The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Texans, Rockets BOTH Get Big Wins, Brawls In CFB Rivalry Week, Which H-Town Sports Figure Would You Pardon?

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Matt Thomas of "The Matt Thomas Show with Ross," Dan Mathew of "The A-Team" and Chris Gordy react to both the Texans and Rockets coming up with big wins on Sunday. The Texans defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars 23-20 in a road AFC South matchup, while the Rockets took down the Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder 119-116. Matt, Dan and Chris also;debate the possible consequences for linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair's late hit on quarterback Trevor Lawrencerecap the many brawls that took place across college football's rivalry weekdiscuss which Houston sports figure they would pardon and more.

Launch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. 10-01 in H-town. Good morning. What a day. Two Houston victories. It's the Matt Thomas show and Ross. This is Sports Talk 790.

Fresh set of downs. They go to the ground. Joe Mixin trying to get to the edge. Now some running room for mixing. Inside the 10, it'll be first in goal, Houston. First down in 10. for the Texans. It's Mixing.

Good cutback in a big lane. Mixing on to the speed now and Nixon out of bounds inside the 10. Nine carries 22 yards before that 30-yard run. And now Mixon again, sweeps the left side into the end zone for a Houston touchdown. One on the play clock just gets the snap off. The hand to Mixon. A hole on the outside. Mixing with room to run in a first down.

Texans just four for 12 on third down today. Toss play Mixin, looking for an opening. He's got the first down, and the Texans are going to get out of here with a big road win before the buy. First of all, I love Michael McDonald. Second of all, I love the Doobie Brothers. Third, I want to apologize for takes one and two. And I love this song. Nor should you.

Michael McDonald's awesome. This song is such a jam. and I know 98% of you never heard of it. Greg Cook looked more like Michael McDonald or Bob Seeker. See all the above. Oh, this song. And it fits. Joe Mixit was so freaking awesome yesterday.

100-yard game. That was the only storyline from the game, too. That's it. That's it. You know, he was fantastic. And what's his face? Dalton Schultz caught a couple of passes. Yeah, no, that was good. It was nice to see him finally factor.

scored a touchdown in the second half, too. Yes. So we're running. Two for the price of one. Singing Mr. McDonnell and the dupies in the backup. Just keep running, Joe. That offensive line appreciates you running. Finally, it's not our fault.

Yeah. All right. I just, there are songs. There's not enough good crooning anymore. There's not. That's a croon right there. That is a crew. That's a crew.

That is a crew. It just song puts me in a good mood. I don't know why it does. And here we are. Oh, yeah. No, no, you're fully in, like, with the yacht rock right now. Oh, my God. I have not seen the documentary. I'm going to watch it tonight in Sacramento.

Okay. Because there's Monday night football on and really nothing else. And Sacramento's on a town you do a bunch of stuff in. That's what it sounds like. You go eat dinner and you call it a day. Plus, I'm going to be in the morning at 8 o'clock. Pacific time tomorrow with you. That's true.

That's Dan Matthews. Ross is still in Angola, and we look forward to getting him back as soon as possible. Yeah, he's got to clear customs. And is there like a quarantine period or something like that? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

for fruit flies, something like that. Sure, sure. So he is leaving either tonight or in the morning and flying all the way. And he's back with us on Wednesday. I'll be in San Francisco. So I won't even see him. But he's going to be all won't. He's, first of all, wonky as it is.

Second of all, the whole time change and the, I always thought you'd volunteer and take an extra day off just to recuperate, but he's trying to save the rest of his vacation time for later this month when he turns 40. But that's his own deal about it. Wednesdays his show, be a little weird because I'll be busing from Sacramento to San Francisco doing the show 8 o'clock in the morning. He'll be fresh off of serious jetlake. So Wednesday might be a no, all crazy, you never know what we're going to say kind of show, like most days are. Well, sure.

I mean, that's the fun of this show from 10 to 2 every single day right here, sports talk 790. They're 14 hours ahead over where he is right now. So this would be. And it's a 15 hour flight, 16 an hour flight, something like that? Something like that. Ooh, voted. No, that's, I can't do it. I can't sleep on planes, but that one would be pretty tough as well.

All right. So we have, for a Monday, we have a lot to get to. We have the college football weekend, which was very interesting. Fighting Texas Aggies did not fight. Well, they were one of the few that didn't. Yeah, everything else was very intriguing. We'll get to that. Texans were the win against Jacksonville, another one-score game, another road AFC South victory.

Al-Zazia Aishire, we got a good. get to a lot on that and man there is some serious sanctimonious conversation out the world on this on frankly both sides some people saying Trevor Lawrence didn't do much didn't do anything to help himself out then you hear about

Alshare is the dirtiest player on earth I mean there is a I mean both ends of the whack spectrum on this well and we're just going to pile on right I mean that's what the Matt Thomas shit with Ross is exactly sanctimonious for four hours every single day fiery hot tags I want to run the Twitter and try to

engage with as many people as possible to anger you. Make sure you use hashtags SportsMT whenever you do that too. You need to be able to do that. So we got to get that to get to. We had the Rockets with a huge win. Huge. Freddie Van Vleet. Deep three.

Call, say your prayers, eat your vitamins, jack up long three pointers and make them. Well, there you go. I like that Hulkomania right there that you just went to. A lot of kids might not still understand that. But they're a hateable team, too. Who is? Thunder or the Rocket?

Rockets. That's what I read last night. Some bozo up in overrunner. Yeah, but it's because Dylan Brooks has hated it. And that's fine. But if he, you know, if you, if you, if you, if you're with you, if he's with you, he's your best. You know what I say, though? Good. Good. Gives a little personality. It does. Absolutely it does. Because I like it when other people are like, I can't stand that team. Like for the longest time, you know, people, I think we're looking at the Astro situation wrong. It's like, hey, look, it's good. It's good to be the villain sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. It is. So we got that to get to just so much. We have all the rivalries of college football this weekend and the putting on the flag at the 50-R line and people fighting. Oh, just, you know what? And I don't mean to paint with a broad brush here in Segment 1, but just give me more of that. Give me Michigan, Ohio State.

It is the nastiest, meanest, ugliest rivalry in football. And if Ohio State goes to Michigan next year and wins, put that damn Ohio State flag right on the end at the 50-yard line. I have zero problems with Michigan trying to put the flag at the Ohio State 50. Good, good for them. Two unbelievably unlikable football programs, holier than thou, cocky, think they're better everybody else. If they want to throw hands, I'm here to watch it.

And we literally saw a trident that somebody tried to plant at the 50-yard line of the Arizona State Arizona game. Oh. So yet again, a. Trident was part of a massive brawl. You want to throw some helmets around, you want to kick somebody in the Nads, let's go. It's rivalry week. Or you could be like the Notre Dame player who full helmet, full everything,

decided, hey, here comes a close fist punch right at you. Yeah. You want to take a whiz at the 25-yard line, I'm all for it. All right, there I think we're getting a little bit of a gray area. Okay. I understand. All right, so yeah. Let's keep clothes on, if possible. Yeah, you don't want to drop trout.

