I was having to go to fill our material so much that I brought up Rossville Real on my Rockets Radio Network broadcast. Things were going

quite slow, I imagine. Or I could tell, actually. I could hear. The Hornets suck. I mean, how the hell do the Rockets losing them on opening night? That's all I could think about during the game last night. I mean, there is a lot of good about the NBA, but that wasn't what I saw. And I didn't see it in the night before in Toronto. God, bless it. Thank God the Rockets won those games. That have been terrible, terrible

losses. Happy Christmas Eve, Sports Harvey. How the hell are you? I'm doing great, Matthew. How are things and wherever you are in the world? I'm in the Kingwood Studios. Oh, okay. I'm damn-ass tired. But other than that good, what time did you guys get back from New Orleans last night?

I'm around 8.8.30. It's not bad. Nothing too bad. This is going to shock you, Matt. Ran into some traffic on I-10 on the way back. Can I guess where? Yes, you can. Can I say in Lafayette?

Lafayette is exactly correct, actually. Yeah. It's a bad spot. Lafayette. I mean, you can hit Baton Rouge, Lafayette. There'll be the random Lake Charles construction. It's just everywhere. It's everywhere.

I tend sucks. I think Lafayette is almost a guarantee that you're going to run into some issues for some reason. Literally had to go and take a double. detour off-roading. You know how Waze does, Matt? They send you like six miles off the main road. Right. Which, same thing for an 18-wheeler in front of us.

It's a two-lane road on a sharp curve. He tries to take it, can't make it, and stops everybody behind us. And then he had to back all the way up. He's honking at us to back up. Oh, my God. Now, who did you have in the car and who was the most calm of the situation? And who was the one that was like dropping? Freaking out?

Yeah. dropping F-bombs and whatnot? I think everybody was pretty calm. It was my, it was family and then my lady, so we were all together. Okay. Yeah, so, yeah, I would not have been in a good spot. First of all, I don't like driving to the office, much less driving in through Lafayette. But, you know, at least you stopped off and got some cracklins and dropped Gris Gordy's name and got you like a buy-one free Gilwere.

No, we didn't get any, no boo-d-in and no cracklins. Yikes. All right. So, New Orleans treated you all? How was the, isn't the World War II museum awesome? Oh my gosh. Yeah. It is incredible.

It's extremely modern. It's very informative. There's six, have you been or heard of it? I have. I've been to the museum about five or six years ago. I'm not a big museum person, big history person, but as you know, my middle son, Peyton is. Yes. And we had a fantastic time.

Yeah, there's six buildings. I literally only saw three of them in five hours. So I need to go back. Yeah, it's good. It's a good thing. It's a hidden gem of the New Orleans area. Oh, well? I mean, everybody that, they have billboards all over the place.

I think it's getting pumped up. I don't know. And then you went and took some sports bets of ours, and we didn't last, what, 20 minutes with any of them, I don't think? Yes. Now that we're on air and the parley lost anyways, I can make a confession. I accidentally clicked the wrong button on one of our poor parley bets, but we would have lost anyways.

Yeah. I meant to take Penn State over SMU, but we would have lost anyways by a half point on Clemson. Well, the reality is this, and we've talked about this, before for those that like to bet um if you're betting parley's you're just asking to get your ass kicked right i mean that is correct the big ones especially it just but it seems kind of think about this when you are sitting with your buddies you're talking about three or four games don't you feel like you get them right when you're just talking with your buddies oh yeah i had the steelers uh beating the ravens oh yeah i had

uh the chiefs beating the texans well that's a parley right yes so why don't why do we talk about parley's and win them, and we put some money on them, and we went up losing them every single time when we go to a variety of different casinos. Well, because how come when you just caught the fish, it's a 10-pound red fish, but then five years later, it's 15, and then against the 20 pounds.

You always remember things better than they were, Matt. Like back in the day when I was married, oh, yeah, I was hanging out with an eight and a half, nine, and I went back with some photos, and she was a two. Exactly. That's not a great analogy, but it works for a Christmas seat. Nostalgia, yeah. Yeah. I'm a little sleep deprived, so look, it's going to be an anything goes Tuesday on the Matt Thomas show with Ross.

We're very happy to have you with us today. We're going to check in in Baltimore coming up at the bottom of the hour. We'll have it for you. We also have the news that new. We got Ross's NFL rewind from yesterday. I missed nothing between the Saints and the Packers last night. The first shoutout of the season. Good gracious. How bad were the – how bad of the Saints? They suck. They're very bad. I mean, God, how embarrassing are they? Geez. 34 to 0. Do you want that team?

What about that team inspires you? Like, oh, this will be fixed overnight. The division's winnable? Everybody's hurt. Get everybody back? I mean, no Alvin Camara. Get some Hill, no David car. Wait, Derek, which car do they have?

It's a Derek. Yeah, whatever. One of the cars. I believe it's Groucho car. Whoever it is, he's not good. Yeah, it's not good. All right, we are with you today until 2 o'clock. We're working.

The A team is off after this. What? Yeah. Yeah. What? Yep. Are you serious? I wouldn't lie to you.

I mean, I would, but not in this case. Whoa. What are those lazy bums doing? Yeah. That's basically they've been their life the last, I don't know, nine years on this radio station. Okay. They're also not working New Year's Eve either.

What? No, I knew that one. Yeah. That's because, what do we have? We have an LSU bowl game. Okay. Something called the Texas

bowl. Yeah. Chris Cordy will tell us all about it. Is he here today? Is he in the office today? He is actually. Oh, okay. He's a,

I've seen three people, I think. Any of them's salespeople? No, Matt. They're home to their families. No, they're out on calls right now. That's true. They're out on calls for the Matt Thomas show. I got you. All right.

713, 2, 112. 790. Real quick, Ross, the Rockets wake up today with the second best record in the Western Conference. Your thoughts? That sounds amazing. That sounds great. It keeps going and going and going. I don't want to get my hopes up and get too excited, but things still looking pretty good. And now they used to be like three and a half games out of the playoffs. Now they're comfortable five and a half games into the playoffs. Cushing, I mean. Yeah, I mean, there are going to be some tough games coming up. It won't be one on Thursday because they play in New Orleans. and the only thing they'll be hurting them would be perhaps the New Orleans flu that some teams get, but the pelicans are god-awful.

It'll have a tough back-to-back. They'll play Minnesota the next night. But they had two terrible teams on the road, and they beat two terrible teams. I mean, 62 to 31 at halftime was pretty damn impressive. Yeah, that's good. That's what good teams do. Good teams don't squeak them out or lose to the hornets like they did in opening night. Good teams go and take the trash out and take care of business, so that's great to see.

All right. The Texans have a game tomorrow. And I was mentioning this yesterday, because we look, the Texans played Saturday. We didn't do a show on Sunday. It is really odd. Here we are on a Rando Tuesday. That's like the dog day of an NFL talking week. And tomorrow at 3.30, the Texans are playing a football game.

Yes. It feels like they just got done playing. And they're, Rossi, they're battered and bruised. Yes, they are. and Baltimore wants to win the NFC North. Yes, they do. Excuse me, AFC North. Oh, yeah.

So they can't afford to just have a layup drill. I mean, they can't afford to say, oh, well, it's going to compete. Battle Red, this may be a tough year for you, my man. Yeah, you might be looking good. If they lose this game and then they have nothing to play for in the last game, Mr. Thomas' under nine and a half might be looking good. I mean, I wasn't thinking it was going to turn out that way, but I did not anticipate them winning either one of these.

two games so at least i got that going for me 1013 if you are out and about today if you are shopping first of all the question would be why uh secondly if we don't hear from you normally because you're a teacher or you are uh an established lawyer in the community or you just don't have a chance to call the show we welcome you today on the program at 713 212 5 790 719 if you want to join us via twitter you may do that as well it's at sports mt at sports rv and at Connor D. McGovern. Cordo Woodland from 105-7

The Fan. Isn't there a sports station? There's always a fan somewhere. Is there a fan in Houston? Do we have one? No. Not yet. Should we call ourselves 790 the fan? No. That's too cliche. I like what they went with. Sports Talk 790. Once the animal died.

Ooh, that was a bad one, too. Well, sports animal. You're a sports animal. We're not a WF&M. We're a sports animal. We growl at you all day long. Is that what they pay to come on the show? They say, hi, I'm this and this, and we're going to growl your way through four hours of sports talk. I think that's exactly the way it was.

It's a Cordell Woodland 1057. The fan joins us on the show today. We have the rewind. We've got the news at noon, and we have a final pre-Christmas edition of, believe it or not. And Rossi, I won a Fantasy 5 against Dan yesterday. Oh, I want the lists. I don't want it without the names on it. Okay.

I'll give it to you and come back. Time is 1014. 713, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 5. 7.90 if you want to come in and say Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy Hanukkah for those you that celebrate that. 713-212-5-790. Matt Thomas, Ross Villariel. It's the Matt Thomas show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. All right, so yesterday the Fantasy 5 was this. Group A, Ross, was I'll be home for Christmas. Frosty the Snowman, the most wonderful time of the year. Run Run, Run, Rudolph, and this Christmas.

group B little drummer boy winter wonderland jingle bell rock silent night and Rudolph the red nose reindeer no specific versions by any person or just in general in general oh hmm okay uh my initial lien was b can you say those one more time yes i can uh a is i'll be home for christmas frosty the snowman most wonderful time of the year run run rudolph in this christmas b is little drummer boy winter wonderland jingle bell rock silent night and off the red nose reindeer. Neither of you had a Christmas song? They were all Christmas songs. A Christmas song is what it's called.

Oh no, I don't know. Chestnuts roasting on open fire. You know that one. Oh, yeah, that's right. I'll go B. Jack Frost, nipping at your nose? Yeah, of course. Tiny tots. Anyways. I'll go with list B, which I think is you. That is right. Yeah. Little Dumber Boy should have been the

answer on that one. That's fine. I mean, I know you love Little Dumber Boy, but top to bottom, your list is stronger. Thank you very much. All right. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-2-7-9-0. Yesterday, C.J. Stroud spoke to the media.

We carried the presser here on Sports Talks, where he says, look, with Tank Dell out, Stefan Diggs has been out. Other receivers have got to step up. Yeah, I think I've seen it. You know, y'all seen it time and time again. Mets showing up, Huts showing up. You know, Jay Wayne, you know, going in there blocking and doing this thing.

and, you know, I think those guys, you know, have another opportunity to show who they are. And, you know, I know that they can do it. I see them in practice do it every week. So I'm excited for them and it's a good opportunity for them to step up. Yeah, the Texans aren't nearly as excited. They went and got Deontay Johnson off of waivers yesterday, who's a former Baltimore Raven who basically has underperformed with the Ravens after being traded from Carolina. He got suspended for a game.

And then I think it had another game where personal reasons. I mean, let's face it. Sounds like it's going to work out. I mean, it's week 16 of the NFL season. What the hell are you going to go grab at this point? You are bargain bin hunting if you're Nick Casario right now, and you can take what you get, and you could do worse than Deontay Johnson. I mean, the talent is there.

He's a former pro bowler. I mean, he's had a thousand-yard season, so it's not like he's never had tasted any success in the NFL. He's 28 years old. It's not like he's super old either. So for what you can take in week 16, as you said, are week 17 coming up, you take what you can get, and it's not the worst thing in the world. Do you think at the end of the day, now again, forgetting about the money, okay? Don't think about the money that Netflix is paying the NFL.

Do you think there's going to be a huge backlash against these Christmas Day games? Are we going to sit back and go, man, we bitched and moan about them and the players complain about it. But at the end of the day, it was great. It was having two football games on Sunday. Or is there a little part of me that says these games are going to suck. It's short week for three games and 11 days for all these teams that are playing. this is just, I mean, I know greed is wonderful, but my goodness, I mean, how about giving these guys an extra day off? It's a bridge too far. I don't think they should do it, but also I'm going to watch. So I'm a hypocrite.

So what can I tell you? We said the same thing. I remember it used to be like a special week of Thursday night football? Then it was every week and we're like, this is not right. The players. And then I'm sitting there watching Amazon Prime hanging out with Al Michaels. Yeah, 80-year-old Al Michaels, by the way. Yes, who is normally falling asleep by the third quarter. Well, he's now on a year-to-year contract with Amazon's. He'll be back next season. Yeah, I look, of course we're going to be watching. What else we're going to be doing? I mean, the NBA, frankly, you know, hasn't had a lot of steam so far this year.

The television ratings have not been good. We've talked about that a lot last week when you were gone. But the reality is if the NFL is on, it could be on. Ross, if we did a special 1 a.m. edition of the NFL, we'd figure out a way to watch. I probably would. Especially it was good teams, you know. Yeah. Now, I'll say this year, the London games have been typically lousy,

so I haven't paid attention to that. But that's because logically they're involving the Jacksonville Jaguars. Yeah, they got to stop with the Jaguar stuff, where the Jaguars got to get better, one or the other. Oh, yeah, I don't anticipate that happening at all. So, all right, we're going to check it in Baltimore coming up in just a couple of minutes. What else is going on? We have a lot of infighting between ESPN colleagues.

first and foremost, we had Kirk Herb Street rip on the first tank gang a couple days ago for the fact that they thought that Ryan Day should be fired if Ohio State was getting let go. And you have other people at the other network at the same network complaining about the fact that Kirk Herbster is complaining about how bad the games were in the first round. And now you've got everybody who has ever been a college football pundant complaining about the fact that SMU was not competitive against Penn State. You've got people complaining that Indiana wasn't competitive with Notre Dame. I don't know what you take.

What about Tennessee? Is everybody complaining about Tennessee? Oh, yeah, they're doing the same thing on that, but not to the level because that's SEC. You never want to take a shot at SEC. SEC bias. Oh, yeah, for sure. The reality is

if everybody thought those four first round games were going to give us four one-score games, that's probably silly. Would it have been nice, Rossi, if one of them would have been really great? Yeah. But we're going to long forget about this.

This 12th team thing, was asked and people were clamoring for it for the longest time. It puts a lot of extra money in the college football playoff pool for all the schools. I wish there were better games, but this wasn't the time to go, well, SMU, if Alabama was in there, it would have been a better football game. There's no guarantee of that. If South Carolina was in it or BYU, we don't know. The reality is we're down to the best eight teams in college football.

I think we're going to be okay. Yeah, I think a lot of the whining is about, you know, putting the best teams, but at some point I understand that, but the resume has to matter. And that's why Alabama, it's very simple. Don't lose to Vanderbilt

who wouldn't have been bowl eligible if they didn't beat you. And don't lose to oh you who would not have been bowl eligible if they did not beat you. So I feel like Kirk Herb Street argument is we want the 12 best teams, teams, teams, teams. Well, yeah, at some point that's just up in the air and that's just a

hypothetical. And that doesn't matter. We have to go with what we saw on the field. And what we saw in the field is, while Indiana may not have been deserving, they only lost one game. So I see a team that lost three games in Alabama, including against those two bad teams like we mentioned. And then the same thing with Ole Miss. Ole Miss is in like, don't lose to Florida. The craziest argument from Kirk, and I talked about this with Dan yesterday, was Kirk is like, you've got to value the wins more. Take the nine wins that Alabama got as compared to the 11 wins that Indiana got. and who had the better wins.

And it was almost like, he wasn't like he was saying totally discount the losses, but he was like put more credence in the victories and who you played as compared to just having the sheer number of victories. Yeah, but losses, the losses matter too, though. Well, I mean, in his world, it didn't mean as much. But I'm telling you, with Alabama losing to a very pedestrian Oklahoma team, not only losing the game, but getting blown out, the committee said, you know what, sorry. We're not putting you in.

I don't care what conference you're in. you played a second-tier SEC squad who was barely above 500 and you got your ass kicked. It meant something. Right. So, you know, again, it's a very subjective situation. That's why in a lot of regards, it's really nice at the NFL, there's no subjectivity. Either you win your division or you grab a wild card spot. Same thing in basketball, same thing in baseball.

Anything that's involving a committee or a group of adults determining where people go and what they do and who gets in and gets out, is going to have this argument every single year no matter what teams you put in. Let's go to Baltimore next. 1027, it is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We check in on the Ravens, as they'll be in town tomorrow to take on the Texans. We'll discuss that from a Baltimore perspective next

here on Sports Talk 790. A little disappointing that she's performing at a halftime show that you can't watch. Nah, because I'm going to go out there and watch. I'm going to go out and watch, man. My first time seeing Beyonce perform. at our game that's dope. I'm going to go out and watch. Sorry, how all.

Sorry. Sorry, fellas. You guys have it? No, man, I'm not even thinking about the lead. I was just thinking about just seeing Beyonce for the first time. Not saying it like that, no disrespect, no. I know how people can take things. Pause.

At least, Lamar Jackson is honest. He's like, you know what? I don't need to hear about the halftime adjustments. I got to see Beyonce. 1034. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. we say hello to a second time visitor of the show. Cordell Woodland

covers the Ravens and Orioles for 105.7, the fan. Please tell me Cordell, the city of Baltimore is not losing their mind over the fact that Lamar wants to see Beyonce at halftime. Oh, no. Not, to my knowledge, they aren't. And, you know, I don't think that they should be.

Look, Lamar is just like all of us. You know, who can help themselves when Beyonce is in the building. So, The funny part is, though, about five minutes before Lamar said that John Harbaugh had brought up, I think, Evan McPherson in the Super Bowl going out to watch the halftime show. And the Bengals had an issue with that, and John was jokingly saying that if any of his guys did it, they'd be in trouble. I don't think he expected Lamar to be the guy to say it. So I think it was all in fun at the end of the day, but it just shows Lamar's one of us.

The reality is, Cordell, this is the secret ingredient for the Texans to win this game. tomorrow is the Beyonce factor. The Las Vegas line has already moved four points since finding out. Lamar is not going to hang out at a half time with his teammates. Well, look, when you're Lamar Jackson, you're the reigning MVP and you just put up

a nice getting, coming off a big win against the Steelers over the weekend, and you had the Jackson side, five touchdowns the week before against the Giants. You tend to be able to miss a couple of things, but something tells me Lamar will still be locked in for sure.

Let me ask you this, and I brought this up at Cordels with 105-7, the fan in Baltimore. I brought this up to our audience multiple times. It feels like to me this postseason, Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen have the weight of the world on their shoulders because their teams have gotten close but did not have gotten to the Super Bowl. Is that the feeling you get, forgetting about the fans, just about what the aura is around this team? If the Ravens come up short, is this, oh my gosh, we got close again, or is this we got to shake something up to get us over the hurdle to win an AFC? You know, that's what I'm battling with, because I think everybody knows when you talk about

the Ravens. It's all about January. It's Super Bowl of a bus with them. You have Lamar Jackson. You just added Derek Henry this year. This is probably the most lethal backfill we've seen in the NFL. It should be. It's probably the toughest backfill to stop. And so I think, yes, that expectation is there. And if they don't get over the hump a year after losing the AFC championship game at home, yeah. I mean, I think it would say things need to change.

And I don't, I mean, Lamar's not going anywhere. I could tell you that. Right. So it would definitely be some conversations, I think, to be had at the top about what direction they want to go. And how long do they want to continue to see them be good?

but ultimately not good enough. Cordell, Deontay Johnson is now a Texan after spending part of the year with Baltimore. It seems like he's had a murky time in your city. Tell us about what you know of him and what he did or did not do for the Ravens this year. Well, I know that he pretty much quit on his team on the sideline. I mean, when you refuse to go in a game and he's not the only one that is kind of almost the norm, almost now when you hear these types of things happening where 10 years ago you wouldn't have heard that um but i i think dionte obviously his talent is there you know the type of player that

he can be when he asserts himself when he does commit uh to to being a teammate a good teammate that is and we know what just happened in baltimore we know what's happened in pitts berg Carolina pretty much gave him to the ravens for free and you know the thought when he came to baltimore was that he would be a nice insurance piece if something happened to Zay Flowers or Rashad Bateman, who's had an injury history of his own. Deonté would have been great, and ultimately, he's good enough to at least be a top three receiver on your team. I remember there was a Monday that I asked John Harbaugh, can we start to expect to see Deontay Johnson play the type of snaps that we expected when he got here?

And he said, yes, this was maybe going into the third game. And ultimately that didn't happen. So obviously, like I said, the talent is there, but you just don't know what type of teammates are at it. Cordell Woodland covers the Ravens for 105-7, the fan in Baltimore with us here on Sports Talk 7-90. I was reading some of your tweets today. Is there any – look, you win both these games. The Ravens win both of them, 12 and 5. I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Pittsburgh loses to Kansas City

because Kansas City feels like maybe lose one more game the rest of the way. Who knows? How much of this is, we've got to win this thing out and maybe sneak around Pittsburgh and win that AFC North and have a home playoff game as compared to getting back on a plan in a couple weeks and perhaps coming back to Houston? Yeah, I mean, I think definitely their number one goal right now in terms of the short term is to try to win this division and went out. And they felt like they're playing their best ball right now.

They had the week 14 by, and it's, you know, you know, kind of a gift and a curse. That means you're playing 13 straight weeks, but also, you know, maybe it gives you a time to reset and hill up at the right time of the year. And I think it was the latter for them. They blow out the Giants. They win a huge game against Pittsburgh at home, and they're now looking at a two-week season right now to try to win this division.

So, you know, they've been asked a couple of times about the division and about, you know, what Pittsburgh has to do to help them out. And they don't want to hear anything like that. They're only focused on what they can control, and that's winning these football games. So I think that they'll be favored in each of these games that they're playing in, and we'll see what happens. But I definitely think that this is a team that's starting to hit their scribe right now. All right.

Give me the one thing that you love about what they did against Pittsburgh that maybe they didn't do in weeks past because obviously the Ravens have had difficulties with beating the Steelers, and then what's the one thing of concern as the Ravens come to Houston in a short week? Well, yeah, I mean, I thought the thing that they did against Pittsburgh was they won in the trenches, you know, and that's a physical battle every time those two teams get together. And this Ravens' offensive line, you kind of know what you're going to get out of them depending on the type of matchup. And to this point in the season, matchups like the one that they had on Saturday against Pittsburgh. They normally don't win those, but they did on Saturday. And it led to them running for over 200 yards in the game.

that's what you love to see from the Ravens because that's who they are. That's how they want to beat you. They want to roguerate you. Pittsburgh is not normally that team that they're able to do that against. So the fact that they did and Derek Henry look great out there, that's something that's very encouraging. With something that I would worry about a little bit, they had a couple of fumbles in that game, and they were lucky to be able to recover them. So that's a little concerning.

They lead the league in penalties. that's a big concern. That's been one of their big time problems all year. It wasn't on Saturday. They only had the two penalties. And also, like I said, the offensive line, they were good Saturday, but Houston's got a nice front themselves. I think that'll be another test for them.

Is there any of the thought of, hey, it's the Texans again. Texans have not performed well against Baltimore the last handful of years. There's no look past. I don't think in the NFL with this late in the season, that could be an issue, right? Yeah, I don't, I agree, agreed right there with you. I mean, just leading up to that Giants game, look, let's be honest, the Giants think. And they're not having a good year this year, but the Ravens didn't want to hear any of that. Apparently they didn't even mention the Giants record all week within their meetings or any of that.

So they're not looking past anybody right now. And I don't think the Texans are the type of team that anybody is going to look past anyway. The Ravens faced them twice last year. and neither of those games were necessarily easy. So, you know, I think that the Ravens definitely have, I should say the Texans definitely have the Ravens full attention right now. Cordell, happy holidays, you and your family. Thank you for joining me on my show today, and we appreciate it.

And we may bother you again, especially if the teams play each other in a few weeks on that wild card weekend. For sure. Happy holidays for you and yours as well. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Cordell Woodland joining us from 105-7, The Fan, in Baltimore. getting a little bit of the Ravens perspective of the game coming up tomorrow at 3.30.

Rossi, I got to be honest, I'm not the biggest Beyonce vocalist fan. I mean, I could watch her clearly. But if I was the Ravens, I would go watch them at halftime, right? I mean, you don't get to see one of the biggest stars in music history every single day. Yeah, she's not the greatest singer in music history, but one of the greatest stars, as you put it. I would agree with that. Yeah, I mean, if I... It's on a good show.

Like, you know, if we were doing a show and we had to... a 10 minute break in between our show and Kendrick Lamar was going to sing for between 12 and 1210. I would definitely want to stop the show. Well, he's doing that half time at the Super Bowl. Is he? Yes. Does he realize that half America's going to hate him? Does he know this yet? Why is half America going to hate him? Because half America hates every halftime act. Oh, okay. That's true. Let's see. I feel like we came together and liked some of them in recent ones. I don't know. I feel, again, if you went back and looked at the last 10 years, like who was pregnant up top on the state? Was it Beyonce? for years back.

Oh yeah, Rihanna. Rihanna. She did a good job. We hated Prince because he showed his package. He did? Justin Timberlake. We hate them all. Prince took it out?

Well, I mean, it was, I don't know if he took it out. Did you have issue with Usher last year? Usher was good. I think half American. Rihanna was good before that. Dr. Dre Snoop Dogg M&M. Did you like that? Oh, Kendrick Lamar, of course.

Had an appearance there as well. Yeah. Before that was the weekend. Oh, I think. I think the world loved Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020. Oh, we couldn't complain about that. I could tell you that for sure. Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga.

Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Now, Coldplay sucked. Coldplay was sucked. Lady Gaga was spectacular, I thought, in Houston, Texas. Bruno Mars. And I know you loved the Beyonce performance in 2013. Yeah, there is some Twitter evidence that. Hopefully I've scrubbed that since then.

I'm not completely sure if I have, but thanks for bringing that up. All right, 713. 212.5.790. 713. 2.1.5.790. Our time is 1045. We've got a little bit from the Astros. Christian Walker introduced by the Astros.

What? I know. Do you realize we have a new first baseman? What? I know. And by the way, I may be winning my lunch bet on the Brighman deal. You're winning? I might. I'd say I might. Winning? Yeah. We'll see.

We'll tell you what the bet is on that, if you haven't heard. Next, 1045, Sports Talk, 790 with a word for Game Day Men's Health. Look, you're in the holiday season right now, and maybe you're not working out, maybe you're taking some extra naps, but you're still feeling groggy. You're not feeling yourself, and you've got zero libido, and your energy levels are bad, and you're cranky, and you're moody, and you've been wanting to try to stay lean and keep your weight down, but that's been an issue. Game Day, men's health wants to help you.

If some of you are suffering with erectile dysfunction, the folks at Game Day, men's health can help you. Eight Houston area locations. The final one near you, you go to Game Day, men'shealth.com slash Houston. If you are suffering with low testosterone levels, get them checked to see where you are. And then if you need replacement therapy, they can make that happen for you at a very affordable cost with licensed trained physicians and physicians assistants assistants at their locations. Eight in the Houston area, go to Game Day, men'shealth.com slash Houston, game day men's health.com slash Houston.

And if you begin TRT therapy, you're going to be able to get a free vitamin shot as well to give you a little extra boost. Feel better about yourself. Do it today with the eight locations of gameday men's health.com slash Houston. Matt Thomas, Ross Villarreal. It's the Matt Thomas show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. The word you hear a lot is culture.

You know, for me, that's knowing how to win. that's being used to winning, that's expecting to win. But there's this other angle of playing with an edge. You know, when you're out in the field and you're looking at the energy and an opposing dugout, you can tell when teams have it or don't. And, you know, I've been watching this team for a while now. And, you know, that edge, the energy, the expectation, you can tell that they're going out there, you know, with a standard.

And I'm very excited to be a part of it. Brand new first baseman. How about that? See, I forget when you work, Ross, were you working when this happened, or were you gone? I was gone with the Christian Walker thing, yes. We've got Issaq Paredes at third base. It's been, yeah, intermittent fasting. I'm doing intermittent working.

I don't even, yeah. Have you gained weight? Have you lost weight? Have you still, you still have your flow? I just spent five days drinking and eating in New Orleans. What do you think? Okay. So what was the best food item you had while you were gone?

Oh, food item? Oh, my God. We ate at G.W. Fens, which is a high-end play for the birthday. They had a nice birthday dinner there. They had the lobster dumpling was incredible. The redfish was really good. Oh, the shrimp and grits at this place called Achafalaya. Oh, man, that was incredible.

Char-gilled oysters at Felix's? I mean, I don't even know, man. I can't even... Good for you. Po boys. Oh, Lausa. Lauzza's on the track. It's called a barbecue shrimp po-boy.

It's not really barbecue, but that was incredible. Oh, I had so much good food. So you've gained your Christmas 5 basically. Oh, my God. Yeah, about Christmas 8. Inflation, you know. Speaking of food, I think, Ross, we've found maybe one of our new favorite Astros, Christian Walker, talking about what he looks forward to and seeing in the vibe of Houston, Texas. I don't know much about the city.

I'm most excited for the food. I love to eat, I love to cook. The barbecue scene has me very interested, but very much looking forward to learning about the city. Houston's one of those cities, right? H-town. It fires me up to be a part of it and get to know it. He could have said, Ross,

I'm going to hit 40 home runs and 150 RBIs and have Gold Glob first base, and all the Astro fans would have been like, yeah, that sounds good, whatever. He drops a, I can't wait to check out the barbecue scene. They want to retire his jersey number already here in Houston. Yes. He's heard great things and he's heard the right things.

Barbecue seemed quite good. By the way, he's working number 13. Is that right? Did I say that right? Yes. Does Billy Wagon know this yet? I don't know. Man.

Yeah, you know what? You probably can't any more retired numbers anymore because you're going to run out of space. Yeah, the Astros already did too many. Yeah. So Christian Walker, whatever, whoever he prepped you for your little press conference you drop in the 8 I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm surprised he didn't say I'm throwing up the H's here shortly because everybody's thrown

up the H's. Last asked few Astros to Where 13 Cooper Hummel Goat J.J. Matajevic? O.G. Jacob Wilson. I don't even remember that guy. Ooh, Jacob Wilson. That sounds made up. I should have made one up for you. You know what we should do today?

We should do it. Believe it or not is was this person ever an Astro? We could actually. We could easily do that today. Or we could do something Christmas related or before that, A. Abraham Toro and then Dustin Garneau and then the Great White himself, Tyler White. So there was a lot of guys wearing 13.

If I was Billy Wagner, I'd be severely disrespectful by the number of Jemokes that would have been wearing the 13 since I left. What do you mean? What do you got against Brandon Laird? Geez. 13 may be the worst number in Astros history not named Billy Wagner on it. Was there anybody before

Billy Wagner that was really good? Bruce Bochie? Well, he only played for a couple of years. I mean, he's notable. My argument is good so far. Tuck Farrell. Yeah. Turk Farrell. Excuse me.

Tuck is his cousin. Same thing. All right, by the way, real quick, there's a few Twitter reports, and those aren't accurate, but it is for the sake of the show. That perhaps the Red Sox are only willing to offer Alex Bergman a five-year deal. Ooh. So you could win, Maddie. I could win. We have a bet.

For those that don't know, well, it would be a late lunch bed. It would be like a 205 lunch bed. I have him at five years or less, six, we go Dutch, and seven or more, Ross wins. Correct. Chandler Rome told me all the last season. I was going to be right. I'm going to be upset with Chandler-Hum. As a matter of fact, he actually, when he came in and filled in for you last week,

he's like, I'm going to start to hedge my bed a little bit. I'm like, holy Ross knew, but now you do. Dang it. First of all, that's just internet speculation. We don't know. I mean, obviously the market is cooled. It has, I mean, the aster's just flat out moved on. Yes.

Was this a misplay by a Boris, or was this a, everybody just decided to move on? It feels like a Boris could be overplaying his hand once he was trying to get, I think maybe in his mind, the Juan Soto deal reset the market, and in all the team's mind, it did not. That's my guess. Just speculation. All right. 713, 212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. 1058.

the Matt Thomas show. Hour number two starts up next. Merry Christmas Eve from all of us here at Sports Talk 790. Launch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. Here we go. 11 o'clock. 11.01 Sports Talk 790. Ross, Matt with you on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We have gut feelings coming up at a half an hour. You ever gut feeling what you're going to get for Christmas from the people in your live sports, Harvey? Not really I was asked what I wanted I don't really I mean come on I'm an adult now I'm over 40 Stump packing in

How do you feel being part of the 40 club That's fine I've been mentally I've been mentally so because my birthday is December of 84 When the calendar turns You know when it turned to 24 That's 40 right

So in my mind I'm 40 It's fine I've been 40 for a year Let me tell you something 40 to 49 didn't bother me at all Once I've hit 5-0 it's like This sucks. Yeah, you look like hell.