No, no. So, yeah, so much to get to the Texans Rockets we mentioned college football the polls will be out tomorrow for everybody to complain about Gordy's going to be here at 1 o'clock because I got to run to Sacramento with the Rockets so he'll you ever notice when Gordy is like

like we're just sitting here talking and then all of a sudden something SEC related comes up he turned his voice up really loud and he's like Gordy man slow down it's okay is Mr. SCC but I mean he is zero to 60 on just a normal conversation

goes up tenfold. Well, I mean, look, it's hard to kind of blame them for that because I fired up Aggie fans this weekend and boy, they let you know. Oh, yeah. They call your names? Short of name calling, although somebody was just like, man, some of these comments, I was like, yeah, that's cute. And I read some of them and I was like, I'll remember that A, when you ask me for tickets again, or B, when you still think I'm your friend. You can get tickets? Every once in a while, that's nice. All right, 713. I know people. Yeah, I'm sure you do. 713, 212-790. 7-790. 7-7-1.7.7. Let's come back and talk about the Trevor Lawrence play. Al-Zey-Zas-Shayr getting ejected from the game, and rightfully so. But beyond that, we'll get to what should the NFL do, whether it's a fine, whether it's a suspension, whether it's all of the above. We'll get to that at 7-13-212-5-790.

7-1-3-212-5-790. Also today, we are not doing to tell the truth. I thought of this literally when I got to the radio station today when I heard that President Biden pardoned his son. We're going to do something we've never done in the history of the Matt Thomas show, whether it's here, whether it's over on other stations, whether it's in other markets.

You get to pardon somebody in Houston sports. Interesting. Think about your entire life being a Houston sports fan at 1130 you had to pardon them for some past transgression I'll leave it open and it like that

713-212-5-790 7-1-3-212-5-790 if you're on Twitter want to follow us it's at SportsMT at Conner-D-Moghvern and at Dan Matthews all caps for some ungodly reason H-O-U

I have to make sure I stand out some way Why you, go back. Get your lowercase letters going in. You're not that damn important. No, I'm pot committed at this point. Are you really? You're stuck with it? Absolutely, I am.

All right, very good. Look, you know, you got to have something to differentiate you from the cloud. You certainly did. You certainly did. It just was like, it goes to all caps right away. Just crazy. 1013 on Sports Talk 790. More Matt Thomas.

Now. On Sports Talk 790. No doubt that Trevor represents that. Oh, my, that'll be Al Shire, who's flagged for the big hit on the slide, and that's going to start a little bit of a scrum afterwards as the Jaguars come in to protect their QB. Oh, my goodness. This deserves an ejection, in my opinion. Another flag has come down with the activities on the bench,

but the bigger concern right now is what's going on with Trevor Lawrence. He was taken off the game out of the game on a golf cart. Apparently he is okay, but concussed to no surprise. Ejection came for him and a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars who got involved in a fight and absolutely should have done so. I don't document every time LZ. Alsharayr does something. There has been a few people that have said that he has had some questionable plays in the past. I think there was a fight that he threw a punch during the Chicago Bears game. But again, I wouldn't have a long memory of Al-Ziz-Az Shahir's history of overly physical play.

I saw his tweet this morning when I woke up and he obviously apologized and said that he had been harassed on Twitter, which is what Twitter does is harassed people. So without trying to get two over the top one way or the other, it was a dirty hit. it could have been avoided. I know the game is fast. I know the game is physical. I know that sliding for quarterbacks is tough. I know there have been some people this morning saying that maybe

quarterbacks shouldn't slide because, again, you're asking to get hit more than you are not getting hit. And that's something I think for competition committee and probably just for the for coaches to philosophically discuss. He probably should be suspended for the Miami game. But, and I'm saying this not because I live in Houston, Texas, or I'm a Texans fan or an observer. I'm just telling you that one game suspension for this plus being kicked out of the game yesterday to me, Dan, feels like an appropriate punishment for set offense. Well, it's also, too. I mean, you're taking the rational approach to this because what a lot of people do in our industry is they want to rush to social media and show you just how mortified they are, that somebody would actually do that on the field and how angry they are.

And, you know, I mean, I saw a couple of different ones, like one of them was that he should be suspended for as long as Trevor Lawrence is still out. All right. Why don't you go ahead and save that one for another time? Or maybe you can just not even use it at all. And another one, too, is kind of like I was talking about with the Rockets and Thunder earlier. I actually saw somebody say, well, that's what Houston does? What? Like, what do the Texans have to do with your Jones against the Astros?

Like that's what that's what you're allowing for it. And then again, it's social media. People just have a license to be stupid. Kind of like going through airports. I mean, people just feel like it's a license to be rude and be dumb because there's no accountability for it. But no, I mean, everything you said is 100% true. It was not a good football play. It was a play that he knows better.

And probably hindsight being 2020, he wouldn't try to make the hit. But it's also, though, too, it's football. Like that happens. that is going to happen. Despite your best efforts to protect everybody. But the forearm was not beyond football. That was, I've got a quarterback or I've got a runner heading my way. I want to make sure he's down.

What's his job? What's his job to do? Well, it's a tackle, but you don't tackle with forearms typically. I mean, I don't want to slow this down. I don't want to slow it down to a microsecond to say in the heat of the moment or whatever the case would be. What I want to say was, it was if you look at it, hundred times at regular speed, at fast speed, at slow speed. It was a dirty hit.

I'm not disagreeing with the way that it ended up, yes. But at the same time, though, too, his job's to tackle the defensive player. That's his job. So, I mean, if you want to talk about that tackling is not thought well anymore, all these different things, that's fine. But, Dan, you can't say by any mean necessary, which I think what you're trying to say. Bring them down by any means necessary. That's not, that's, the NFL has said you don't do that. that's the case you'd everybody be spearing people you have to you have to do it a proper way and if

you don't know it a proper way you're going to face a 15-yard penalty or you're going to face ejection or you're going to face i mean whatever fines or whatever the case may be there are certain ramifications his job is to tackle his job is to legally tackle and that was an illegal tackle that forced a significant injury that forced an injection from the ballgame well it's also though too i mean for everybody and i'm going to keep it on point but also too at the same time you know, use a different example is where was all of this hand-wringing last year when C.J. Stroud's, you know, head bounced off the turf at MetLife. Nobody was coming after Quinn and Williams.

No, nobody was saying that he needed to be suspended as long as C.J. Stroud is out, any of those different types of things. So it's like all our selective outrage that people will throw out during situations like this, more often than not, it's just about the benefit of the situation. Because Aziz al-Shayr, most people have no idea who he is. of course to them, he's faceless, he's nameless, he's all of these different types of things, that they're going to say, oh, yeah, no, there's no place for that in the game. Give me a break. There was, no, there wasn't a place from the game.

There's no place in the game for what he did yesterday. There isn't. I'm sorry, there isn't. I mean, but I'm not, I'm not ready to indict him for the rest of his NFL career like some others are. And that's what I'm saying. But there isn't a, there is no oops into that yesterday. There was no oops to it. That was a ejectionable, is that a word, ejectionable offense.

We'll go with it. Yeah. that that's what it was and and eject them find them suspend i mean finding's not going to do anything no you're going to you're going to have to suspend because i mean this has been yet another offense and i saw people posting videos today of i guess what was it last year a couple of years ago he uh he he kind of like choked tom brady as he was going at him uh on a play and then of course you talked about the bears game he had the hard hit of caleb williams on the sidelines then throwing a punch at a player.

So, I mean, I get that, you know, it's one of those things that people are going to look at and look for examples of, oh, man, this guy's a dirty player. Here's an example of how he is a dirty player. But it's also, though, too, let the league suspend them and let them handle it and let it be done. I mean, all of this, I mean, I even saw somebody try to say that he should be banished from the game. Like, that's ridiculous. It is. But I might let one fan of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

is giving a national tone to this. The tone of this should been nasty hit, illegal hit, ejected, probably suspended for a game, and hopefully he learns from this. And I don't know if you have to go much beyond that. And that's where I think the problem is, again, when you have television and radio and newspapers and fans that all have platforms to whatever level degree, you're going to get a variance of answers. There's nothing universal said. I mean, there are some people that are defending the.

saying that Trevor Lano, like I was watching ESPN today and they were talking about how, you know, that maybe NFL quarterback should not slide anymore because you're basically asking for those, for two high-octane athletes to clot at the same time. Well, we're seeing enough of these slide plays in college football. We're not seeing, we're seeing some collisions, but we're seeing a lot fewer than we did say 20 or 20 favor years ago when there wasn't a slide rule. The slide is supposed to be the I'm giving. myself up for the play. That's what the

slide is supposed to be. So then to tell an offensive guy, because we talk about this all the time, well, the rules are built for the offensive side of the football. Maybe so. But also to at the same time, I mean, if you're going to try to, you know, have them

limit themselves in the way that they play, then I'm not going to do that on the offensive side either. Again, the slide is to say, hey, I'm sliding, I'm giving myself up on this play. I am no longer a threat to Yeah. I, again, I don't, the sport is very, very physical. You and I will definitely agree on that. There's no right way to do it except running out of bounds, but that's just not how work, there's a football field.

And Trevor's trying to get his yards, but he also realizes, hey, I got to give myself up. I don't want to be in a situation where I potentially can get hit and hurt. And it unfortunately happened because of any legal play that forced an ejection of a ballgame. And I thought the whole on-field situation was not handled properly. I thought the Texans probably should have sent him to the sideline as fast as, possible. The Jaguars ran. I mean, it was a hot mess for about 10 minutes. No, it was. And I mean, it's an emotional play and football is an emotional game. And that's going to happen if you don't take the guy out of the game, which eventually they did. But it was

after there was the full-on brawl on the field. But two, at the same time, I mean, Trevor Lawrence knows the risks of playing this game as much as anybody. I don't think there's a single player that goes on to an NFL field and feels like, hey, I'm going to absolutely come this field and not be injured today. Now I'm not saying that it, you know, makes everything okay, but also too at the same time, he realizes it's a mean, nasty game. It can be a physical game. And this is one of the things that can happen from playing this game.

All right. So again, my take on this is not trying to get into too much of he never should play again, or he's an awful human being or he's the worst person on earth is he did something that was highly illegal and very, very dangerous and there has to be a punishment that goes with it. That's my take. What is your? 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-21-5-7-90. If you want to jump into the conversation, we are with you today up until 2 o'clock. Gordy's going to jump in with Dan for the final hour of the show.

We look forward to hearing from you. And at 1130 today, you have an opportunity to pardon a Houston sports athlete. If you so want to. You don't have to. Does it have to be an actual athlete on the field? Can they be an athlete? It can be a coach. It can be an owner. It can be anybody Houston-related. All right. I got mine.

I got a few, sadly, because I've lived here most of my life. Well, I mean, so have I, except for the last few. But, no, I mean, I've got the deep roots in this city. 713-212-5-790. With the word now for Big City Wings, get a $25 gift card from Big City Wings for the holidays. Get a $5 bonus. $50, get you $10, and so on and so on. Do yourself a great favor and get some delicious food and delicious

gift cards give to yourself. Remember your family, your best friends. You enjoy the big city wing experience. It is big city wings. Also $1 chicken tenders today at any one of their 13 locations. A great place tonight to watch Monday night football. A great place to hang out all throughout the week. Great place to have your holiday party. And again, the gift cards are in play. For every $25 you purchase, you'll get a $5 bonus. All from Big City Wings, the home of $1 chicken tenders tonight plus $450 and $5.50 big brews. We're talking 34 ounces of the delicious beer, your choice of flavors at $4.50 or $5.50 at Big City Wings and Big City Wings.com. Yeah, it's unfortunate with the hit, with Aziz. It's not what we're coaching. It's just

want to be smart and everything we do and not hurt the team. Get a penalty there. We just have to be smarter when the quarterback is going down. Just an unfortunate play, not representative of who Aziz is. Like Zee's a smart player, really great leader for. us and you know we hurt he we felt his presence not being there not his loss it really affected us on the defensive side just not what we're coaching I didn't want to see the melee and all of the the aftermath that's not what we're about just uh not representative of us so we you know I'll talk to Aziz address him personally and we'll move forward from it as it answered I'm you know I trust Dico to get this figured out Damico wasn't a dirty player he certainly didn't

doesn't coach dirty. Dirty play. It was. And if it happens again, then Al Ziz is going to find himself in a severe amount of trouble with the league, not only just the team with the league, hurts his team by being ejected. But again, I don't know Al Ziz O'Sayor at all, but my guess is he's not a vicious human being. He probably feels very bad for what he did, but there has to be a punishment for sometimes for even when you feel bad about something. And you can run to social media and apologize, but the NFL's me like your actions speak louder than your tweets. I don't think you say that anymore, but you can't. And that's the thing. I mean, he did deliver the apology.

You mentioned that earlier. But, I mean, in terms of acting like this is the only time this has ever happened in the league or that this will never happen again if you severely punish Aziz Al-Shayor, I'm sorry, you're not going to get that conclusion. And it's a crazy thing about sports is we celebrate late hits in sports. When a quarterback gets a late hit and the flight comes down, what does the crowd do? Cheers. Well, I mean, we used to even more.

I mean, you know, God, you mentioned the four-letter network earlier. They used to have a segment called Jacked Up. Now, obviously, with, you know, all of the issues they've had with head trauma and everything else in the league, it's kind of now, hey, we've got to get away from that. Well, the types of, yeah, the types of posts we saw yesterday, they're not happening as often because there are coaches in the league and there are players in the league that have prepared themselves for situations like this. It's still not uneasy. But it has to be done. But I mean, that's the thing, though, too, is, I mean, even veteran people who have covered the NFL for a long time and are saying that that's the dirtiest and worst hit they've ever seen in their entire life. I'm sorry, I just don't believe you.

Like, this has been a violent game ever since its inception. And, I mean, you're going to have plays like this again. That's just the way that the NFL and just football is in general. Well, hopefully not, because as soon as it happened yesterday, it was very scary. It was just really, really scary. And I don't ever want to watch a football game thinking to myself, that's the last time I saw a particular athlete walk or talk and chew gum and eat vet food. And, you know, it's just, it was really ugly, the aftermath of it.

And oh, by the way, I thought, I know who said it was, it might have been Daryl Johnson had said this. I'm all for, you can't, all that was offsetting penalties. You can't offset all that. Because if the Texans player, if that was C.J. Stroud having that happened to them by a member of the Jacksonville Jaguars, and you're telling me through all that, through all the fights, through the vicious, illegal forearm hit, that the play just never happened. That's absurd. There should be a change in the NFL to say, all right, we can offset the personal foul calls, but there should have been a penalty on the play for Jacksonville that would have advanced in 15 yards. So, I mean, in terms of like actual real-time accountability, like that's that you've got to make it count for something. That, hey, this is what got it started. I understand the emotions afterwards, but that's what, I mean, I think if nothing else, I do agree with you on that. I mean, just go ahead and have that penalty be upheld and tell the officials, hey, look, we understand what happened afterwards.

But we've ejected them. We've given them 15 yards for that. Yeah, eject the other guys. Don't throw extra flags. Just get rid of them out of the game. And again, if the Texas. had CJ Stride had that had to them and you get nothing out of that except just the redo of the play. Football fans would have been really mad.