I look great. I look at myself in the mirror that I'm like, God, I'm position of Donnas for 52. I can't even, I see you, but I can just tell. Okay. You want to guess what I'm wearing right now? No, please, please. I'm going to tell you something, Matthew. Yes, sir.

Don't ever in your life ask me that question again. The answer will always be no. All right. Always. I don't care if it's Halloween, for Christmas. I don't care. Just don't ask me that question. question all right well since you asked uh red collared shirt shorts and my dress socks from last night

when i was uh flying back from charles okay thanks appreciate it i mean i wouldn't go out in public wearing what i'm wearing but i'm not like like i mean it's cold i'm not going i'm not going i've done shows naked but that's a different issue it's fine i'm in sweatpants nobody's up here who cares yeah it's true yeah how is the office today it is a ghost town at least gordy was up here for a minute but now he's gone oh imagine that gordon he's getting ready for that big Axis Bowl showdown with Baylor and LSU. Yeah, I'm glad we're doing a great lead into the A team today. Yeah, what are they doing?

Seriously, they'd be embarrassed the lack of work they do. Embarrassing. All right. If you're out about today, let us know that you're here, because we don't know if you're here or not. I mean, Ross and I can be just doing a show for ourselves. We got some Twitter in action. Our friend, Joan is listening. So Merry Christmas to Joan and her great family.

But if you're out there, want to say hello, just want to wish you want to do a Christmas shout-out. We'll take those at 713-212-5-7-90. 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-70. So if you're going to the Texans game tomorrow, which is at 3.30, I want to ask you two questions. Is anybody going to the game because they get to see Beyonce? Now, obviously you're a Texans fan, but when you heard Beyonce was at halftime, and she doesn't do a lot of touring, does she, or she has done touring? I mean, I don't know what her concert schedule is like, per se.

She just got off a huge world tour. Did she come to Houston or no? I don't assume so, right? Yes, but it was like a year and a half ago. She was touring for over a year. So basically you're buying a Texan ticket and getting a halftime performance for free. That's what I'm going to the game tomorrow. Are you really?

Yeah. And who are you going with your family? Family, yeah. Is the girl going to? No. Ooh. Have you had that conversation about how you're speaking? been in Christmas together tomorrow or no.

Me and the girlfriend? Yeah. No, we've been dating for two months. We're not doing Christmas together. At any point, you're not going to see her tomorrow at all. Probably not. Okay, all right. Maybe if we go out to the bars late at night, maybe. Oh, the Christmas bar scene's good on Christmas, huh?

Okay, I got you. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I've never been. Well, I'll be at a casino at 10 o'clock tomorrow night. I can tell you that for sure. Where are you going now? New Orleans. Oh, okay. By the way.

I can go pick up our parlayes that you... Mistakes were made. Sorry. $50. If you want to play $3 to $2, $50 minimums. Oh, yeah. I was at a high-end hotel. High-end in Las Vegas.

I was with the Rockets. I couldn't find a 3-2 table to save my life. I know, Matt. The world's going to hell. For those that don't know, 3-2, meaning, if you get blockchain, your $50 bet is a $75 win. If you play a $6.5 blackjack, your $50 blackjack is worth $60.

So it's a significant drop. Yes. Yes, it is. And nobody seems to care. The 65 tables are all full. So why would they ever give three to two? No, I mean, my guess, I wonder what the limits are going to be when I get to Vegas. I mean, are you a degenerate if you're gambling on Christmas night?

Or are you like, hey, you spent time with the family? during the course of day, it's all good now. You're probably degenerate. You can't spend the entire day of Christmas with your family? Now, I'm in the exception because I'll be traveling, but we're not leaving here tomorrow night until 8 o'clock. So I mean, I'm going to be getting the New Orleans late. You are traveling degenerate then.

I'm just thinking, what is a, what do you think it's going to be in a law, in a New Orleans casino at 10.30 tomorrow night? Christmas Day? They should close the casino, quite frankly. You shouldn't be in there. You can't close a casino. Why not?

Why not? It costs you more to close it, then what did it keep it open? Is that true? Yeah. I mean, yeah, they lose money, but that's, in theory, every business lose money when they Cook. Chick-fil-A loses money when they close on Sundays. There's no way you're closing down every slot machine, every table.

What do you mean? What's the switch? No chance. I'm saying they should. I'm not saying they would. Now, what you probably could do if you really wanted to do it is you probably could just close the building down and leave everything open and, you know, the lights. on everything.

They probably do it when there's hurricanes and stuff. All right. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. Oh, my two questions. One, are you going to the game primarily to see Beyonce? Like Connor. And number two, how is your meal day being affected by this?

Because if you're going to the Texans game, it's 3.30, don't you think Christmas meal day is? in the wheelhouse between like two and five? Yeah, we just have it at noon. You're good to go. Do you want to know what we're doing? Please. So we got family coming in right before, so like 10 a.m.

So we're going to have a big brunch. When we go to the second game, I'm assuming we'll have a snack or two, and then we're going to have kind of a lighter dinner because we're going to be eating stuff at the game. We're pushing back like a big Christmas Day dinner to 26. Now, see, that's very smart. Very, very smart. Because, look, Ross, you don't want to be eating at noon

on Christmas Day. You're barely like waking up before a new, knowing you. There's no chance. That's me, but that's not most people. It's different. Yeah, but you don't have any kids

that run around the house. I mean, if you were with your niece's nephew, you'd be up at 7 a.m. That's where I'm going to be, yeah. Are they going to wake up Uncle Ross at 7 a.m. to open up presents? Probably. You're going to be throwing,

you're going to be dropping F bombs on them. And say, I don't drop F bombs on them. They're very sweet. And bringing up mistruths about Santa Claus and how he's a fair with some, okay. I believe their parents don't tell them about Santa.

They say we bought the presents, not Santa. And that's somebody else. Yikes. All right. Let's go to James calling us somewhere in New York at 1108. James, where are you calling us from? Holy moly, what's up, fellas? Happy holidays, very Christmas.

I'm calling from Manhattan, Lower Manhattan. Oh, same to you. What are the great parts of our world is Lower Manhattan. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I had a revelation yesterday. I was hanging out with my wife, and it was her birthday,

and I was very thankful for being with her. And I realized that I'm going to take you guys back 20 years, all right? So 20 years ago, before her and I met, I was dating another woman who was an actress here in New York. And one day she says to me, hey, a friend of mine from the cruise ship that I used to work on is doing a show at one of the jazz clubs in the city would you like to come yeah sure let's go and we go down there and who's up on stage but a very young michael bublier i don't know if i'm saying it right or not nobody does right but uh so we go we see the show it's really good sounds it's fantastic say you want to go backstage and meet them like yeah sure let's go so again me and this other girl we've been dating like a

year pretty straight through i'm not really sure where the relationship is going but we go into the green room and there's Mike, there's three other girls and my wife or my, sorry, my girlfriend, and this bouncer. And I'm sitting there and anything Michael Bublier says, all the girls are giggling. I'm looking at the bouncer and he's looking at the ceiling. I'm looking at the ceiling. And I thought to myself in that moment, I said, you know what? I'm going to put this girl to the test. I'm going to walk out of this room and let's see what happens, you know. So I get up and I walk out very quietly. I go down to the bar.

I'm sitting at the bar and I can see the door to the green room, you know? So I sit there for a while, drink my first beer. The three young girls walk out. I was like, okay, so now it's just her and the bouncer and him. And then I sit down. I was like, let me get one more beer and I'll wait. And then the bouncer walks out. I think, oh, shoot.

So now it's just her and him, you know. I'm sitting there. I'm drinking my beer. It's like, man, it's been like 15 minutes. drinking my beer. I was like, you know what? I'm going to just go outside. I'll have a cigarette and I'll come back in. I come back in and now the bouncer is standing out there and he's like kind of like, you know, a little bit uncomfortable. I was like, I'm just going to take a walk around the block. I go, I take a walk around the block. I come back and Michael Bubli, he's standing out front. And he's, oh, hey, how are you doing? Yeah, I'm getting out of here. You know, it's nice to meet you. I'm like, all right, great, good to meet you. I go in and then she comes out of the green room. And I thought to myself, you know what? This is perfect. That's who this young lady is. That's who this young lady is. You know? And we got into a cab. She started crying immediately. She's, oh, my God, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's all right, baby. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. And then two weeks later, I'm at a holiday party and I meet the woman of my dreams. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful woman from Houston, Texas that was in town visiting friends. And her and I have been inseparable ever since 20 years straight now. Merry Christmas, everybody. Thank you, Michael. Ross, do you care to deduct the genesis of that call? Did Michael Blueblaze sleep with his wife in the green room?

No, I thought it was just a... It was a girl that he was dating. He said he's been with him for 20 years now. I thought he met somebody else at another polity party. Oh, I wasn't listening. I zoned out, quite frankly. Okay, help me if I got this call right. And Connor, if you were listening.

He goes with a girl and meets Boubley. Bubey kicks the guy, but our friend James out. He hooks up with James' girl or date that night. Yeah. Gets in the cab with her. She's crying because she's emotionally spent and probably physically exhausted.

And then he meets another girl and he's been with her for 20 years. Oh, okay. Is that what happened? I think, right? Am I right about that? I zoned out. I'll have to go back and listen. I did not.

I was not following. Did I get that right, Houston? James' girl, girl A. Yes. Got Boo Blade. Yeah. While he was outside smoking a cigarette, walking around,

grabbing a couple beers, and then he met another girl, and he's been with her for 20 years. That's what I think the call was. Okay. Don't hold me to that. That's fine. I'm not holding you to anything.

We got four hours to kill. Kill, we're talking about compelling sports conversation. Oh, sorry. B'bley, not bad, I'm Krooner, right? I don't hate the guy. I don't have any of his songs, but I mean... I think he's got quite a good list, by the way.

Apparently, James' girl is one on that list. Yeah. All right, if you want to follow that up, 713, 212-5-790, 7-13-212-5-790. By the way, V-Rox says you let the cigarette and the beer out. Yeah, I mentioned a cigarette and a beer. He had a cigarette and a beer. Two beers and a cigarette and one for a walk while Blue Blay is plow.

James is a girl. Merry Christmas, everybody. 1114, Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas, Ross Villarreal. It's the Matt Thomas show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. Is this Wham or is this George Michael by himself? It's Wham. This is actually not a bad jam here.

I'll be honest with you. I'm not having a big Wham fan. I don't like Chris's music very much. you. I'm with you, Matt. This is a jam. Say it was a chess, Matt. It's a jam.

There we go. One more thing on James' story. He was trying to humble brag that he lost a girl to Michael Bublay because if you think about it. He brought up the story about Bubla and the cigarette and the beer and the fact that he left her for like a half an hour.

And then he said, then two weeks later he went to a holiday party. He met a girl he's been one for 20 years. the two stories don't coincide. There's no if-then statement. So he was basically humble bragging that he lost a woman to Michael Bublay. Yeah, I guess. I guess he was trying to be a sweet story.

If he wouldn't have lost the woman, then maybe he wouldn't have met his... I don't know. I don't know. I think it was a Christmas Eve humble brag about who he lost a girl. Might have been part of it. Okay, I'm just throwing that in there. All right. We have the NFL...

We've got feelings coming up in 10 minutes or now. What? Yeah. Okay. You're going to have to help me through this, Matt. I've been on vacation for so long. Oh, I'm sorry. I got home at 2.30 this morning.

I'm going to just be... Oh, you're fine. I'm peppered up and excited, too. Okay, so gut feelings coming up at 1130 here on Sports Talk 7.9. News at noon will be at noon. I'm here at the Kingwood Studios and the wife is making a breakfast cassero of tomorrow. Well, really? The bacon and sausage combination cooking smell is pretty damn good.

She's making it right now for tomorrow morning? Yeah. You throw in the oven in the morning. You heat it up and you're done. 24 hours. That's called meal prep. That's what the kids call. Yes, that's what the kids say.

And then she's got the damn Hallmark Channel on. That might be the worst channel in America. You love the Hallmark Channel. I despise the Hallmark Channel. Now, I will watch a Lifetime movie because some of those movies end poorly. What do you mean? Like, you know what? My jealous mother-in-law or my mistress's his best friend.

I mean, every whole whole thing. Mark movie is pleasant. Oh, okay, it's too much Christmas cheer. It's any Christmas cheer. You never see on the Hallmark movie Christmas Eve gone bad. No, you don't ever see that.

It's two white people in a romantic comedy in a small Midwestern town or small Vermont City when it snows, and the storylines are the same. She's a busy worker. He's a guy that's by himself and misses his family. She doesn't have the romantic and they meet over mistletoe and they have one simple kiss

and then it becomes complicated for like five minutes and the end of the day they wound up being happily ever after. And they met at the Christmas tree farm. Correct. Where the Christmas tree farm may be running out of business is slow and may have to shut it down and it's going to take the poor people out of that own this Christmas tree farm for the last 40 years.

See, you've watched them too. You know exactly what I'm going with. I have not watched a single one. Hallmark movie, you suck. Homewock Channel, you suck. I hate you. When somebody was talking about it on Twitter, how they all had the same plot and they meet at the Christmas tree farm.

They literally have the same plot every single time. Like, you know what? They never meet at the casinos. They never meet at the horse track. Yeah. Or the VD clinic. They never meet at the bus station. You know what I'm saying?

They always meet in the middle of the town hall, town square, if you will. Yeah. I'm sorry, Matt. That's what we should do, Ross. If we have enough time, we should help the Hallmark Channel for next year, write a bunch of different movies. Okay. We can create our own plot twist on there.

We can spice it up a little bit because everything is so nice and and Christmasy and jolly and everything. No, we want, no. Okay. So you want like the guy at the end to like mask or everyone? No, I'm not saying the story, but let's just throw things up. Let's how about this. Let's go back.

We'll do what we'll call a Hallmark Channel add-on. All right. They meet at the tree farm. Single girl. finally feigns her dream meets the dream boat and he's been so sad and depressed because his you know his wife left him and he's getting ready to put a ring on this girl and at the very end the ex-wife comes in and says i miss you let's try to rebuild our marriage and he turns around and says sounds like a good idea and then it leaves the girl by herself at the christmas tree farm that's how you end a hallmark movie and that's a great one man don't you rewrite that one down what do you call him i don't know rebound christmas Rebound Christmas. A special guest star Charles Barkley. Oh my gosh.

All right. Yeah, we could definitely have some fun with rewriting some Hallmart movies. 713-212-570. 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-79. I brought this up with Dan yesterday, and we'll get Battle Red's response on this. Because Battle Red, you are someone that has lived and died with the Texans this year. Are you feeling it?

And you know what it is? the season slipping away? Yes, I wanted to make sure I didn't want to put words in your mouth. That is correct. I mean, they had however many offensive linemen get hurt. Tank Dell is now out for the year. You've already missed Diggs for the year. It's not looking good.

It's not looking good. By the way, we pled to tell the truth yesterday, and the one thing they didn't believe me was the Texans should go after a wide receiver in the first run of the draft last year, next year. You don't think they should, or you do believe they should? No, they should go offensive line. They've got to repair this thing. Wide receiver works.

You can shore up the offensive line if you want to do it, especially interior guys, you can find free agent-wise, but they obviously need to be addressed. Yeah. So you're ready to say it? You want to see a wide receiver in the first round? No, I'm not going to say that. I'm ready to see, yeah, offensive line, wide receiver, running back.

Because clearly Nick Assyriel saw no offensive line issues before the trade deadline. We already saw that. Well, clearly they saw issues with Kenyon Green. He didn't come in. They went to Kendrick Green. Yeah. That's got to be hard, Ross, for a general manager who picked, he picked Kenyon Green, right? That was like a serial selection.

Yes, in the first round. And we talked about it when it happened. That was a lot of draft capital on a guard. Yeah. That has to hurt. It's almost like when you're running of a business and you hire like you, tenants, you're now the general manager of a restaurant or a business or a sales department and your underlings just don't come up.

I mean, you finally have to cut the court and say, I made a mistake. but I think if you protect somebody and leave somebody on a roster and give them too many opportunities and makes you look worse. Sometimes you have to get efficient. Like, for instance, if the Astros would continue to throw Jose Abriou at us in September last year, that would have been awful. Yes. Well, some people think they went way too long as it was. Yeah.

Because, again, when Assistant General Manager Jeff Bagwell says, hey, he's worth of giving him a three-year contract, not just two, you have to give him every opportunity. We had to keep looking at the back of the baseball card. uh-uh what's the rule you knew that rule was coming you said it i did it's like dan matthews making a movie reference god how many kind of do that while i was gone oh my god

he brought up willing walk in the chocolate factory yesterday he did yes well he was bringing up christmas vacation he was bringing up christmas movies with us that's true all right uh... 1127 let's uh... get a phone calling and we'll get the gut feelings here shortly after that 7132 1-2-5-7-90

Tim and Galveston on 7-90. Tim, what's on your mind today? Hey, it's Kim, but Merry Christmas, you guys. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I'm sitting down here on the seawall waiting to play pickleball, but I digress. So let's go back to the Hallmark Channel,

okay? So Hallmark Channel is for girls, right? Yeah, well, I mean, there are men that are obviously involved in the movies, but yeah, I would say primarily it's for females, yes. so this is the way we do it we make it Hallmark channel for guys

and what we do is we have those little bubbles in there and little smart-ass comments about what they're really thinking you know and that's how you'd run the movie what do you think about that Not a terrible idea thank you Tim wasn't our show that did bubbles was it was a VH1 that would do videos and it would put up bubbles about

anecdotal things about the video right Yes pop-up video Pop-up video yeah was it was called Pop-up? Pop-up video. Yeah. And then there was Mystery Science Theater 3,000 that would basically just comment on what they were watching,

which would what guys do, yeah. No, yeah. We could do a segment called Hallmark Channel Movies Gone Wrong. Like, how about this? We could take five or six Hallmark Channel movies and add a prepositional phrase to them. Hmm. Could we damage the plot of movies with just four or five additional words?

I'd rather just not watch them. network as a whole. Well, you know what? Thank God you're not victim to that. You're trying to fix something that I don't think needs fixing because I don't care. It doesn't affect my day-to-day life, man. Well, think, you know what? You're considering yourself less, Ross. I am lucky, I guess. Because I'm talking to you, which is entertaining enough as it is. But then I go in the room and I smell the sausage cooking. I smell the bacon cooking. And then I have the damn hell on our channel on. You don't have to watch it. I'm not. Trust me. You want to. You're talking to you. All right. 1129, Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show. Time now with Ross.

with time now for gut feelings. If you have any sports predictions, Ross, you're ready to make a prediction on Baltimore, Houston tomorrow. Not really. You're going to have to do it next. 7-13-212-5-790. Gut feelings. As the Matt Thomas Show with Ross continues here on Sports Talk 790.

Listen up, girls and boys. That's been so appealing. Girls Ross and Matt Thomas. Yo, they got a gut feeling. This is their gut feeling on the Matt Thomas show. I'll go first because I don't want to be the... bear or bad news, sports RV, because you are Battle Red Ross. 713-212-5-7-90.

If you've got a gut feeling anything in the world of sports, let us know. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. The Baltimore Ravens win tomorrow's game by at least 10 points. Whatever. Fight me on it. Why? Well, the line's 5.5. They can keep within 10.

Okay, so you're going to take the opposite then? Yeah, I'll take the Texas plus 9.5. All right, there it is. We're betting nothing on it. Oh, why not? Because life doesn't need to be a bet. I'm saving my money for my family. I mean, you're going to already owe me a lunch when Bregman sounds a five-year contract somewhere.

Yeah, we'll see. Okay. I don't think I lose. I think your best shot is still a push. I think we're pushing 100% on this one. I don't think he's getting 7 and I would be. 100%. Okay.

Yeah, I think we are pushing on this bad boy. We didn't even review last week's, Matt. Come on. All right. Was I even on? No, just because you weren't here doesn't mean we don't have predictions, Matt. Let's see. How do we do?

The show goes on. Let's go. Let's go. Mr. I've worked three days this month. Well, this was one of them last week. You weren't here. Okay.

Let's see. Last week. Oh, I predicted Pat Mahomes wouldn't play on Saturday. Whoops. He sounded all down. And then literally hours after we did this segment, he was a full participant in practice. Yeah. Wait, is this true?

I had the Texans beating the Chiefs if Pat Mahomes didn't play, but well, that didn't happen. I said no Nolan Aronado for the Astros, no Anthony Santander for the Astros as well, which has been floated. That's too bad because I just like saying Anthony Santander. It is a fun name to say. It's a Santander, but in his case, it's a Santander. Cona McGovern had the Rockets winning their next three. Bingo win. There you go, Conner-A-Govern. All right. That's what I'm talking about.

He also said Pat Mahomes would not play, but he also had the 10-Mogvern. Texans losing to the Chiefs and Carson wins. Eish. Hey, we got this one right. Unfortunately, Tank Dell gets a touchdown, said Connor McGowan. Oh, God. It's your fault!

That's the Connor curse. It's your fault, Connor. It's the Connor curse. He did get a touchdown. He held on to that ball. Yeah, he got a touchdown, but still, you were right, but it was your fault at what cost were you right. We had Brian Bogusseviken.

He said, Alex Breggman. will be a Detroit Tiger was his gut feeling by the way I changed my opinion yesterday by the way from what from the Red Sox of the Yankees you're back to the Yankees yeah back to the Yankees I don't think I'm gonna stay with the Yankees okay do you want to hold on let me write this down you said Texans lose by double digits yep Bragman's a Yankee is a Yankee okay I'm sticking with the Yankee I mean that was my original prediction I'll stick with that.

Okay. Then we also did it. We mailed it in, Matt. We did gut feelings twice because Adam Wexler came in. Alex Breggman, he says Boston Red Sox, which I think they're probably one of the leaders in the clubhouse, it feels like. And then he also had Pat Mahomes playing versus the Texans, which he did. And that is your review from last week. All right.

I got some more for you. Double-digit loss for the Texans. Breggman to the Yankees. What else do I have going for? I had something else. I've already forgotten. Sorry. Okay. I will say that the Texans do keep it within double digits.

Okay. That's good because you're about a red. They're not going to win. It's a home game. They're going to need like, I don't know, two pick sixes and a fumble six to have a shot. Oh, my gosh. Oh, I know what I was going to say. Okay. Put this way down on the calendar like September next year.

You ready? Okay. Tank Dell will not start this season on the active roster. Oh, next season? Yep. It's December. It's possible. You can be in the pup.

Just thrown in there. I mean, busted kneecap and an ACL, yeah? Apparently the kneecap, if you've seen the still photo, is in the wrong direction. Is that bad? I don't think it's good. Is it perpendicular? How many degrees? 45 degrees?

What is it looking like? You know what? Let's not get any more graphic. People are trying to have a Christmas Eve meal. I'll listen to the show. Okay. Somebody's having a Christmas ham right now? Sounds delicious.

I will predict also, Matt, that I will go back to back to back. Oh, here we go. And win the

I heart fantasy league for the third straight year as I am in the final versus Trey Campbell. Are you really? Trey Campbell

of Kill Tony fame? Yes. By the way, Roto's with us on Thursday at 1 o'clock Oh hell yeah, I need his help. You know what,

you can just host a show if you want to on that part. I'm okay with it. Because basically you're going to, it's all self-serving for you. That's not, true. I mean, I would, I'm not blaming you for it. I would do that. If you have a chance to win the pot again this year, why wouldn't you take advantage of Roto? He's helped you out

before in the past. Absolutely. Roto's done a great job. And I got some injuries. I got James Connor who got hurt, so I got some issues on my roster for the final. Okay. So yeah, Roto's with us on Thursday at 1 o'clock for the final time of this season. Okay. So who you're playing, you're playing, Trey Campbell? Yes. How much do I owe by the way? Am I, am I doubt a bunch of? Oh, yeah. Let me see how many low points you had. Oh, God. I'm so... You don't realize what a huge weight of the world is off

my shoulders now that I'm never playing fantasy football again. Yeah, whatever. That's fine. All right. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. Clay is in Hockley. Happy holidays. Clay, what is in your gut? Very Christmas to see you guys, too. Yeah, this

is a little bit down in the future, so I have to wait a little while to see if it comes to fruition, but I say the Astros finish. a little bit below 500 next year. Whoa. Maybe get in with a wild card. I also think that they're done pretty much signed. They might pick up a do a small splash and the outfield. But I think that pretty much done.

They're going to row with who they have a decision that they already have in place. Wait a minute. Let's backtrack here. You have them finishing under 500 but still making a wild card? That's not going to be possible, I don't think. Well, I say around 500 and possibly if it's, making in as a wild card. I think either the A, you believe,

they're going to win the division or the Rangers are going to turn it around. But, yeah, I don't see them if they make, get in the, get in the playoffs, I don't see them going very far. Is this Dan Matthews calling the show? Seriously, is this really you, Dan? Come on. Are you hiding?

No, this is Clay. All right, Clay. And what else did you have besides that? I just, I just said that. I don't think they're going to do anything else. I don't know how this thing works where you have to give up draft picks. So whenever you signed somebody, I didn't know that was a thing, but I guess it is.

Well, as long as you tender them a contract. If you offer them a qualifying offer, you can get compensation back in return. Okay. I'm hoping next year that Jim Crane will open up the pocketbook so they have a little money out the book and books and maybe get a stud outfielder or two and then stroll with it. All right. Thank you very much, Clay. Appreciate you to listen.

Happy holidays. Yeah, Dan thinks the Oakland A's may win the American League West next year, Ross. What? Yeah, he was like going through examples of teams that have vastly improved and how the Astros may regress in that, maybe your case. But he's like, you know, the Oakland A's were an up-and-coming team last year. I said, up-and-coming, what was their record? He's like 69 and 93 or whatever.

He goes, well, that's better than they were the year before. They won 51 games. They were better in the second half of the season. I'll get them that. Yeah, I'm not buying into these Sacramento A's. By the way, you can't even call them Sacramento A's. just regular A's. They're just A's?

Yeah, they're just calling themselves the A's or the athletic. I mean, athletics. Hmm. Okay. That's terrible. Well, how does the city of Sacramento feel about this? They don't care. They're getting rent and getting a home and getting a major league baseball team there, so.

They probably want some sort of shine. Nope. They're getting none. They're getting zero shine, Ross. That's a shame. All right. 713-212-5-790. our buddy James and Garden Oaks

and Gilbert and Austin wants to talking. If you've got a gut feeling, let us know 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. This is Sports Talk 790. Back to Matt Thomas and Ross via Real. On Sports Talk 790.

Ross and Matt Thomas. Yo, they got a good feeling. Lunch timers, gut feelings continue now on the Matt Thomas show. 1149 on Sports Talk 790. If you have a gut feeling, let us know. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90.

Look who's online too, Ross, is our buddy James and Garden Oaks. New York. Just to let you know, Ross, that James yesterday called in as a Fantasy 5 judge and he voted for Dan Matthews. James, good morning. What's wrong with that?

Hey, thank you for taking my call, Governor, and Merry Christmas A ho, ho, ho, ho to one at all, including you, my friend, Mr. R.V., and Connor, listen, I'm going to get straight to the point. I'm sorry about yesterday, but he edged you out, man. Five to Four, Matt, but you're still my boy.

Okay, I'm going to get to my picks real quick. First of all, I disagree with you. Breggman's not coming to the Yankees. I got an inside tracker. He's heading to Boston. The person that made that prediction is right on target. And the bad thing about it is Tucker might soon follow him next.

year that would be tough for my boys in New York to deal with because the red socks will become mighty and that will make my older brother happy like happy like a like I don't know what but you'll get on my nerves okay and I also what I got yeah yeah and also I got I got the the ravens just plucking the you know the daylights out of your Texans sorry Texas the Texans are fried and also the chiefs putting the final nail in the coffin on the way to a three-peep and that's all I got right now Thank you once again, and thank you for taking my call, Governor Thomas.

You're the man. Thank you. Ross, do you ever want to go to Times Square on New Year's Eve? No. When did you become governor? Somebody called me a governor one time, and James calls me that every time. Okay. Governor Thomas.

It sounds like it's one of those things where it would be fun in theory, but then you're miserable. Because here's the thing I'm thinking of. You get down there all those hours ahead of time, and you've got to go. P. Where are you going to go? I believe you got to bring your pouch. Oh. Keep it on your leg. Like a, like a...

Catherer situation? Yeah. Ooh. I'm sure there's some sort of contraption you can rig up. I mean, the chance of you kissing a stranger, complete stranger at, you know, midnight Eastern time is probably pretty good because people have been out there for hours and it's cold and you had a few beverages. Oh, man, I don't know.

I mean, I wouldn't, but I'm just throwing that out there. That's the first thing you've been. brought up. No, the first thing I brought up was trying to go to the bathroom and losing your place in line. In line where? You got a really good spot. Did you see Dick Clark? No, he's dead.

Oh. Ryan Sequest? Does he still do it? I think he's busy with Will of Fortune. I think he still does it. Okay. But if you have a primo spot near the Apple or where the ball drops or whatever the thing is, you don't want to give that up, right?

I guess. Can't you get it back? You fight your way back. tell somebody to hold your place. Oh, that's going to work with hundreds of thousands of people downtown. I'm sure it's going to work out of beautiful. It sounds like a gigantic waste of time. I'll just go watch for my couch.

I would like to get a room at the hotel next to the time score. I mean, I'm sure the rates are astronomical, but that's what I don't want to celebrate it. Yes. And those of you who are going to be popping fireworks between now and New Year's and after New Year's, I hate you. I just want you to know, I hate you. And my dogs hate you too, by the way.

Just give me a little. New Year's Eve, I get it. It's fine. It's fun. You want to blow your hand off and go to the. the hospital, have a great time. But outside of that, I hate you. Well, I hate you no matter what. Gilbert and Austin, what's in your gut? Happy New Year. Happy holiday. Well, actually, I'm from San Antonio, but I was working in Austin when I was calling you guys. Anyway, my gut feeling

is going to be, I don't know what that guy was talking about. He goes, remember when we had the Astros last year, okay, we were doing, now, I think if we'd have been, instead of Jose Braue, if we had been using singleton, Guarantini and Diaz, I think we would have had a a better record for one. Also, all my gut feeling is that the hashos did pretty good while Tucker was hurt, while Brigham was hurt, they stepped up. And now we got a first basement, gold glove, and then we also got parades, and now all the we can do is get the pitching going.

I think we're going to be better than last year. And that's what I'm looking at. I'm pretty sure we're going to put some more pieces together. But my gut feeling is that the Astros are going to win the division again. And also the Texans are going to win by field goal. All right. Look at that. Oh, like that.

A lot of positivity for Gilbert. Astros won the division. Texans win by a field goal. I mean, look, the Texans are good at home, Ross. I mean, not counting the Tennessee game, obviously. Yeah, we'll have to bring that up. But they beat in Buffalo at home? Ugh.

They beat Indianapolis at home. How are they going to score points? They beat J.B.L. at home? You've got a score to keep up with Lamar Jackson. How's that happening? Yeah. Who's going to cover his eight flowers for three hours? Derek Stingley, all pro.

Mm-hmm. having a better season than Sauce Gardner of TSE. TSC continues to believe and we'll always believe that Sauce Garner was the pick. TSC, how are we feeling about Will Levis? And he'd been benched twice this year?

I believe we're no longer bullish on Will Levis. TSC picked Brock Bowers though. He did pick Brock Bowers, yeah. TSC's done okay. You didn't go to a third person on us. What are you, Coach Prime? No, I'm Ricky Henderson. R-A-P. May he rest? Oh, wait, did we do him for Believe it or not already?

Yesterday, thank you very much. I wasn't listening. Oh, you know, let's do this for a quick. We can do this. We've got 713-212-5-7-9. Let's play, believe it or not, real fast, with just you and me. We'll see how well you would have done. Oh, from the questions? Yeah.

Okay, you're going to pull up the questions? I'm going to pull up the questions. Let me see if I can find them. This is yesterday. I deleted your Merry Christmas email. By the way, don't text me Merry Christmas tomorrow. I'm going to text you. you married Xmas.

If you really wanted to wish me and Merry Christmas, you'd send me a card or call me. Why can't you text, though? What if you have a fairly informal relationship? What is wrong with you? No, because the people that are texting me, I have more than just informal relationships with it. So you want a card or nothing?

What's wrong with a Merry Christmas text? Because I've got to respond to it. I don't want to look at it. Oh, my God. You're a sick human being. No. People are trying to speak. It's so, it's so, it's so personal.

It's, oh, let's just, A friend of mine for 19 years. We'll send him a Merry Christmas text. You know, how about it is? People's lives are hard enough. You know how hard it is to get you a car? You're probably not even going to be grateful for it in the first place, the way it sounds right now.