And if I was Jacksonville, I'd have been mad too. Now Jacksonville to get the first down ultimately on the play, I believe. But that was just, it was absurd. Offsetting penalties. Offsetting what? You had a Jacksonville player came over and wanted to kick Al-Z's Al-Sier's ass because he barely, you know, he was trying to, you know, not trying to, but he almost decapitated his quarterback. Well, I mean, that's the thing is, I mean, I would expect that, like you said, if something like that happened to C.J. Stroud, then, yeah, you need to have everybody on

the field at the time. You don't think, well, Laramie Tonsler going on there and said, let's go, I'm going to throw hands right now. I would expect Larryman Tonsler go, I want to go throw hands. I think that C.J. Stroud would probably, in a roundabout way, expect them to as well. For sure. David, Missouri City at 1038 on 790. David, good morning. Boy, you said it beautiful. Good morning. Listen, I see these guys. I'm old, man. I'll be up at the LA fitness.

I see these guys, you know, working out and stuff throwing 14,000 pounds and stuff, you know, in consecutive workouts. If he had to hit that guy underneath that chance, I wouldn't watch football game. That could have killed him. This is not a joke. Football is fun. When I see nice, clean hits, oh, wow, everybody, you know, they glued to see.

Did you see that? And the guy gets up, everybody gets up and continue to play. play. Football don't have to be what do you call MMA wrestling. Come on. Stop. You don't punch nobody in the face when he's out of bounds and stuff. You got to stop. You don't twist, quarterbacks, legs, ankles.

You got to stop that stuff. NFL has to get smart and stop that stuff because somebody's going to get hurt real bad. You don't lose a lot of fans and it's going to get a bad or worse reputation. Repetation. You got me. All right. Thanks. Thank you very much for the phone call. I appreciate it.

First of all, you're not going to lose any fans. Short of every game being point-shaped, you're not losing fans. Everybody loves the NFL not going, nobody's watching a game yesterday going, I'm done with football. I mean, maybe they're one person, but generally speaking, we all still finish the game. We still watch the game. And again, the NFL players, generally speaking,

have done a better job of making sure plays like this don't happen on a regular basis. And that's probably the part of the reason why there's going to be a suspension. because there has been a trend where defensive players have been able to manipulate their body, somehow, some way, to get away from the quarterback who's sliding. Well, it's also, too, I mean, you know, one of the roles that was implemented this year was the hip-drop tackle. But the problem is you have to call it if indeed you're going to say, hey, we're putting an emphasis on this this year, and you haven't done that.

They've done well enough in terms of, you know, the helmet-to-helmet hits, take your head out of the play, all those different types of things. That's fine. But you've got to be able to do this all across the board then if you're really focused on player safety. Because if that's the case, then it needs to be emphasized week in and week out with officiating crews. Hey, we're calling that penalty. Like, it's going to happen. You have to call it as soon as you see it.

And this is where, I mean, the increase of instant replay. We see it in the college game and I know that people hate it. But it's also too as well. I mean, if we're going to say that we're going to try to get this right, then get it right. They did get it right last night, though. That was exactly, that was the appropriate call to be made. I mean, I know you can go, we can go to hundreds of examples of other problems out there, but what we're talking about yesterday wasn't debatable.

There was no way in the world he should have been able to get away with that hit and stay in the football game. Call was made right. Now, the hip-drop thing, it's been a sensitive issue. Joe Mixon would back you up on that situation. By the way, Adam Schaefter just a few seconds ago, it is anticipated that Al Shire will be suspended. it's just the question is how long will the suspension be? Yeah, I mean, I can't argue that. I just can't.

It was as nasty as it gets. Again, I'm not condemning him for the rest of his career. I believe Al-Z's Alshare will hopefully never have it happened again. I hope this is a huge warning sign for other players in his position and in the situations that in. And some of it can be inevitable. But that to me, at regular game speed, look like that could have been avoided. and that's the reason why he's going to be suspended. 1043, Sports Talk, 790.

Matt, Dan, with you today until 2 o'clock. 11.30, if you want to pardon somebody in sports, this is going to be, I can't move taking us this long to figure this out. There have been some other pardons, Daniel, in life. I was going to say, I mean, usually at the end of a presidency, there's always a, hey, let me give you some good stuff for me leaving the door. So I'm going to pardon some athletes that have affected my life in the last 40 years of the Houston sports fan. There's a lot of them.

A lot. 713-212-5-7-9. 713-212-1-2-5-7-90. We're now for Game Day Men's Health. I want you to fill your best all the time. If your sleeping habits are off, if you're not able to work out or run, or your moody, or your sex drive is limited,

it might be because of your testosterone levels, and that's why you've got to get with Game Day, men's health.com. Go to Gamedaymen'shealth.com slash Houston. You'll find six locations available right now. Two are opening this month and much more coming up in 2025. You get a free T-level check when you stop by one of the locations. If your levels are too low, you can start a program with them. They're going to hopefully get those T-levels regulated for you.

They're going to help you with your erectile dysfunction that's something that is concerning to you. If you're worried about weight loss or all the above, it's Game Day, men'shealth.com. You get a free vitamin shot with starting a treatment with TRT, if that is indeed what your body says it needs. Gameday, men'shealth.com. Gameday, men'shealth.com slash Houston. I promise you, you visit with one of their members of their team. and you'll be very satisfied with your results because you'll start feeling better and they'll take great care of you. That's game day, men's health.com slash Houston.

More Matt Thomas. Now on Sports Talk 790. Go on for that basketball. Tip is up and it is won by the Rockets. Jalen Green right away behind the Fred. Going to launch it with one to shoot. Three-pointer is good. 35 feet as the shot clock goes off.

And the Rockets win at one. 13 to 110. That was a lot of fun last night. And we're going to, look, we have the Texans, obviously. It's a Monday after a long weekend of college and pro football, but we're going to give them a little run here in this segment because it was a great game, good atmosphere in the arena last night. Rockets beat the number one team of the Western Conference,

Oklahoma City. And the Rockets are now a game out of the top spot in the West, started a road trip that begins tomorrow in Sacramento against the Kings. They'll play the final group play. game in the in-season tournament. If they win the game, they will be at no worse, a number two seat. I think they're going to be number one or two for the group play

tournament anyway, but for the knockout round. But this is the best basketball we've seen in five years in this town. Five years. No, it's fun to see it again and it's also, too, last night. That was a good building. I mean, I think that you're getting people who are believing in this team again,

which is nice to see. I mean, because every single city goes through this where you have the rebuild, you have the tough times and then it's, you know, maybe you're starting to show me that there are some signs of life and then you miss the playoffs. Okay. I don't know quite yet. And this is the team that's at least better off than they were last year at this time where they're putting themselves in a really good position to stay out of the play in round and maybe even be one of the top teams in the Western Conference. You know what is so crazy about this year? And I'm painting with a broad

brush on this, so I apologize. But one guy will be terrible one night. And Amazing the next. Jalen Green scored 41 points against Philadelphia and Wednesday. I think he had, what, nine last night? Alpi will go a game and a half, two games without being a difference maker. And then all of a sudden, you wake up and he's one assist short of a triple double. Fred Van Vleet, one night, will go three for 15. And then he'll hit six or seven shots, four of them with three-pointers.