Then I've got to mail it and stamp it and get it to you and sign it. Yeah, it's caught a little bit of effort. You're welcome. No, you're sitting you a text. I'm blocking you. I'm sitting you a text at midnight. All right, here we go. You're ready?

Yes, I am. All right, let's see if you would want a prize. Okay, here we go. Ricky Henderson is baseball's all-time steals leader. He's also been caught stealing more than anybody else, too. Believe it or not? Believe it. That is correct.

Believe it. Ricky Henderson said his favorite manager of all time was Billy Martin. Not. Believe it. Believe it. All right, here we go. Ricky was drafted by the A's in 1976 but had at least 12 scholarship offers to play football. Not.

That is also a believe it. 12? What? Where did you get that number? I need to see verification on this number. Why would I make that? It's Wikipedia. Okay.

Number four. They counted 12 exactly. It's what it said. B.S. on that. That's a not. Ricky had several girlfriends over the years, but never got married nor had any children. Believe it or not. Not. Yeah, he married his high school sweetheart and has three kids.

Number two, Ricky Henderson, who appeared in Toy Story 4 as an Oakland A's bobblehead. Not. That's a believe it. Believe it. I didn't watch Toy Story 4. I didn't see Toy Story 2, 3, or 4. What? Yeah.

Ricky wore two numbers during his major league career, 35 and 24. Not. That's a believer. I believe it. Sure, why not? Ricky Henderson used to work as a game commentator for NBC Sports after his retirement, but was fired for swearing twice during the 2004 All-Star game. Not.

Yeah. In 1984, Ricky scored. to run for the A's on a sack fly from third base, sprinting backwards towards home plate. Not. Not. You're good okay. I don't think you got any prizes, but you at least you try. I think I got the last three, or two or three.

Okay, you got one prize. You can go see the toties. I'm good. Alex and Conroe on 7 on the Alex, what's in your gut? All right, I got a couple here. I have a gut feeling that Singley's going to get an interception. I have a gut feeling that Mark Andrews is going to score. touchdown. I've got

a gut feeling that the Astros are still trying to keep Breggman and that they're secretly trying to shop be sucked-forated to move him. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's possible. I'm hopeful.

We've got a first baseman now. It'd be great to retain our third basement. But those are just my gut feelings. And I also have a gut feeling I'm going to drink a lot tomorrow. Yeah, you're probably already starting to drink already. Here's the quote from Alex Dana Brown. The way I view it now is that

Isaac Paredes is going to play third base. Christian Walker will play first. Negotiation stalled. I thought we made it a competitive offer in showing that we wanted Alex Bregman back. Rossi, Alex, his agrees. He didn't think it was very competitive, but if they have so much better, he would have been signed by now.

6-156 was not apparently competitive enough. We wish Alex were best. If 650-156 wasn't good enough, Maddie, I don't know if you're going to win your bet. Well, somebody's got to do it, right? Yes. I wonder if he's thinking, I want to get to the 200 threshold. That was the most important thing for him.

It seems like that's what's going to happen. It seems like that's the number in their mind. That's the number not in the minds of the other teams. All right. The news at noon is next. 1159 here on Sports Talk 790. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show.

1204 in H-H-town. What's happened at lunch timers? We are into hour number three of the Matt Thomas show with Ross. And as we do every time during this portion of the program, it's time for us to give you the news at noon. And with that, we go to the news desk for Ross for a row. All right, Matt's going to be back in the news at noon here on the Matt Thomas show. A lot of stuff going on here to sports news into Houston.

Most importantly, the Rockets pick up a big win last night. Holliday, right elbow. Goes up. Foltz a high arcing seven-foot shot over the arms of Musadiyabate for two. Aaron Holliday with back-to-back baskets and a technical foul has just been called. I believe. Let's see, who's an iron. Charles Lear or a player?

Oh, is Aaron Holliday? And he's just been tossing the game. Huh. A 11-1 win for the Russian Rockets. You're bearing the lead on that. What? Three minutes. two baskets

two technicals and an injection it's got to be some kind of a record for Aaron Holiday I mean what I don't know what he said but he's I saw him on the bus after the game last night and he goes I shouldn't have been thrown out

for the game I deserve one technical he thought he didn't deserve a second one well nonetheless the rockets get up big in the first half and get the win and are now 20 and 9 on the year and the number two seed in your Western Conference.

Thoughts? I'm happy. Very. Yes, I am happy. The schedule? I mean, what am I supposed to believe? Is the offense been good? I've been gone. I've been paying attention. First of all, the competition has been wretched, so they're not losing to them. They shouldn't be losing to. That's good.

Jaylon has, now, Jalen did not play well last night, but he has had a better run of things. Rock has played without Dylan Brooks yesterday. Van Blee was terrible in Toronto and was awesome last night. Jibari has been. become a, I think he's got double figures in six consecutive games, which is something I think a lot of Jabari Smith fans have been waiting for. That's good.

I mean, Thompson continues to be awesome no matter what you put him in in terms of me. He's hitting three point shots on the net, the semi-regular, but more than just once in a while, put that way. And the blown out teams, they should be beating up on, and they did. So, congratulations to them.

20 and 9, they've got New Orleans on Thursday, which should be another win. A tougher game against Minnesota on Friday. And, you know, Ross, I put it in there. I said yesterday during the Tell the Truth. I think the rockets are going to survive the top six. There will be no need for worrying about a playing game. They're not going to be in a plan.

Nope. Matt Thomas has locked it in. Yeah. And that's purely biased because I hope you're right. I'm rooting for it. Seriously. I mean, we've got to start believing in the hype at some point. I mean, we're this far into the season.

It's not like they just started. Yeah. That's good. All right, Matt, moving along on the news at noon. Of course, the Astros with First Baseman Christian Walker, and you had Dana Brown saying, as of right now in his mind, third baseman is going to be Isok Peridis and then First Baseman Christian Walker. MLB trade rumors also talking about how, well, on Chandler Rome's podcast,

he said he doesn't expect any more significant big dollar additions to the Astros that could leave less expensive outfield option for the Astros if they choose to pursue, such as Jesse Winker, Alex Verdugo, David Peralta, or Jason Hayward. Not sure if any of those names do anything for you. They're fine. Boy, I was talking about Christian Walker signing and our friend of the show Dan Matthews. He was, this outfield is terrible. You can't possibly go to the season with this outfit.

Bra, have you watched the team last year? They went with this outfield for 90% of the season. Yeah, Verdugo had a down year last year. Jesse Winker's okay. Jason Hayward, and, you know, I mean, obviously they'd claimed him off of waivers from the Dodgers, but he was good here in an Astros uniform down the stretch. Yeah. I will say this.

I think we're going to be underwhelmed with the outfield performance, especially if it's, well, if it's Jordan, who cares, he's playing DH. But it's going to be, 7-8-9 is going to be full of outfielders in the batting world. I think, what about, how do you feel about Zach DeZenzo in left field and then possibly down the road a Jacob Melton? When you say down the road, I get the feeling when Chandler was with us, it's going to be late 2024, if 2025 if it happens. It feels like to me that Matthews and Melton, probably Melton first over Matthews,

but it could be a while before either one of those two guys dons in Astro uniform. Okay. Let's see. Other things going on, of course, your Houston Texans in action going to be against the Baltimore Ravens. I'm trying to actually find a shorter clip because everything. as a minute plus. But, Matt, why don't you talk for five seconds? All right, I'll talk for five seconds about there's another story that we have to get to concerning the college football playoff.

And for Texas fans, you're going to be very upset when you hear the news that was reported yesterday by the folks in Atlanta. So stay tuned for that as our next news story here on the news. Okay. By the way, NFL rewind with Ross at the bottom of the arm. Yes, that is coming up. I'm actually prepared for that one. Here is C.J. Stroud talking about the injuries that have been piling up for the Houston

Texans. Yeah, you got a nice manner mentality. You know, with your numbers call, you got to make the play. So we're all prepared for these moments, you know. We do, D'Amico does a great job on, you know, competition periods and, you know, and practice during the season for practice squad guys to get an opportunity to play against the starters. And, you know, I think that's good for them. And it's an opportunity for them to, you know, step up and rise to their occasion.

So, yeah, I think, you know, that this is something that, you know, it happens on everybody's team. Injuries happen to everybody. So it's not easy to say that it's the worst part of our sport, but it's a part of it. And you've got to be prepared for it. I think Nick has done a good job of that. And, you know, the Miko has done a good job of preparing us that way to, you know, to have that next man mentality up and, you know, to be able to execute a high level when your number's called.

He knows it. What is that? That he knows. He knows it. He knows it's John Metchie season, baby. Oh, Xavier Hutchinson. Deontec Johnson. Yes.

But the Ante John is even going to be active tomorrow? What would you think? Probably not, right? Why not? What do they have to lose? They need depth. They need a receiver. He's not going to know where he's going.

What he's doing? So he's saying the route tree, the Texas is more convoluted than the average NFL Rock. No, I don't know. He's got to learn the play calls, at least, in the, yeah, the nomenclature, if you will. Nice, nice pull. Yeah, that's one of your favorite words, of course. Love it.

That's a word that's been in the problem. part of our vernacular for the last 14 years of this show. Elsewhere, Matt, if we're going to off the board for the news at noon, let me take you to Chilton County, Alabama. Where in Maplesville, there were police called to a bar, and, well, they found a man in a Grinch suit who was arrested after he had drank too much eggnock. The man dressed in the Grinch suit was acting strangely in the booths at the venue. Later at a Christmas parade, police spotted the same name. again acting aggressively towards nearby parade goers. The suspect was arrested and charged on charges of public intoxication,

disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and theft of property. And while the sheriff's office also put in their release, quote, intense to steal Christmas cheer. So it was a heavily spiked eggnars if you're trying to tell us. Yes. The Grinch Suitman actually waved his hand at cameras while being taken away in the back of a police car. Eggnog, yes or no, by the way?

I don't like it, but I mean, I'll drink it. It's not my favorite. But once a year. You wouldn't have a lot on a really hot day in July you would have a big old glass or eggnog. I'm not huge on brandy in general or cognac, if you will. Yeah, but the generic eggnog is not alcoholic. Well, yeah, but I thought you were talking about alcoholic. There's no alcohol in it.

Why would I even bother? So you're saying a non-alcoholic, non-alcoholed eggnog is not on your, every, you'll ever drink. What are you going to next? Give me a ginger ale with no scotch? Come on. All right, may I give you some breaking? We're not necessarily breaking news, but I'm going to add a little news and noon tidbit. Okay.

The Peach Bowl, and it's got a corporate sponsor to it, but they don't spend money with us, so they're not going to get a plug. Okay. Sent out a tweet 22 hours ago, Ross, and it goes like this. We all love. we love all of the great traditions of college football and no doubt bevo is one of the best but the unfortunate reality is there simply is not enough room on the sidelines of raredes wren stadium

with the constraints of the stadium and prioritizing the safety of bevo the players the network cameras support staff cheerleaders and photographers we unfortunately will not be able to have bevo on the field at the cfp quarterfinal at the rick roly peach bowl your thoughts Do you want my honest opinion?

Was he at the SEC championship game yesterday? No, he was not. He was also barred from that. All right. I don't care. I don't care. Oh, I see. You were going to set it up.

You said, you want my real thoughts on which, man, I knew you were going to go the other direction. Yeah, I don't care. It's a cow on the side of the field. I'm sorry. It's cool. I would like it. I mean, if Bevo is there? Is that going to help Quinn Ewers not throw interceptions?

I don't know. It's, there are some Longhorn people. who are upset about this and up in arms and this is, it doesn't matter. Please. If there's no room on the sidelines for him, there's no room on the sidelines. It's a giant cat, 900 pound cow or 1,000, whatever bony pounds cow it is.

Who cares? Play football. Let's focus on the game. I'm going to rank the best live mascots in the world. You're ready to go? It's B-B-O-1, and if you want to say something, you're lying. Here's my list. B-B-O.

Thank you. Revely. This is, okay. The buffalo at Colorado. It's just a dog. The buffalo, yeah. Like, yeah, Ralphie is cool. The tiger.

Although Ralphie stinks. Mike, the tiger, right? Yes. I got a sneaky first round live mascot pick. Okay. Uga. Yeah, Ugg is fine. And do we count the horse at Texas Tech?

Yes or no? I guess. Am I done? Is that everybody? I think it's Ralphie and Bevo. Ralphie and Bevo are one, two, in whatever order you want to put him. Oh, I'd go Raffee. Revely is literally just a collie.

I'd go Rever. I'd go, I'd go, Uggah, then Ralphie, then Bevo. And Uggie does nothing for me. Smoky, it's just literally just a dog. Does the Baylor Bears, they have a live mascot? They put a bear in a cage and go? Yeah, there's a grizzly bear. You can wrestle it for 75 bucks.

It had a circus, correct? Yeah. All right, there you go. That's the news at noon. 713-212-5-790, 7-1-3-21-2-5-7-90. Ross has the NFL rewind coming up in about 15 minutes from now. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. I don't know if you notice this, but we're going to talk about this coming back.

Kirk Herbstrude is being worn out by college football pundance. It's been a rough week for the lead college analyst in sports. 1215, sports talk, 7-90. Texans on three, one, two, three. Back to... Battle Red Ross and Liberty white-ass Matt Thomas. What up, what up? That is what I am.

Real Pale Texas Talk continues on the Matt Thomas show. What up? If I gave you the option, Ross, of listening to Chris's music when you wanted to, but had people singing songs pre-1990, I would take that option, right? I mean, I would say most of my favorites are pre-1990. Yeah. Yeah. I got you.

I don't, like, yesterday, Connor was playing all this hipster, like, Justin Bieber, and whatever. Wasn't that boy band that you had yesterday for a couple of songs? I mean, it was just like, eh. The Jonas Brothers? Jonas Brothers, exactly.

That's not Chris's music. Bing Crosby's Christmas. Harry Como's Christmas. Correct. Burrel eyes, if you will? No, I do like, Annie Lennox singing Christmas songs. It's kind of a strange.

And the Mariah Carey is post... Well, that's around 1990. It's the most popular Christmas song in the last 25 years. So says, I think, People Magazine or something like that. Whatever list you were looking for it to make... I got one more question for it's non-Christmas-related. Okay. I was looking at my Instagram, and I'm getting a bunch of people that are liking my videos

that I've never heard of before, and they're probably either bots or just people that just don't follow me. So I was looking at the number of people that have looked at my various different reels and videos. Like I had a video that showed up 1,200 views, one that's got 600 views, one that's got 500 views,

nothing crazy. My video of the, of me being in Las Vegas at the Schfier, a spear, a sphere, I can't even say it properly. Sphere. Sphere. Sphere.

Sphere. There's no V. No, Schre. It's not a smear. Or sphere. Sphere. Sphere. Sphere.

Sphere. Sphere. 38,300 people have viewed my videos. Wow. What'd you hashtag? I didn't hashtag anything. Nothing. What's your name?

You're on, this is the Instagram? SportsMT. Instagram. Oh, good for you. And apparently I found out that Don Henley gets all pissed off if you shoot video of it. Oh, he's coming after you, Matthew. He's the one that watches 38,000 times. Quite a political activist. from my understand too, which I didn't realize either.

It's funny, I don't know, I don't know, generally speaking, I don't know the political slants of the people that I like in life. Yeah. But I was certainly told after how he feels about certain things. I'm going to be honest with you. I have no idea what Don Hanley's politics are. I'm going to tell you something else. I don't care. Yeah, well, others do. But yeah, if, if you've not gone to the sphere, sphere, sphere, yet to see a concert, you have to go see it. It's unbelievable.

It was the greatest venue I've ever seen a concert. in my entire life. Wow. Period. And a story. Period. And a story. And you did a good job

filming their greatest song. All right. No, but it was their first song. It's not bad. I mean, I still like Hotel California. But it's not my favorite. They played it first to get it out of the way?

I mean, how do you feel about generally speaking? You don't play your number one hit to open up a concert, do you? They did that, though? Yeah, very sure. Yeah, I think a lot of people do that now. Trying to get it out of the way

and then they can go on to some. other stuff they like. Like, get your videos, blah, blah, blah. I think that's the way that a lot of people are going these days. Okay, so, yeah, the quick summation of that. Greatest venue you've ever seen, the sound was spectacular. I thought Don Henley sounded awesome for being 77. I mean, really blown away how good he was.

Vince Gill was very good singing the Glenn Fry songs. Glenn's son was in the band. He was good with a couple of songs he sang. Everything was great except who's the other guy that they're. sings in that group that was terrible. I've drawn a blank. He came a break. He's probably in his 80s. He's about the same age. I'm trying to think of who, God, Joe Walsh.

I was going to say, was Joe Walsh there? Joe Walsh was there and he was. He was back in the band, okay. He's lived a hard life, Matt. Oh, my God. He sounds like he's 97 years old. He's trying to talk into us. I'm like, man, do you even know where you are? A lot of drugs and alcohol for Joe Walsh. Oh, a lot. I think missing teeth, too, I think at some point.

Well, that happens to the best of us. All right. Let's go to Scott in River Oaks at 1226 on Sports Talks. Scott, thanks for holding good morning. Good morning. Morning. Morning. Afternoon, Matt and Ross.

Merry Christmas. Thanks for what you guys do all year long. I know it's not. We're not celebrating New Year's, but I really enjoy listening to y'all's show. This might have been a better topic last week when, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on with the Astros. I'm sure you guys have been talking about a lot of football today, but I wanted to hear y'all's thought on, I guess, a baseball conspiracy theory. I've come up with it. I'm really not a conspiracy theorist, but I want maybe you guys can give me some better insight. So I've always

been frustrated that when, you know, during the off season, when big name free agents come up for years, obviously now, especially of late, no matter who they are, the Yankees, Dodgers, and Mets, they're always going to be in the running, right? Because they're willing to go over the luxury tax. Well, the other day, I was watching the Texans' Chiefs games with my dad, and he came across an article saying since 2020, there's been about a billion dollars in luxury tax money alone collected by the MLB. That is a lot of money. So we started talking about it when it came across that article.

It's like, well, wait a minute. Where does that billion dollars go? And so we started looking into it. And the only things we could find is some of the money gets put into like the pension funds for retired MLB players and stuff like that. But then a large portion of the money from what we can understand, maybe I'm wrong. I can't 100% verify this. But it sounds like from what we read,

the other money gets redistributed to the owners of teams that are below the average revenue from local TV deals. If that's the case, this is a scam, in my opinion. I mean, the pirates and the Reds and the A's and whoever essentially get the luxury tax money paid by the Yankees and Dodgers. So essentially they're getting paid to allow them to get the best players. am I totally off on what I'm hearing because you guys know more about what exactly happens with this money? And if not, do you agree that that's, they should feel scammed.

Their fans should feel scammed if that is the case. It's not a scam. By the way, you've read it completely accurately. There is a money that has put in for like a coffer for pensions and whatnot and to fund insurance and that kind of thing. And there is operating costs that go into the major league baseball. But you're absolutely right. The Royals and the Guardians and the A's and the Reds, and the Reds, they need teams to go over the threshold so they can try to say competitive. You're never going to hear them complain about it.

You're never going to hear about the Royals having to hit a threshold where the Yankees have got to pay for it because they know they're getting money off of it. Because the reality is the television network deals where local TV rights, first of all, we're a wide discreputable. to begin with. And now these regional TV networks are larger going away. So instead of getting $3 million a year to broadcast your games, they're getting zero. Or instead of getting the multi-million dollar deals to broadcast

and these regional TV networks are getting zero. They need additional revenue funds and the easiest way they can do that because they don't get the big national TV dollars like the NFL does is they're going to take money from the teams that feel like they can go over the cap or the luxury tax. And so, yeah, they have a zero

problem with this. so you're saying that yes they do get the money but it's not something that the owners are just able to put into their pocket they're actually needing that money to fill out their payroll even though it's way less than the bigger market club ironically bobby wood juniors bobby wood juniors long-term deal with the yank with the royals to stay there is paid in part because the yankees the red sox the dodgers the cubs give the lower end teams the pittsburg's of the world extra operating money. See, that part I didn't, that they would actually need that money to fund their payroll. That's crazy. Yeah. I guess, yeah, they're never going to complain about that.

But I don't know. I mean, I say it's a broken system. I just don't like the system. I wish that there would be the, we could find a system where if the Reds need an outfielder, you know, T. Oscar Hernandez, for whatever reason, could be tied to them instead of him being rumored to go to one at five. Well, you know, the easiest thing you do on this is you have a hard salary cap, like the NFL does, where Green Bay and Pittsburgh can compete with the LAs and the New York teams.

You know, the NBA has got it to a lesser extent. They've got some different levels of aprons and whatnot, but you do allow San Antonio and Sacramento to compete with other teams. Major League Baseball, the upper echelon teams, want to. to stay up our national on and if it comes at a cost of saying we have to help Pittsburgh, Seattle, Cleveland, Cincinnati, I could go on and on Miami, stay alive, we'll do it. Yeah, I mean, I've always thought that one way to fix baseball because I know they would

never get the union to agree on a salary cap would be at least to do a salary floor, but that would sound dangerous. The teams would never, I guess, agree to a salary floor because they wouldn't guarantee, would ever be able to be guaranteed that they'd have a salary floor. enough revenue to fill out that salary for it, not be operating at a loss. That I don't know. Thanks, Scott, for the phone call. Do Major League teams have a salary floor, Ross?

I don't even know. They do not. Oh, I don't think so. Yeah. Yeah. No, the Yankees' television deal is so astronomical. They don't want to split that up with anybody. They don't want to split up with the San Diego Padres, Ross, who don't have a television

deal at all. Major League Baseball produces the San Diego Padres broadcast. they get zero money from a regional TV network. The Yankees, because they create their own network, are thriving because they get all the cable systems to subscribe. So they're playing by different rules. That's why Major League Baseball will never, ever go to a hard cap. The players would never agree to it.

Yeah. Because they want to continue to make sure the Yankees and the Dodgers are overpaying these athletes. Which they are! So even if you're being overpaying, if some people are overpaying, then you're at least getting other teams to spend money too to think that you're like Breggman needs the Yankees to overspend. They need the Red Sox overspend. Everybody needs everybody to overspend because at the end of the day,

everybody's contracts go up. All right, NFL Rewat is up next with Sports RV. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-1-2-7-9-0. Want to tell you once again about Game Day men's health, if testosterone levels are an issue for you and you're like, I don't know if I'd have low levels. How about getting a free tea test at any of the eight Houston area locations?

Game Day, men'shealth.com slash Houston will help you find the location near you. That's game day men's health.com slash Houston. Also, remember, if you're suffering with weight loss issues, if you think you've got erectile dysfunction, they can help you with that as well. Do me a favor. Go see those folks. They'll supply a plan for you that will be absolutely amazing to get your tea levels regulated, so you're feeling better.

You feel like you're in a better mood. Your libido is better. You've willing to work out a little bit more. You're getting better sleep. All with gameday, men's health.com slash Houston. Game Day, men's health.com slash Houston. The Matt Thomas Show with Ross continues on Sports Talk 790. Time is 1238.

A weekly feature on the show. Not done by Ross much the last two months because he's been busy galvan around this continent and world of ours. Two months feels like a little strong, Matt. All right, six weeks. Hey, only one of us is in studio today. One of us arrived at 2.15 at home. That's fine.

That's your second job. That I'm going to have to do with me. Oh, God, I knew you're going to say that. You know what? I need to go check on Carly, so I present to you the NFL Rewine. Okay, well, Matt is going to check. Back in two minutes. Okay, Matt, we'll be back in two minutes.

In the meantime, let's go ahead and start off with some wild action. in the NFC, Jaden Daniels against a Jalen Hurtz-Less Eagles team coming through in the clutch. 10 seconds to go. Second to go with the 10.

Snap to Daniels. Eagles rink four. Into the middle of the end of him. Texas! Go ahead! Washington Commanders 10 and 5. I mean, Jaden Daniels has locked up

the rookie of the year, at least on the offensive side. Despite 150 yards and a couple of touchdowns from Sequin Barclay. And we'll see what happens with Jalen Hertz, says he had the concussion in his missing time, but you would imagine going to be okay for the playoffs. But at the end of the day,

12 and 3 are the Philadelphia Eagles. The Lions right now, still the one seat at 13 and 2, tied with the Minnesota Vikings. So crazy enough, Vikings might only lose three games and the rest of the season, although they do have the Packers this week and then the Lions after that. a tough schedule coming up for them,

but shaping up like it's going to be the Lions is the one seed. NFC, while it has been the AFC with the more strong contenders over the last several years, very good. And now with the commanders and Jaden Daniels winning three straight, they got 10 wins. They are in all likelihood going to be in the playoffs

as well. Totally unrelated. Have you seen this? And again, I don't trust Twitter because you get the 4-U and it winds up giving you a bad directions. Have you seen there is a, and maybe it's just foe, that there's been talk of moving the commanders name back of the Redskins? No, is that real?

Are you watching fake news? Well, I mean, that there's... Again, I don't know if it's right or not. And this is my fault for not best doing more... Betting, yeah. Yeah, betting it out. But I don't know. I don't think a change in presidency means you change a name.

I mean, who knows? It's just weird that if you're the commanders, you've got things going right, you've got new ownership, you're about to get a new stadium. You got a rookie quarterback who's a phenom. I wouldn't worry about stuff like that. Just win football games. All right, Matt.

Elsewhere in football with teams not involved in the playoffs, De Las Vegas Raiders getting their third win over the weekend against the terrible Jaguars. Antonio Pierce asked about it, and he did not seem to care much about losing control over the first overall pick. Coach, for the part of Raider Nation, that is focused on the first overall drier. off-pick conversation. What is your response to them? Talk to Tom Stolesco. I didn't even hear what he said. What did he say? Talk to Tom

Telesco? Who's Tom Belesco? Is he the guy that runs a motel six? Is that the... Tom Telesco? That's the former general manager of the Chargers. Okay. So there you go. I thought that was a different one. I thought that was a different bite that I was playing. That's fine.

Okay, well, Tom Telesco, is he their current GM? Yeah, I think he is. So he ain't worried about it. Says Antonio Pierce. They're trying to win. They're not worried about the draft. They should be. They need the number one pick.

Although it's a terrible quarterback draft, right? I thought Shador. I think it's top-heavy. I think it's, is it Shador Sanders, and is there one more? I can't remember. I think there's like two quarterbacks, and then that's it. And you get Shador Sanders, and you get his dad, who's the will be the assistant general manager of the team he goes to.

Quinn yours might be available. Oh. Did we see enough, by the way, Arch over the weekend? in or no? That's fine. Yeah, you got in there a few times. We were doing a drinking game. Every time Arch came in, we did a drink. Okay. I got you. Yeah, Cam, was it Cam Ward? That's what I'm thinking of. I think Cam Ward and Shador Sanders are the headliners. And then after that, it's a very weak

quarterback draft. Is that what the draft Knicks are saying? The pundits, if you said. Yes. Okay, I got you. Yes. All right. What else you got? Let's see. What else? Actually, let's go to the NFL in general, Matt. as you know, the games on Christmas going to be on Netflix. And if you also recall, the Jake Paul Mike Tyson fight was a disaster on Netflix. Apparently Mike Floreo and Pro Football Talk reaching out to the NFL, asking if there are any contingency plans in place, the response from the league spokesperson, quote, we will be prepared and we are looking forward to a great day. So the answer is no.

the natural switch suggested by pro football talk would be CBS making a switch there to going to the major network CBS as they are producing the games So what do you think gut feeling We don't have to write this down on the document Everything gonna go smoothly within the games on Netflix tomorrow or no Yeah they'll be fine They're gonna be fine okay

Speaking of tomorrow and Christmas and the Texans taking on Lamar Jackson, Demico Ryan saying everybody has to be dialed in. The main thing when you're playing against Lamar is everyone has to be disciplined, right? Everyone understands and have elite awareness. So what he's capable of. And I think everybody knows that by now. He can run it.

Whatever he wants to do, he can buy time and throw the ball downfield, throw the deep passes. So everybody is a matter of just working together as a defense. Not only D-Line, but linebackers, secondary. Like, it's everybody just working together. being disciplined in our coverages, being disciplined, and our rushes, everybody just being dialed in. By the way, back to your Netflix story for a second, I greatly misreported the amount of money the NFL is getting for this game, these games. Go on.

I thought it was $10 million for the two games. Netflix is cutting a check to the NFL for $150 million. dollars. How is that worth their while? I don't know. How is that possibly worth their while? Anything I see, anything I see when it comes to any television rights fees. Like March Madness is a billion dollar deal between CBS and Turner.

ESPN wrote a blank check to the SEC to say, we'll carry every one of your games. 150. I mean, are people on Christmas at 1.30 in the afternoon going, God, I don't know. don't have I don't have Netflix. How am I going to watch this game between who's the first game? Kansas City in Pittsburgh.

Is that right? Yes. How am I going to miss this? There's a Swifty. You think you think 13-year-old Swifties are going to be like, but the game's in Pittsburgh, though. Yeah.

Oh, she's not even going to be there, huh? No, I wouldn't. I mean, maybe she might. You got to spend Christmas with your husband, right? Yeah. I think so. Maybe he'll pop the question after the game. Maybe that'll spike up the Netflix members.

That'll make it worth it, I guess. Yeah. All right. Sorry, but I just had to pass that along. All right, there you go, Matt. And there is your NFL rewind. When I told you,

when I said 10 million, I thought that was outrageous to pay for two games. 150? That's insane. And I believe it's Iron Eagle doing the first game and then Sun Noah's doing the second one. Hmm. Okay.

How do you like Noah Eagle's NFL prowess? He's doing very well for himself. He does the number one Big Ten game. game of the week on NBC. He's doing the Olympics. He's doing the Texan Chiefs game. And he just turned 16, I believe. Noah's a friend of mine,

so I'm not going to drop an age thing on him. But, yeah, he's young. He's doing quite well. He's doing very well for himself. Gave up the Clippers' radio job to do national television. Imagine that, Ross. Yeah, I think it seems like it's been a good move. I think so. What is, believe it or not today?

What? Mm-hmm. You said it's going to be Christmas related. Oh, we'll figure it out. All right. Up next, we're into Kirk Herb Street. He is getting worn out by the college football pundits. 1247, Sports Talk 790.

Back are back to the Mad Thomas Show. On Sports Talk 790. For the corner. Home of your Astros. Oh, Blue Eyes, SportsRV. You can never go wrong with the chairman of the board. Nope. He did it his way.

I see. He also flew you to the moon. And he also had people bury in cement. Well, allegedly. Didn't be to remove the Christmas. That's life. All right, real quick. Crick Herbstree got sideways with the first take gang and said, you know,

look everybody ripping on Ryan Day, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You won the game. And, you know, what are they going to say in first take? And then Shannon Sharp says, get your name out my mouth. Or get your name out your name out. mouth and I'm going to come after you. I don't care what ESPN said. And then Shannon Sharp today on his podcast had to kind of backtrack it. That's a man, me and Kirk are cool because frankly, ESPN will drop you like a bad habit, Shannon Sharp. So you got to know your role with ESPN.

But Kirk is getting worn out by a lot of national pundance. A former friend of the show, Joel Clyde, became too expensive for us, said basically, you know, why is everybody ripping, why is Kirk ripping on the schools like Indiana and SMU for not advancing? There are blowouts all the time in quarter final first round games. This is not out of the ordinary, and you just can't expect four one-score games in the first-round matchups. Do you think is there, and I like Kirk a lot,

I think he's very good, I think he's a very hard worker, he's very prepared, I never feel like he slips. Now, the issue is, is calling the same league week after week after week, creating a bias for him? Because you don't think about it. You know, the ESPN spent all this money on the SEC. So the best game of the week typically in college football, most time, more time than not, is in the SEC.

Is he showing his extreme bias because he's been in that league all season long? Is ESPN telling him you've got to be nice to one of our big partners who's paying us a lot of cash? Or do you really think that Kirk Herbstreets got a, uh, anti, he's got a bias against teams that aren't in that league because maybe he really truly believes that Indiana and SMU should not have been invited to the tournament? I think there is a little bit of bias there, probably. And I think it's not even necessarily Kirk Herbstreet. I think it's a lot of the national pundits. I think if it were named any other team, talking about Alabama specifically,

like if they were Mississippi State and they had the exact same resume and lost those games, I don't think there would be nearly as many people clamoring for them as they were to get into this playoff. And pointing to the example of a couple of blowouts, I think as long as you're going to bring up Tennessee and say they were undeserving as well, then just don't bring any of them up. Yeah. The reality was we just, we didn't get very many good matchups.