Dylan Brooks went 0 for 11 against Philadelphia and Wednesday, and he was the hot hand in the first quarter against the Thunderline. night. And I think that's kind of how you have to do it in today's NBA world. If you're expecting one guy to carry you the entire way, short of being a top three player in NBA, it doesn't happen that way. Well, and that's what, you know, people want to see from this Rockets team is, I mean, that's why you continue to get the, hey, trade for Janus, trade for, you know, whoever. And, you know, people still want to have that guy. But didn't Dylan Brooks say it best last week of one night at be me. One night it might be you, but one way or another, it's all of us. And that's the way

this team has played. I mean, it's hard to figure out because you can't, you don't know who is going to be the hot hand and you're all in. And part of it is scary because when, if you're a thunder fan, you know that Shade Yilders Alexander is going to wake up and give you 30 points. You know that Yon is if he's on the floor for Milwaukee is going to get you 25. Dame Willard. Dame, uh, um, who am I thinking of? Uh, Jalen Brown's going to do what his thing is going to do for him, you know, for the, for the Boston Celtics. But the Rockets, it's literally, oh, is it your turn the night? Okay, it's my turn.

And I don't think they obviously plan it out that way. It just happens to happen to turn out that way. Well, and it's also too. I mean, I think that's why of all the players that wear the brunt of this the most, it's Jaylan just because of where he was picked. And, you know, you're thinking to yourself, hey, that's supposed to be the guy. Like, that's going to be the guy that's going to lead this team every single night. Yeah.

I just think he's a streaky player. I mean, I said this last week when I was hosting Rockets' Rap is, I think, with Jalen on the offensive end, you're just going to have to ride the highs and the lows. I mean, he's going to go through his stretches where he's not been good. Jabari was awful in the beginning of the season, offensively. Now, he had double double last night for the team.

And, I mean, he's a guy that I think has started to gain a little bit more confidence in his shot. And you're starting to see that play out a little bit. I mean, do you, what I feel better about a team that I was calling games if you had Jason Tatum scoring 28 points every night and you had Shaygilders scoring 32 every night? Because it's a constant.

Because you know that you can count. wake up in the arena, it's going to go, unless it's just a Nikolio Kits is going to wake up and going to get you almost a triple double every single night. Sure. The Rockets don't have that. And at some point, will one of the guys on the floor be that for the rockets? I don't know. But they're

winning despite not having that absolute go-to guy right now. Well, it's also too. I mean, it's even guys off the bench as well. I mean, of Amin and Tari Yason. I mean, they've been able to give you that from times. And don't tell me, this team is not in position, the position that they're in right now.

with Tari Isson back. You saw how much they missed him last year down the stretch. And you saw, though, with you missing him down the stretch, that Amend Thompson finally realized, hey, I'm comfortable in this role. I can do this role. I think he's going to have a legitimate shot at six men of the year. I really believe that. Because he's doing everything you possibly could ask for a first or second guy coming off the bench. You're talking about a man? A man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. I mean, but... I think Tari's shooting probably, his scoring is going to probably preclude him from getting in that category.

I think a men is And for those that don't watch the Rockets a lot I get it. Outside of mine, I would invite you to come check him out and listen to the radio here, obviously. But a man may be one of the finest 20-year-old players right now in the NBA

who shot still not great. It's a little bit better. And obviously shooting is the number one thing you have to do in basketball. But if you took that with other intangibles, he's about as complete of a player the Rockets have right now. And he doesn't have any fear either.

I mean, that's the, part of it as well is that, you know, you just brought it up. He's 20 years old. He should probably still feel like, do I kind of belong? Do I maybe belong? I don't know. But no, I mean, he's kind of, he's taking that element out of the equation. He's saying, no, I belong, and I can absolutely play well at this level. And he's a guy too. I mean,

that if you ever do need, you know, load management, whatever it might be, that can be able to give you some good minutes off the bench. And the great thing about him is he can play four different positions for you, anywhere from point guard to power, for it, necessary. Second hour of the show. We didn't really get into much in the game itself. Again, we mentioned Mixen was awesome yesterday.

The offensive line gave him so on protection. Secondary, I mean, Mac Jones came in and did throw for some pass in yards. Jacksonville still has a difficult time being good because the receivers don't catch everything. The quarterbacks, both of them, were overthrung guys yesterday. Another one score game. Are you feeling any better? We'll leave that for the second hour of the show. also coming up in 35 minutes

if you want to pardon somebody in Houston sports in honor of our president pardoning his son will let you pardon somebody today 713-212 we have to do this every four years I think

this is going to be a new once every four year bed I think I like it I mean especially too you know it keeps the people you know wanting more but you know it's also too sometimes good things come to those who waits so the Olympics presidential elections and pardoning for them to tell the truth.

I like it. All right. 713, 212.790 if you want to jump in. 713-212-570. Al-Ziz Ashaeir is probably going to get suspended. It's surprising to me that Shepter said that maybe it would be more than for more than one game. Again, I don't, for us to try to guess what the NFL is thinking, it's just foolish. Because even when you, it's like trying to guess whether an official is going to change a call in a sporting event or on challenge or a flagrant foul.

I feel like I'll let the experts handle that. 713-212-5-7-90. What I want you to be an expert at is knowing football stats, basketball stats. And if you feel like you know what you're talking about about your favorite athletes, whether they're a Houston player or not, or they just have me playing tonight's Monday night football game, you can make some outstanding money by getting the player stat projections accurate with underdog fantasy. Higher and lower.

That's simple. You know a player is going to do higher than the. the numbers that Underdog Fantasy is giving out or lower, you take those selections, you make multiple picks with those, and you can make some serious cash. In fact, up to 1,000 times the money you can make with Underdog Fantasy. And it's so ridiculously simple. All I want you to do is get to your phone right now and go to Underdog Fantasy and download the app or go to Underdogfancy.com. And what you're going to do is you're going to put a promo code SportsMT, and that's SportsMT. And what they're going to do is they're going to give you a deposit match. They're also going to give

you a free pick as well and all that will be done as a way to accept and enjoy the professional sports or for that matter collegian sports and win money at the same time. So once again, go to underdogfantasy.com. That's underdog fantasy.com or underdog fantasy app and put that promo code sports mt in and you're going to get an opportunity to do some serious fun things like again, get an opportunity to get a free pick. You're also getting an opportunity to get some lots of cash, depending on how many selections you make and how many games you pick. Must be 18 plus and present in the state where Underdog Fantasy operates. Terms apply, concern with your plate call 1-800 gambler or visit www.n. There's discounts. There's free picks and there's profit boost, all with Underdog Fantasy promo code SportsMT.

Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas show. It is 1101 on Sports Talk 790. your Houston Texans are two games away, I should say magic number of two, to win the AFC South, in the worst kept secret of the world, because the AFC South sucks. It just does. Tennessee got blasted yesterday by Washington,

Jacksonville's Jacksonville, and Indianapolis. Well, they beat New England, but even the Texans went to New England and won that game. Although the Colts barely held on to that contest. They had to come from behind to win that game. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those that if the Texans don't make the playoffs, then it's absolutely on them. But the bills, already the first ones in there. They win that Snow Globe game last night.

And they got to put on the hats and the shirts and everything of saying, hey, we're in the playoffs. But the Texans now hoping that they're one step closer to being able to do that. And a combination of a couple of wins or a win and a loss by Indianapolis here in. Yeah. So that isn't the issue. The issue is the Texans are going to win the division. and win it rather easily.

And the question would then be, can you do it and then get out of that four spot in the AFC? I highly doubt it because Pittsburgh is phenomenal, but Buffalo is playing well in Kansas City. Oh, Kansas City. If there is such a thing as the luckiest one-lost team, maybe in NFL history through 12 weeks, it's definitely them.