I mean, Clemson, Texas hung around for a while, right, Ross? But speaking, that game was over with by the start of the fourth four. Yeah, Texas did cover the spread, man, as you know. As we know. Unfortunately, it was close. And that's the most important thing.

That was the only one of the four that did cover is, right? I think, no, I mean, that didn't cover. I don't know. Sure, why not? But, yeah, I mean, SMU, Stop throwing pick six as SMU. But anyways,

uh, blowouts are going to happen early on. We'll see if they keep going on. I mean, to me, I think it's much ado about nothing. We argued about the top two teams. We argued about the top four teams.

Now we're arguing about the top 12 teams. If you lose to Vanderbilt and you lose to oh you who's terrible, you don't deserve to be in. Maybe something needs to be changed with these automatic bids. I mean, I mean, excuse me, uh,

Boise State and Arizona State having these automatic top four is ridiculous. but I don't know if that's going to change. Well, the reality is if we went to 16 teams, we'd have an argument about the 17th and 18 teams. Absolutely. At no point would we ever go, we don't need to argue about the two teams or the three teams that didn't get in.

Right. Before the top of the hour, Michael in the Woodlands on 790, Michael, good afternoon to you. Thanks for calling. Hey, guys, just want to say Merry Christmas, and I appreciate all the work you guys do on the Rockets games. Thank you very much. We have a great time doing it.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm a personal trainer in Houston, so I drive home after my evening clients. I can always count on you guys to have the game on, man. Awesome, thanks. So that's always good stuff. But now, man, I just wanted to call in because I had a gut feeling that I called in at the beginning of, you know, preseason NFL. And when you guys were real hyped about, you know, the Texans, Bobby Sloick, C.J. Stroud, all these guys. And I said, I said that C.J. Stroud would throw 100% more picks, and he threw five last year.

And I've been waiting to call in because he hit him. number 11. So, you know, he threw that 11th pick. And the reason I said it was going to happen because there was a year of film on all these guys that had great seasons last year. I said there was no existing film on Bobby Slovick's offense. You know, C.J. Stroud, you know, not in that offense. You had the Ohio State film. Tank Dell came out of nowhere. You know, Nico had a great year. But yeah, man, I kind of called that before the season started. And I also said, Kukuchi was going to be good. And I said Bregman was going to come back. But I don't think that going to hit. I think he's going to walk. But you know what, Michael, I'm glad you call because

one of the things about gut feelings is when you hit them, you're supposed to call him brag. And it's not a humble brag. It's a regular brag. You get it right. You are deserving of the opportunity to come in. And if you said there he's going to throw double the interceptions, I respect that. Yeah, I work with a lot of Texans fans. I'm like, hey, man, pump your brakes, man. A lot of these wins have been really, you know, unimpressive, you know. But, yeah, but no, they beat my Cowboys, so you know, that was a good game. Sorry your Cowboys were eliminated from the playoffs, by the way, over the weekend. Hey, it was tough, man.

But, you know, I think McCarthy and Zem, I think they're earning a little two-year deal or something to come back, man, because that defense was playing their butts off. All right. Michael, thanks for the phone call. Happy New Year. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. What else?

Hanukkah, for those of you that celebrate, anything you want from a season's greetings from us here at Sports Talk 790. I can't believe McCarthy is still the coach. the Cowboys. I'm stunned. He's going to get an extension. He's going to get an extension. This is great. I think it's great. You beat the Bucks on the night. You get eliminated from the playoffs?

I mean, does that mean he's a master motivator? Does it mean guys are working for next year? Does it mean they want them there? Hell, I don't know. Yeah, how do the Bucks lose at the Cowboys? You're in the middle of the NFC South. This is your division to win. Carolina sucks.

New Orleans sucks. Atlanta just went to Mike. Michael Penix, and you can't win a game against a team that just got knocked out of the playoffs? Bucks, you suck. And they're not very good. That's how? LFC South. What's worse?

NFC South or AFC South? Go. NFC. By a smager quite a bit. Which, by the way. Yes, sir. We dismissed that Texans win over the Cowboys. They've won four out of five cents.

All right. Final hour, the Matt Thomas show with Ross coming up in your own. We've got, believe it or not today in 50 minutes. And by the way, we played the Christmas Peanuts Instrumental song. What's the name of that song? We know what it's called. Linus and Lucy. That's an underrated Christmas jam, I've got to say.

Is it underrated? I have been. I think it's great. It shows up on my Facebook reels all the time. Oh, okay. With Anne Margaret dancing to it back in the day. And Margaret? And Margaret.

1968 and Margaret. Okay. Ooh, Lordy. Man, that is how this algorithm's got. you down to a team it does have me down i mean i gotta be honest it does i stare at that music and i'm like she's dancing and like okay i'm gonna send it to you right now i'm good no you're just too late you're getting you're getting blocked no you've already i've already gotten three merry christmas text already from people today i'm not happy about that i'm sending you one right now guess what am margaret's

on your way next one o'clock at sports talk 790 lunch timers this is the Matt Thomas show. Apparently, we're coming up this May, last May, that Lindsay Lohan's going to play Anne Margaret in a biopic coming up. I'd watch it. Is that real? She said it receives her blessing, but is it in production? I don't know, Us Magazine reporting that. Thank you, Matt.

Hmm. Why are you sending me a TikTok? I don't even have TikTok. I got to sign up, I guess. It's fine. It didn't hurt you. I don't think you need any trouble on TikTok. I thought it was the, I thought it was the, I thought,

I thought like a China was going to get all my information. No, China, it's fine. I thought TikTok was going to be banned. No, if Israel may get you guys. The China. What, TikTok is about to get banned? Yeah, so I shouldn't bother signing up. Okay.

So I shouldn't bother signing up. Okay, well, I can still send you a video another way if you want me to. It's her dancing to the peanut song in 1967. It's not really that she's not really dancing to the peanuts. Correct. But it just matches. I love watching old videos of things I saw. as a kid being match up with current songs.

Clearly they know that. How much cocaine is she on in this video? Geez. Oh, you're watching it? Good. I found I had to find it on Instagram because I don't have a TikTok. I mean, well, I guess I didn't sign it. I think I do.

I mean, I'm telling you, I don't know Anne Margaret at all, obviously, but I'm guessing back in 1965, like, 80, she was quite a rascal. What does that mean? 713-212-5-790. I mean, she was basically probably Britney Spears back then, right? A little BS crazy. Don't even know. I don't even know.

What is Ann Margaret known for? Was she on that show with the three-hour tour? What was that called? Gilligan's Island. No, that was Tina Louise. Oh, okay. What was Anne Margaret known for? Singing, dancing actress, hooking up with Elvis many times.

Okay. So she's known for hooking up with Elvis and dancing. Okay. She's Oh, she was in Bye Bye Birdie. Yeah, I didn't know that. I'm looking into Wikipedia right now. Grumpy old man.

Oh, she was in any given Sunday? She was in grumpy and grumpy or old men. She was a classic. Hook up between Walter Mathau and Jack Lemon. She's alive. She's 83. Congratulations to her. But, I mean, look, 1975.

I am Margaret. I mean, it is what it is. I'm sure it was great, Matt. 50 years ago. Question is, Anne Margaret go to Elvis's funeral? The answer is? I have no idea. Yes. She was advised not to attend, but did anyway.

Was it mob ties or what? She loves Elvis as a dear friend and wanted to honor his memory. Even decades later, Anne Margaret would become emotional over Elvis's memory. So apparently Elvis went from Anne Margaret to Priscilla Presley. Okay. So every time she saw a toilet, she would think of Elvis Presley slumped over on it. Is that true that he really died in the toilet? I believe so. I feel like that's kind of made up.

Is that an old wife's day? I think so. It's like Mama Cassett. She really choke on the ham sandwich? I don't know. Did Elvis really die on the toilet? Oh, you're going to go to Wikipedia or Google to figure that out? Yeah, why not? That's right. Yes, Elvis Presley died while sitting on the toilet at his Graceland home in August 16th of 1979. And apparently working at the Kmart in Grand Rapids, Michigan into the late 90s.

Elvis likely died of a heart attack after straining. No, never mind. All right. You know what, that's enough. Let's not bury. May he rest. You ever been to Grace Line, by the way? No.

Do they have the toilet on display? No. No, but I was there one time. This is obviously before Lisa Marie passed, and his grave is at the site. And so you walk by his grave, and I think his parents, I think, are somebody near. I mean, I think Priscilla's there.

I mean, not Priscilla. Lisa Marie. Lisa Marie is there now, too, I think, since her passing. She's dead? She's dead, yes. I got to look this up now. Oh, yeah, she died last. I forgot.

When I walked by, and I was like, there was something on top of his grave. And I was like, what is that? So I walked really as close as I could without getting any trouble. It was a canned ham. Like spam or ham? No, it was definitely, you can go get a canned ham right now at the grocery. if you wanted to. I don't think it would taste very good, but you could do that.

This is Christmas. This is like post-Christmas 1996, because I was there to cover the Liberty Bowl game. And, yeah, we went on a tour, and we went to Elvis's grave, and there he was with a canned ham around on top of the tombstone. It was really bizarre.

That does sound bizarre. Thank you, Matt. You know, you're going to put on top of my tombstone. There's only one answer. I'm, well, if you want that nasty, pressed port gristle sheet, 713-212-5-7-90 happy mic rib to pre-mic rib for christmas it's already out isn't it a delightful treat if somebody gives you a mic rib for christmas throw it in their face folks you have my blessing you tell me

you would not want a platter of micribs being served on christmas day no that sounds i would no that sounds worse than getting lumps of coal louis and sugarline at 110 on seven o'ty louis good afternoon mt and rv hey happy holidays to you guys you all be a Great job. Same to you. Okay, Matt, I got two things. Let's take care of the most important one first. The video of Ann Margaret dancing to the Linus and Lucy is from 1975, not 68, first of all.

Well, it says 67 when I went and looked at it, so I mean, I wouldn't have made that up. All right, then there's another one floating around out there of her dancing her ass off on Johnny Carson, which wasn't terrible to look at either. I'll just leave it at that, you know. But, Ross, you need to watch Bye-bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, and a movie called Magic with Anthony Hopkins, and that'll tell you everything you need to know about Ann Margaret, okay? I've seen Bye-bye Birdie.

Yeah, but RV wasn't even born then. You probably weren't either. Hi, my name is Ross. I've seen it. I'm saying I've seen it. What intersection are you out? Why is your turn signal still on? Where are you headed?

I'm trying to get the hell out of this parking lot is where I'm headed. Anyway, I have a question. Should we be worried about Tari Isan or what's going on with him? You know what? He has missed what the last three games, I want to say. He was with us on the trip. I don't know if I would say worried. I would say that the thing that E.

May told me was that when you play every other day, it kind of keeps everything not necessarily loose but able to move around a little bit and when you've had extended days off like the rockets have had the last two weeks things tend to tighten up I would say that we're now back to a more regular schedule starting on Thursday when they take on the pelicans in New Orleans then you get a back to back I'm going to hold off for another week or so before I officially hit the I'm worried button all right I was just curious because I mean him him and Thompson were going crazy there and then all of a sudden he's missing, you know.

So, all right, well, guys, happy holidays. And Matt, I can't believe it, but I actually love listening to you on the radio. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. It's nice you to say that. I very much appreciate that. I mean, it was kind of nice. He said, I can't believe it.

Yeah, I was like, I was looking forward to being disappointed and I wasn't. Okay, thank you. I turned on my radio and you're actually pretty good. Yeah. I'll say this. You know who's making the most of the playing time the last couple of games? Who's that? Cam Whitmore.

Uh-oh. Slam Whitmore? Slam Whitmore's got back-to-back threes after making only one in his first handful of games of a rocket this year. She's turning it around. Well, I mean... Reed Shepard, not so much. Reeds going through the old rookie woes, if you... Work in progress, as they say.

Yeah. I don't know. Do you think if you were the Rockets, were you sent the G-League for a little bit, or would you say, you know what, there's nothing more you can do hitting three-pointers against AAA players, might as well get the experience of the big leagues. That seems like the great debate.

I would say, send him down. Let him get some more minutes and let him build some confidence, I think. Well, I don't think he's, his head's not in the, he's not walking around in depression mode. I think he just feels like, hey, the shot's not falling right. You didn't look confident on the floor to me. He's still blocking shots and getting steals. He's lengthy as the kids are saying.

Well, he's not here. block shots and get steals. I know. He's already hit jump shots. I can get it. 114 is the time. I'd be curious to see what they do in the next five or six games with him. 7-13-213-2-5-790. 114. It is a Matt Thomas show with Ross. We've got, believe it or not

today, coming up at 150, and then at 2 o'clock, not the 18. Disgraceful. This is Sports Talk 790. Back to Matt Thomas and Ross Villarreal. On Sports Talk 790. This big Crosby here? You see what I see.

Yes, it is. Isn't it weird that Big Crosby and David Bowie did a duet of Little Drummer Boy back in the day? Yeah, why'd they do that? Well, they create a little bit of 1974 buzz. Hmm. Whatever that was. I don't even know what it was. Like, who'd be the oddest combo of people to do a duet in 2024-5 coming up?

Kanye West and AI Tony Bennett. Why do we go at AI? I don't know. I don't know if there's any old crooners that are still alive. Who is the oldest crooner still alive? Bennett's dead. Gordon Lightfoot is dead. Cruner.

I can't think of it. Who's an old school crooner? Listen, what you wouldn't call Wayne Newton a crooner, would you? Close enough. He's alive? Oh, yeah. Still does a show in Vegas. Now, his face is like 30 years old, but he's the rest of him is like eight.

His face is like eight. It's true. See, Dean Martin, dead. Bobby Darren, dead. Johnny Mathis alive? Johnny Mathis is alive. Not more. Not exactly.

No. Who's the crooner today? Andy Williams? Dead. Dead. Yeah, long dead. That's a shame. Paul Acos still alive.

Paul Anka still alive. Okay. Kanye and Paul Anka. Neil Sadaka, in front of the show, is still alive. Okay. I wouldn't call him a crooner, but yeah. Vic Dimon, dead.

You know, and this is going to come a zero surprise to you. I made me regretting saying that I'm so what I'm about to say. But all my favorite bands and singers are getting so old that they're going to be soon unavailable to tour and have live performances. Yes. Like McCartney is, I'm never going to. see him again. Oh, are you sure? What if he has one last farewell tour?

You're already cracking. You're already cracking. If he's at the sphere, I'll go see him. The sphere. The sphere. The sphere. The sphere. Sphere.

I saw the Eagles at the Sphere. There's no V. No V. Sphere. No V. And they were awesome. But they're in the late 70s. I saw the Doobie brothers.

They're all in their 70s. half the bands are gone Barry Manilow I'm going to Are you doing that again? Yeah I'm taking paint you're sick We're going in June and June in Vegas yeah Okay

It's his Brits' Christmas gifts So don't tell him Okay I won't He's in his 80s I mean God I care This is Hell the Rolling Stones

I might even a big Stones guy But they're still a touring And they're all in their late 70s Some of them were dead Didn't Charlie Watts die Yeah Well as long as Keith and Maker still alive,

the band will so go on. Hell, Fleetwood, Mac's broken up. They're mad at each other. Again? Lindsay Buckingham won't speak to Mac Fleetwood and Lindsay and, well, Lindsay is alive. Christine McVee is dead. The Eagles said good with Vince Gill.

I mean, that was a good pickup for him, them. I mean, he's different, but he's still very, very good. What else is out there that I like that it's going away? It was dead. This is really bringing me down. Oh, Hall and Oates are a restraining order against each other. Oh, that didn't get lifted yet? I don't think so.

You know what you do? You keep selling this as a bit, and then you guys make up, and you have a chance to go on a reunion tour. Like we call it Hall & Oates, we're friends again. There you go. Just saying. Elton John can't see anymore. He's not touring anymore.

He retired. All right, there's my musical taste for the show today. Let's go to Philip and Memorial at 124 on Sports Talk 7-90. Philip, happy Christmas Eve to you. Hey, Merry Christmas, Matt. I love the show. My weekend doesn't start until the strippers wake up. And Ross, shout out to the Aldian District.

Let's go, baby. Let's go. Hey, man, I think the NFC South gets too much hate. I'm a Bucks fan in Houston since the Oilers left. And the AFC South, it's not as good. They don't have as many wins as the NFC South does, and the NFC South has wins against better opponents in the AFC. You know, if we did a deep dive on it, Philip, and obviously you have, I hear the passion your voice as NFC South Guy. You may be the only person in Houston that is NFC South Guy.