And the funny thing is, is I was actually thinking about that on my way in today, is you get quite a benefit of the doubt when you won as much as Kansas City has. And of course, back-to-back Super Bowl, camps. But, I mean, they're pretty much winning games the same way the Texans are. Brain dead way to end

that game. Brain dead, even super more brain dead of a game to end the way the Chicago Detroit game that eventually cost Matt Iber Fluse's job. So much things to get to and we again will invite you to join us at 713212.5-790. In typical Houston sports fashion, sadly,

when the Texans win, not a whole lot of conversation about it. It's easier to discuss and call when a team loses, but that's, you know, It is what it is. Yeah, because the easy whipping boy actually did his job yesterday. The offense actually looked somewhat the way that we hoped that it would look. It was good balance.

Yeah, the offensive line held up for the most part. There was a silly off-sides call against Cain Stover that erased a big play, which is very rarely that you're rare did you see in off-sides against an offensive player, but that happened. Nico Collins got you 100 yards again yesterday. That was good. I mean, it was, I mean, to me, the game was a lot close. than it should have been, but largely because I thought the Texans defense did not put much

of a pass rush in. I mean, we didn't hear Will Anderson's name much at all yesterday. I don't remember how many times Mac Jones and or Trevor Lawrence got sacked, but I don't think it was very many, if any, I can go look, but point being is that Jacksonville hung around. They just did. Well, it's also, too. I mean, that was, you know, what I threw out on Twitter after the game as well, which, by the way, at Dan Matthews, H-O-U, all caps, you know it's me. but I mean letting Mac Jones cook on that last drive like come on me

Are that over the top touchdown and back in the end zone? It's not only the touchdown it's also too giving up the two points and I get it too Hey look for everything we're talking about with Aziz Al-Shayere He means a lot to this team defensively

He is the extension of Domeco Ryan's out there So you don't have him It kind of throws things out of balance a little bit And that's probably what happened on that last drive But no jail and Petrie yesterday and that's probably not going to be anymore this year. It feels like peck injury usually lasts a long strength of time, so I'd be surprised if he comes back.

I mean, it's, yeah, it'll be tough to get him back. But, I mean, Jimmy Ward, I thought they'd fine enough at Jalen Petrie's kind of star position spot on the field. I mean, I wasn't too displeased with him out there. But also, though, too, I mean, that's part of it as well. As, you know, we hear about it, oh, it's the offense, it's the offense. It's the offense. Well, it's also, too, it's the defense. where how about you don't need to be able to get a first down or two

to them be able to get to knees and be able to end the game? How about being able to say, hey, if we've got to punt this football back, we feel pretty good that we're going to be able to keep Mack Jones out of the end zone. Because that part, that for me on that final Texans drive, as I was like, oh boy, you cannot get stuffed on a couple of runs. Just get a first down. Have a hapless pass right here. And then you've got to punt the football back.

Stop the clock. I can't live in a world where Mac, Jones comes back and beats me. I cannot do that. And luckily, you were able to avoid that. But again, though, it's kind of a little bit of the frustration with this team this year of how many times you have to grin and bear it through games. And I get what we're going to hear in the post-game locker room

afterwards. Oh, it's hard to win in this league. Oh, you know, you don't blow everybody out in this league. But when you're facing a two-and-nine team, yeah, beat them by at least two. You needed one of those. You needed a game where you could win by 14-17 points and get a little bit of mojo.

instead, it is a win. You have been beset by injuries, but everybody in the NFL has been through that. You lost one of your best defensive players because of the self-induced penalty. But you still won the game. It doesn't make up with the Tennessee loss at home. Nothing's going to. The next time, I think that Texans fans will really have something in their belly for, in terms of excitement, will be the games against Kansas City in Baltimore.

And that's when the next lip-miss test comes into play. You win one or both of those games and you're like, you know what, through all this quote-unquote, and I hate to use this term, I hate it more than life itself, adversity, because everybody's got it. Nobody lives a life and nobody plays a season in sports without some sort of adversity. But if you can win those two games, that'll get people fired up ready for a deep January run. You lose both those games with these other lackluster victories you've had so far. and I think people will think about planning like winter parties in mid-June, January because they won't be watching Texans playoff football. Oh, I think it's going to come even sooner than that.

I mean, after the by week, it's going to be a good Miami team who's trying to climb themselves back in the postseason contention. So, I mean, that's going to be one as well. I mean, because Tua being back completely changes that team. And it's a team that last year kind of faltered down the stretch, but they were still a playoff team and they're still a good football team. Yeah, you know, they don't like playing in cold weather. Frankly, nobody does. But it's interesting that, you know, no one in the world gave them a chance to win at Green Bayer on Thanksgiving night.

They were right because if it dips below 40 degrees, for some reason those warm bodies down in South Florida don't like playing in it. But they're going to have to ultimately, they're going to need to sneak a win in if they're going to get the playoffs. And the best chance them to do that is to go to Houston. Well, they won't have to worry about temperatures and win in a couple of weeks. But yeah, the Texans, by the way, bad planning by the NFL. How in the world anybody has an off week after Thanksgiving is patently absurd?

They don't mind it. As a matter of fact, I think most players would probably tell you I want the buy as late as possible. Because then for that final stretch drive right there of those games that they're going to have, you feel like that you've got as best an opportunity to be as close to 100% as you possibly could be. You know, I would think everybody's got their own opinion on that. It just seems like to me from a scheduling standpoint, now that Thanksgiving is wrapped up, now that college football is just about done,

I would think you'd want to have every NFL game on in every market so you can get as many options out there. I don't know. I just think I would think by probably pre- Thanksgiving, you'd want to have all of your off weeks done. That's just me for a schedule. Well, and they already kind of have, too. I mean, after the Sunday night against Detroit,

wasn't that the following was the Monday against the Cowboys? am I remembering this correctly? But I mean, the Texans had a... We had a Thursday night game against the Jets. I'm sorry. It was the Thursday night against the Jets and then you had a week and a half to get ready for Detroit

and that didn't really work out too well for you. But, I mean, you've had prolonged times off at times this season. I mean, because again, of getting that extra day of preparation for Monday night, that helped. But, you know, also too, you thought that probably that Detroit game and at least the first half it looked like it

where you're like, hey, all right, maybe some adjustments have been made. Maybe this team is turning in the corner, who knows? Instead, you allowed Jared Gough to throw five interceptions, really four, but five for the sake of the technical aspect of it, and they left for the victory. And then you sacked Will Levis eight times, and you still lost that game, too. Yeah, it's not been a great second half of the team. It just has. It's been a lot of victory being snatched out of the jaws. And I don't think winning yesterday, all of a sudden, is going to just reinvigorate a group of people that.

It's probably been a little surly. I mean, I can tell you, our buddy Adam Clinton puts out these ridiculous videos. They're fantastic. Why don't you, let's try that again. All right, they are great videos. I can't wait until he does him after every Texans win. I'm so excited for him. You don't have to read the cue cards.

I'm sorry, very, sorry. I hear Matt's own voice. Well, it's funny. His comments on his Facebook page have been, that didn't feel great. This team's still not going to go anywhere. And that's why, you know, even if you beat Miami a week from Sunday, it's going to be what you do against the big boys because Kansas City looks, I mean

for a one lost team, which is strange as it may sound, they look as to be as vulnerable as anything. So you're not going up to Kansas City thinking, oh my God, I got no chance because hell, if Las Vegas doesn't have a terrible snap by the center when no one was ready for it, they're kicking a field goal maybe winning that football game.

So it's not impossible to go to Arrowhead. Now, granted, it might be cold as AF there for that game. And then Baltimore yesterday lost. So at home to Philadelphia. and the Steelers are the class of that division. So it's not like these are so much better than everybody else, but the Texans got to want to act like they want to be in that category. And I still think if you, after you take Kansas City and you take Baltimore,

maybe you throw Pittsburgh a mix, the next tier down of elite teams involves the Texans. And it's quite a deep drop back in that second tier. But the beauty also, too, of the playoffs is you just have to be better that week. That's all that matters. So, I mean, for Kansas City, everything that they're doing right now, you have the wrong week in the postseason. It's over. It's done. Right. One mistake.

And that's it. And the Texans also, too, I talked about this earlier on in the season, that them winning close games, I thought would benefit them going forward because when you do play against Baltimore, when you do play against Kansas City, those are the type of games you're going to be in. And, I mean, then it's about, all right, do you make the play late in games? And at times that's been the Texans problem. It's been penalties on special teams. Penalties to bring back touchdowns. Like all of these different types of things that you're just kind of like, we're in week 14 here, guys.

Like, what's going on? Like, why do these problems continue to persist with you guys? But it felt like yesterday wasn't one of those days. That's a big possible. It was a step in the right direction. But, I mean, it still was, though, too, where the first half you were absolutely just, you weren't even pedestrian.

You were bad in the first half. Six points. Six points. against a hapless to win team. Like, that's not good. And then again, too, I talked about it on that final drive that gets Jacksonville within one score. Like I keep hearing about, oh, this defense steps up. This defense steps up.

That's when you need to step up right there. You can't have Mack Jones leading that team down the field. Yeah. And thankfully, Joel Mixon said, we're not giving the ball back. And that was the saving grace. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-2-7-9-0. That's Dan Matthews. I'm Matt Ross today is in, let me check.

Oh, he's in Guatemala to leave today. So hopefully having as well for him there. He'll be back with us in a couple of days. 713-212-5-790. Bottom of the hour, we're pardoning athletes. We're pardoning coaches. We're pardoning, pardoning owners. Anybody that deserves a pardon, we'll be getting them from us between 1130 and noon here on Sports Talk 790. I want to tell you about Two Creeks Crossing Resort. What a weekend to be out in the nature. Temperatures, 50,000. and 60s at night. Oh, goodness. I mean, how nice would that be for you to be out there,

take a walk with the lady, or with your boys hanging out for a couple days, maybe playing some cards, watching some TV, just going on a hike throughout the Lake Livingston area. That can all be done by going to Two Creeks Crossing Resort. Two Creeks Crossing Resort.com is a website. You want to rent a cabin, 40% off. If you have an RV looking to drop that RV on a site, that's 20% off. Right now at Two Creeks Crossing Resort, about 90 minutes from downtown, Houston, if you live north by the Beltway or Kingwood, Tasca Cicada, Humble, even shorter trip for you.

Right up on 59, you take a left into Livingston, and you're there. Modern amenities, like a beautiful clubhouse, workout facilities, laundry facilities, high-speed Wi-Fi. They've got a big barbecue grill area, a big fire pit, just a nice place to relax, and then you get back to your waterfront cabin or perhaps a yurt or a glamping tent, and you'll enjoy very, very nice facilities and accommodations. Two Creeks Crossing Resort.com, 40%.

40% off right now at two creekscrossingresort.com. More, Matt Thomas, now. On Sports Talk 790. 1118 on Sports Talk 790. Matt and Dan Ross is off today. He is in Australia. And look forward to getting him back a couple days. He moves fast.

He does move around quite a bit. Good for him. I don't think I've ever taken. taking two weeks off from radio intentionally in my life. I had my gallblower removed and I hadn't missed two weeks. I had to miss two weeks at work, but not that I've been like for vacation. I think the longest was brother-in-law's wedding in Hawaii, and we were there for a week and a half.

Yeah, I think I'm going to go to London next summer because my middle son is graduating from the Texas A&M University, and he wants to go to a Beatles tour with me. We've never done that before. So I might take seven or eight days at that point, but not that and that many. But, you know, it teaches on him. I'm glad he's having a great time and he's taking lots of pictures and whatnot. So we'll get a full recap of his two-week excursion. The funny thing is, you know, the food is obviously significantly different over there than it is here.

And he's showing bags of chips from, like, lays that are like rib flavor. I saw that. Yeah. It's kind of weird. Prime rib or something like that or sirloin or whatever it was. I did see that. I've been keeping tabs, but, you know, in terms of talking with raw. Ross hadn't talked with him since he loved.

I haven't talked to him either. I mean, we've tried to go WhatsApp, but I don't, you know, he's busy doing his thing. Plus our time difference is, what do you say? 15 hours, you said? Yeah, it was 14, I believe, where he is right now. So that's kind of tough. All right, so he'll be back in a couple days. Look forward to getting him back.

Look forward and we appreciate you stepping in and Gordy as well for the last a couple of weeks. 713-212-5-7-90. So fighting Texas Aggies did not fight. At least offensively. Defensively hung around. Yeah. the score frankly wasn't indicative of how not close the game was to be brutally honest and archmanning

I know he's young I know he threw a hit a mistake interception yesterday I think you're in a really good spot with him at quarterback I really do I know yours is battling ankles and issues like that and he's the guy that's been there done that and he obviously was the one that led one of the drives but I'm just telling you this is a very very impressive Texas football team. I think they're going to, and you would know this better than I, I think they're significantly better than Georgia. I think they're going to win the championship in the SEC. I think they're going to be a top three seed in the college football playoff,

and I would not be surprised if the Texas Longhorns win the national championship. Is that hurtful for you to say? No, I'm fine. It's okay. Yeah, I mean, that's the beauty of this year's first of the 12th team playoff is pretty much everybody's got a shot. I mean, you know, for as ugly as it was over the last weekend for Ohio State, well, the good news is they don't have to play Michigan anymore, so that mental block could be out of their way. And maybe it is a little bit of a retooling for them of get into the playoff, have a home playoff game, and then be able to kind of go on from there. But in terms of teams that look the best right now, it's hard to argue against what Texas has done.

And there's going to be the revenge factor, too, of, you know, what Georgia did to you in your building. You want to be able to do that to them because even though Texas is the home crowd, Mercedes Ben Stadium will be overwhelmingly red and black of Georgia fans there for that. And it's also too as well. I think Georgia is probably already in, but they also would like to be able to get one of those top four spots. So that was the game that probably lived up to the pregame, didn't live up to the pregame hub, perhaps more than anything else. Ohio St. Michigan way exceeded what we thought it was going to happen. Because Michigan was a top. terrible football team about 500. Ohio State was going to just run them over and over and over again,

finally get a victory for Michigan or for Ohio State in the series because this group of four years of Ohio State athletes had not enjoyed a victory against Michigan. And then Michigan goes there and pulls off the upset. I mean, it's watching that game, I just seriously, I couldn't believe just how conservative Ohio State was offensively. And I mean, it was seriously every single time. It looked like what at times a Bobby Sloat game playing, it looked like, hey, we're going to run the football whether you like it or not. Well, are you going to

get much out of running the football? Because it doesn't look like you are getting that. So maybe switch it up a little bit. I don't know. You've got a Mechegbuka. You've got Jeremiah Smith, two of the best receivers on the field. Like, maybe use them a little bit more than you are in this game. Then it was dropped passes. And

I mean, Michigan did what they were supposed to do. They kept it close. I never once thought that Ohio State was going to lose that game. But then, of course, they kicked the field goal late, just a few seconds left. I mean, you get the, what was it, illegal substitution after you come out of a timeout and you're still not lined up properly. It seriously was every single bit of frustration for Ohio State fans that I can understand them being pretty miffed with Ryan Day right now. So that was, the game in itself, frankly, was futility on both sides. It was the alleged planting

of the flag at the Ohio State 50-yard line. Don't tell Jack Sawyer. He didn't like that. I'm going to be brutally honest with you, and I mention this on Twitter as soon as it happened. I'm kind of pro-S-talking in college sports. I don't ever get offended by it.