I would tend to probably believe you because Jacksonville and Tennessee are both at three wins apiece. Carolina, I got news for you, Philip, and Ross, you back me up on this. Bryce Young is actually playing pretty well for the Panthers. He is. They still only have four wins. The division leader literally just switched quarterbacks there so bad. Yeah, but I think we get a little bit of hell because of how we won the division with a losing record a couple years ago. And people see that and they won it last year with just barely nine wins.

All right, look at this. Just a little bit far. Let's go mono, mono. If Jacksonville and Houston, excuse me, if Houston and Atlanta, to play, Houston wins. I think either venue. I really believe that. Indianapolis plays Tampa.

That's the second place team. I think Indianapolis would lose both times, regardless of place. Third place would be Jacksonville against New Orleans. Geez, who the hell would want that? Nobody wants that one. And I think Carolina would be Tennessee. So you know what? You may be right.

NFC South may be slightly. Rossi, 5149 over the EFC sound. Sure, why not? Yeah. I got to take the wins where I can get them. Who's the stinkiest pile of turds? Let me taste it. There's none of the radio show in the marketplace.

It's breaking down NFC versus AFC South except this one. So be happy. We love you for that. We're doing it at our own peril. I know. Thank you very much. We love you. Happy holidays, Philip.

I appreciate it. If you do cumulative point differential, it looks like... Oh, here we go. I like this. It looks like the AFC South is worse as well. But New Orleans didn't score a point yesterday in Green Bay. I mean, that's even the worst team score. That was the only shutout we've had in the entire NFL season.

That's it. That's pretty bad. All right. Let's go to Steve and Katie at 126 on 790. Steve, good afternoon. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Since you were talking about Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, I decided to see if you

would like to hear a real Frank Sinatra story. You know, we know he had. We've got to limit this. Now, hold on. Steve, I'll tell you. We had a story earlier today about. Michael Bublay that why not being completely not about Michael Boubley was about this guy's girlfriend leaving him for Michael Bublay for like 30 minutes and having sex with him so

unless you could beat that I don't know what you could possibly give us to the story here so a real story is he liked a drink he liked a party he like women blah blah blah blah blah and but he was very in Vegas around say 45 50 years ago he required his car to be there from the ballet driver so the valet driver brings his car efficiently and frank Sanatra says, what's the best tip you ever had, kid? And the kid said, $100, sir. They says, well, here's your lucky day. Here's $200.

He says, by the way, who gave you the $100 tip? He says, you did, sir, last night. Thank you. That's a good one. Short and sweet, at least. Did he mic drop that one, too? Yeah, I think so. Hmm.

And again, no affiliation allegedly with Mob in Vegas. you're like no you're saying frank sinatra had no mob ties allegedly allegedly allegedly all right we have one segment left before you play believe it or not believe it or not believe today is all christmasy stuff is that what you're going with we'll figure it oh i gotta yeah we'll figure it up we got i got something okay by the way if rain is coming in the houston area in the next few hours so if you

are traveling today to you see like we're going to the woodland to see family after the show today. So please be careful wherever you are going. You're in no hurry. It's Christmas Eve. Let's not get crazy. So with the rain coming and winds and that stuff, it could be kind of nasty this afternoon. So please be careful.

128. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross. We have a final segment of open-line commentary. Well, we're going to come back, and we're going to play a song for you that I think is unfortunately ridiculed way too much when it comes to the Christmas music season. Sports Talk 790. 713-212.

790. This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross on Sports Talk 790. Now this is, I'm asking the wrong person for this. If you were to go to a list of the worst Christmas songs of all time, this one always makes it.

Because it is the worst. What makes it so bad? It just doesn't sound very good. It doesn't seem very cheery. The synthesizer at the beginning sounds like a six-year-old. Just got gifted one for Christmas and just go,

boom, boom, boom, it's just terrible and uninteresting and not fun. So everybody's allowed to make one mistake in his life. Maybe this is Paul Miller. Doesn't he have some other song you hate? Temporary secretary,

yes. I was going to say something to operate. but yeah, secretary, same thing. I mean, the synthesizer probably is adding too much to the song, but I don't think, when I hear this, I don't go, this song sucks. I do. Yeah, I know. And I'm in the minority.

I think people, even Beatles fans and Paul McCartney fans hate this song. It's, yeah. It's making me actually angry. You know, okay, you know what I'm going to do then? I'm going to text, Connor, my least favorite song of all time. Is this your least favorite Christmas song? This one, I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. It's terrible.

Oh, there's another one I can't like. I don't like it. I can't remember it right now. All right. I'm going to text right now. Connor, I'm going to text to you. And you can play any version of anybody singing this. I don't really care who it is.

It's just the song sucks. Some people don't like the chipmunt song, but I like it. It's okay once a year. I wouldn't want to listen to a lot of chipmunk songs in the middle of August. I will take this song, take it off the board, and add a new one to the all-time worst

Christmas song of all time. Oh, this song is good. This specific version? Any version. Oh, okay. Is Jackson 5? Is this Jackson 5? Yes. Kissing, kissing, Santa Claus.

It's fine. It's not my favorite, but I like it. The lyrics are wretched. Why? All right, enough. I just want to pass it along. Wonderful Christmas time is not great, but it's significantly better on that trash we just play.

Disagree. All right. I have to disagree with you. Okay. Oh, yeah, I want a hippopotamus for Christmas. I'm not a big fan of it. I used to hate last Christmas, but that song warmed up. Yeah, we put it today.

It wasn't terrible. Wasn't terrible at all. We'll get the ideas of Adam and Adam on the A-Team today, Yeah, their favorite Christmas. No, no. They're not working. They're already celebrating their families and stuff. That sounds like fun.

Okay. That's fine. All right, let's go over a few sportsy things here before you believe it or not. I have the Texans losing by double digits tomorrow. Whatever. Don't be mad at me. That's fine. I mean, the Ravens are better.

Usually you're wrong. Your predictions about the team are dead wrong. I've had a better year, actually, this year. I really have. I mean, compared to the year before, I got every winning wrong. I mean, okay, so you were at 20% hit instead of zero, is what you're saying? I was thinking more like 36 to 38%

but what's the percentage among friends? I don't even know. You're hardly ever here. Oh, is that right? Yeah, it is. I'm bouncing around these NBA streets. Yeah. Meanwhile, you're 7,000 miles away

eating amazing amounts of Korean barbecue. Oh, it was good. No regrets. I think Korean barbecue may be my favorite sauce. Like, if I'm going to get, I don't know if Sam's got it over at, Big City wings, but if he does, a Korean barbecue wing is delicious. Okay.

So, Sam, if you're listening, if you want to add a new flavor over there, Korean barbecue would be the jam. Well, cut the check, Matt. Don't just give it away for free. Okay. What else? NBA games tomorrow, I got terrible moves for the NBA. They're going to get their ass kick by Netflix. Unless Netflix is completely failing. And we should also mention Netflix, the Texans game will be on Channel 11 tomorrow. So if you don't have Netflix, need not worry. You'll be able to see at least the second game. Oh, thank goodness.

We're going to streaming for our sports networks. It seems like it's happening. Now, we're seeing cable getting bigger games. You know, the college football playoff, final four. Could there ever be a big enough playoff check? Was there a streaming game for the playoffs last year? Did Peacock do an exclusive playoff game? Remember got a lot of ridicule?

Yes. Yes, they did. despite I believe you saying it would never happen. Is there any amount of money that would put a NFL Super Bowl on a stream? Super Bowl, I wouldn't think so, but I would say never say never now. God, it's crazy. In 10 years, if Netflix wants to cut them a billion dollars to get the Super Bowl or something? Let's put this way.

They're paying one fitty for two games. On a Wednesday. On a Wednesday. And again, here's my thought. Again, I don't mean to speak for every sports fan, but, let's say we were fans of the Carolina Panthers or we were fans of the Las Vegas Raiders and we're spending time with family and friends are we going to and we don't have Netflix are we going to be that thirsty for two NFL Wednesday games that we're going to go put in a

14 dollar what is Netflix a month 15 16 dollars now something like that range I thought the the bottom of the barrel I thought was still like seven bucks I have no I honestly don't know okay the point being is that we are we really going to go get we're going to all of a sudden go yeah maybe we should stream after all. By this service. Okay. It says standard is $1599 now? Oh, standard with ads is the cheap one for $7.

Yeah. I mean, I do love Netflix. I mean, all it does is provide great movies, outstanding documentaries. It's a great channel. And Max, by the way, is coming up nicely, too. They're doing just fine. Those two. I'm sick of all of it.

Hulu, Disney, ESPN Plus, Netflix. I could live without Hulu. I could live without, I think I can live without the peacock. Disney Plus. Amazon Prime. I'd miss the Thursday night games, but most of those are dogs anyway. There were some good ones towards the end of the season. There was, which made Al Michaels happy.

Maybe that's the reason why he's coming back for another season. It's getting some decent Thursday night games. Al Michaels is a legend, but they could do better. He's past his prime. Yeah, I mean, most NFL guys, I mean, I could probably still do the Rockets at 80, but I don't know if I'd be at my best at 80. I'd like to try Well, we'll see

That'd be 28 years from now Woo You know there's an 80 plus year old NBA guy So in the league Gary Gerald is the radio voice of the Kings He's like 83 still doing the games Oh, Kings games? Kings He's seen a lot

Of losses A lot of utility And by the way, Hughie Brown's going to do his last game In February for ESPN Really for his 100th birthday, I believe He's 90 I think he's 92. That's ridiculous.

I mean, good for him. I guess. Go home, Hubey Brown. Go play with her great, great, great, great-grandchildren. I mean, yeah, he's, yeah, Hughby. Imagine being 92 years old and being given a headset and saying you're going to speak to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Yeah? He's obviously more successful as a broadcaster than he ever was as a player, as a coach.

But damn, that's a long time. long long time all right believe it or not today what are we playing for how's the prize vault on this Christmas Eve I bet it's plentiful

we've got plenty of tickets to go see toadies and then we've also got one pair of tickets left to go see sticks um oh sticks okay I got you

by Ross have you seen the Yacht Rock documentary no I didn't catch it how was it? It was outstanding oh I'm sure it was amazing and one of the pioneers of Yacht Rock

according to the documentary was one George Bitts. Oh, whatever. I don't believe you. Okay. Do you think I made that up? He's not a pioneer. He didn't make... Yonauter is made up. I didn't say he was a pioneer. I didn't make...

Yes, you did. I didn't. I'm saying. There's a Hall of Fame of Yacht Rock Goats. It would have to be Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins. You'll also be in that group. It's just a puniful cast. Toto, the band would be a great

yacht rock band. It's all good. All right. Let's play, believe it or not, next. We've got the prizes in 713212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. 144. This Matt Thomas show with Ross.

Final segment for this Christmas Eve here on Sports Talk 790. Back to Matt Thomas. This is Sports Talk 790. Home of Astros baseball. Real quick, Ross, I've got a little Christmas early gift for you. the Major League Baseball umpires union and Major League Baseball have agreed on a new

five-year extension to ratify their labor agreement and that will clear the way for instant replay on ball and strikes to be used in spring training 2025 in both Florida and Arizona in what, like a challenge system or what?

Let me read you the exact story. I think it's basically it's going to be the whole thing. going to be balls and strikes MLB union I I read it as it was going to be everything not just the challenge system and that if they wanted to they could ultimately implement an extra layer of video review

for strikes and balls okay so yeah new five year deal on that I want to make sure I read this properly the two stories I read was they could use it towards balls and strikes. Let's see here. To test an automated ball strike system

during spring training next year. Oh! Full on it? That's not a challenge. That's full. That's full, Rossi. Let's go. It's going to be hard for them to get that all the way through.

I still think the challenge is what's going to be... I mean, I know you don't want to believe in compromise, but I think it's better than nothing at all. It's not that I don't want to believe in compromise. If you can get the calls right, they're saying we can get every call right, but we're choosing not to. It's ridiculous. Well, but nobody's saying for sure they're going to get every call right.

That's why they're going to test this thing out is, will they really get every call right? It'll be better than the humans. You know what? This is one of those situations that I was falling on a sword for this for about, I don't know, the last 10 years, the last two or three. It's been hard. The umpire scorecard website or that Twitter account has treated umpires very poorly. Well, they just put out the facts. Yep. It has not been pretty.

All right, five minutes left to go before Christmas. What should we do? We should play. America's fastest growing sports radio game. Shall we simply call it B, believe it or not, if you're how it works. You call 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90.

Today's edition of Believe or not is the category of about to look it up. Christmas movie trivia. I'll read you a statement about a Christmas movie. Statement's completely utterly accurate. You'll say this. Believe it. If a statement's erroneous, full of bone committed up, you'll say this. Not.

Two, believe it or not, so all things about Christmas movie trivia and wins your prize. What are you playing for today, Connor? A pair of tickets to see Toadies live on December 29th of the House of Blues, and our final pair of tickets to see sticks with Kevin Cronin of Ario Speedwagon and Don Felder, formerly of the Eagles on the Brotherhood of Rock Tour on June 6th at the Woodlands Pavilion. June 6, Woodland, summertime with those great bands. 713-212-5-790.

David and Conroe on 790. David, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it or not, Merry Christmas, guys. Believe it, thank you. In 2003, a Rotten Tomatoes panel determined that Love actually was the greatest Christmas film of all time. Believe it or not? Not. What is Ross the greatest of all time?

I don't know. I made the panel up. Oh, okay. Oh, you did? Okay, very good. statement number two for the win fox studios had to pay millions to a school teacher after a judge determined the story for the nineteen ninety six film and jingle all the way was stolen believe it or not believe it that's correct

congratulations nice to go rubin on seven on a rubin you're ready to play believe it or not believe it there was a director switch during the production of National Lampoon's Christmas vacation as original director Chris Columbus quit saying Chevy Chase treated him like dirt. Believe it or not. Believe it. That is right.

Ross, I've heard nothing good about Chevy Chase as a human being. Period of story. Sad. Statement number two for the win, during the filming of Scrooge to Bill Murray and director Michael Donner actively hid each other and got into daily arguments on the set. Believe it or not.

Believe it. That is also correct. And I can tell you firsthand, having interviewed Bill Murray one time, he's an a-hole. Merry Christmas. 713. That's not a perfect 4-4-4.

I'm quitting. I'm quitting for the new year. You know what? You're giving the gift of 80s bands. How are the people out here? 7-13-212-5-79. If you want to get it, we have one line open. If you want to take it from us, before we get to believe it or not, conclusion, 7-1-3-212-5-7-90.

Mike, you're ready to play, believe it or not? Believe it. In the 2003, a Christmas vacation, 2 Cousin'Ey's Island Adventure. It aired on NBC without involvement from Chevy Chase. Believe it or not. Believe it. That is also correct. Statement number two for the win,

Michael Jackson was supposed to have a cameo in Home Alone 2 lost in New York but had to drop out of the project and was replaced by Donald Trump. Believe it or not. Not. That is also correct. Six correct answers. I quit. I quit.

I'm done. We need one more person to call in. Here we go. let's go to Carl there's a lot of pressure on you we've got six correct answers in three winners are you ready to play believe it or not I am James conne hated working with will feral during the shooting of elf thinking pharaoh was overacting after seeing the film with the premiere con apologized to feral saying he did a great job believe it or not believe it believe it oh here we go I'm walking out of here sorry Connor I'm sorry believe it or not

if you get this question right going to the production of the 2000 film How to the Grinch stole Christmas it had to be halted for 48 hours after Jim Carrey suffered a bout of heat exhaustion while in his makeup in costume believe it or not

believe it did Rosser leave I'm here I'm packing up what do you want congratulations we didn't get a perfect game today we made a perfect game today we made it

we made it all right one out of eight ain't bad so come here's a uh wax what do you got on today's edition of the

a team coming up in a matter of about four minutes from now mm-hmm you're going to have on demico ryan's okay you're going to have on akim elijah on

all right you're going to have on Christian Walker the newest astro you're going to have on Commissioner Roger Goodell and Mike Tyson four huge kits five huge kits

today on the A team coming up in a matter of moments. Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy Hanukkah. Ross and I are back with you on Thursday. Yes, we're going to continue to work. I'll be in New Orleans, getting ready for the Rockets and Pelicans. Ross will be having his leftover Christmas meal on the air eating live for you. Up next, God knows what.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Sports Talk 7 o'clock.