When people come at me for the University of Houston and my thoughts about their football program or anything athletically done and we lose a game because I blank talk that at our school and they want to blink talk me back, I thought Gus Johnson and Joe Clyde, who were broadcasters for the game on Saturday took it way overboard of this is horrible for the game.

This is so unsportsman. This is a dirty way to end it. Well, guess what you didn't do? Cut away. You didn't cut away. Because everybody wanted to watch it, Gus. Everybody wanted to watch it, Joel. Everybody likes a little blank talking.

And if you want to plant your flag there, I'm not saying that you should be giving carte blanche. But if you can get to the 50-yard line and do it, So what? Well, it's also too. I mean, it's Braggers' rights. I mean, Michigan had zero business winning that football game. They're not a good football team this year. But they physically beat up Ohio State,

and they pretty much knew once the game was close, hey, these guys don't really truly believe they can beat us. And they were able to get over the top and be able to beat them. And that's an Ohio State problem. It's not Michigan's problem. I mean, I kind of understood why Michigan did what they did after the game. I don't want to do that.

We completely run you guys. If you're playing U-TAP or you're playing Middle Tennessee or something, you can't jump the field every time you win a game, but there's just going to be a handful of times

that I kind of like, you know what, these are two of the most hated schools towards each other. There are people that live and breathe and die to make sure the other team loses. Like, for instance,

if Texas 101 to drop a flag at the 50-yard line of Cal Field, so what? They tried. They tried. So Bob Ballou, who does TV in the Austin area, had the video of Steve Sarkisian, you know, players are doing the eyes of Texas and all that. And then he starts to hear, hey, let's go to midfield or something like that.

And you see Sarkisian himself running over and saying, no, no, no, we're not doing it. We're not going to jump on the logo. We're not going to do it. Let's go to the locker room. There's enough emotions already. We don't need to feed into them. Let's enjoy the win. Now, I'm not endorsing doing it, but I'm saying.

saying that I thought the faux outrage of it happening was a little over the top. It was ridiculous. Here's what you don't want. I don't want to come on and cross and saying, well, I want these guys to do it and if they want to throw helmets at each other and trying to hurt themselves, that's not good for the sport.

I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that I thought for two teams that despise each other as much as they do. And I'm not saying that Michigan would have been better served by not doing it. I'm not saying that Ohio State, you know, didn't appropriately

act the way that they did. But these are two schools that it's nasty. It's been that way for years. It's never going to be. We respect them. They respect us. It's a good competitive matchup. They recruit against each other. They blink talk each other all the time. They're constant rivals in the Big Ten. They are two of the most high profile programs in the country that happen to be about an hour flight away from each other. I just thought for a network to get, oh, this is the worst event of sportsmanship

in my life, I was like, get over. It's two teams that despise each other. Well, it's also, too. I mean, and, you know, there's the video that surfaced, one of the Michigan guys, throwing something that kind of really ignited this thing even more. I get all of that, but, I mean, I came out of it twofold with Ohio State.

I came out of it number one of, that's embarrassing for you, because not only did they beat you up on the field, but now they really let you know, like, we run this thing. This is our house, and we're going to come in here and show you that it's our house.

The other one as well is Ryan Day being frozen stiff and... You're just staring at it. And asking somebody, what happened? A buddy of mine, it's a huge Ohio State fan. He threw out, and I agree with him. He goes, that is a pretty good indicator of

what this rivalry has been for some time, and not only this rivalry, but how Ryan Day has been in huge games. But the reality is this. We are seeing more of this and ever before. So I guess I'm going to have to let bygons be bygones because we're seeing guys punching each other. We're seeing fights between North Carolina, North Carolina State.

We saw UHBYU with a little bit of a post with a guy throwing a punch. I mean, we're actually seeing probably too much of it. So I guess if we can't control it and it can't be just good old-fashioned sportsmen like blank talking that none of us are going to be able to enjoy it. Here's the unfortunate truth, though, is that you don't have a central governing body in college football. If the college football playoff wants to step up and be that, then by all means. But until then, it's going to have to come down to the conferences. I mean, you had a conference that banned doing the horns down.

That was a penalty if you did it. They had it as a rule. It was in their bylaws that you cannot do it. If I saw all the Aggie fans doing the horns down, I'm all for it. But it's also, though, too. I mean, that's what's going to litigate this. I don't even know if that's the right word, but follow me on this. Is the SEC has to step in and say, hey, you plant flags, there is going to be punishment.

You know, the Big Ten has to do it as well. That's what's going to come down to is these power conferences are going to have to be the ones that say, hey, we're done with the flag planning. You do it. There's going to be consequences for you doing that. So what should be the consequence? I mean, you can fine. You can.

Why does any 20-year-old kid, care if he gets fined. You shouldn't. Should we talking about it, suspending him for the next game? That would be the one that would be the, that would hurt. I mean, because there are rules. And I mean, I think all conferences have rules for field storming. Like for the SEC, the first one, I think it's like 50,000.

Next one, it's 100,000. I mean, they even stepped up too with the fake injuries. I mean, you got Greg Sanky sending out a memo and say, hey, look, if this gets too far out of hand, I'm going to start suspending out. Well, if you want flag playing to be eliminated, you're going to start videotaping these post-game celebrations, and if you catch anybody doing it or involved, then you spend them for the next game. And most of these flag planning situations are usually in the last games of the year

against hated rivals. Imagine telling a handful of Ohio State players that can't play in a bowl game or a college football playoff game because of a flag plan. Then they'll stop doing it. All right, it is time for us as civic responsibility to this radio station of the great listeners of this program, to give you an opportunity to pardon a Houston sports athlete, coach, general manager, owner.

President Biden today, pardoning his son. Who would you like to pardon in Houston sports? I always wanted executive power. You're going to get it for the next half hour. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. 1131, Sports Talk 7-90 with a word here for affordable tree service. Your trees may not like this cold weather.

Your trees may not like the cold and the wind and the rain that's coming, or the iceman that may be coming this winter. get your trees ready for such weather conditions by calling Martin Spoonmore and the wonderful people at affordable tree service. Their website is aftree service.com. They can also be found on the telephones at 713-699-2663. If you want to plant some trees for them to be sprouting in the springtime, get a hold of Martin right now. He'll help you do that. Anything to do with your trees that are such an important part of your property that need to be maintained by professionals, and that's what Martin Spoonmore is.

713 699-2663. They've been in business since 1999, take care of trees, including mine, and if they can take care of my trees, as I've got no business doing it, I trust them, and you should too. 713-699-2663, 7-13-699-2663,

affordable tree service. Hey, it's Sparky from the Astros broadcast team. Catch every Astros game on Sports Talk 790 and the iHeart radio app Home of your Astros. Now who is this again? Oh, how dare you? How dare you?

Why y'all both shaking your head at the same exact time? Well, I mean, because I do understand that most of your musical taste don't go past 1980, but that's rude but fair. This is my heyday of music. This is a band called Incubis. That was really huge when I was in high school. And I've had subsequent albums ever since.

Like one of their best was Morning View, and they just remastered it last year and re-released it, and it was fantastic. Turn it up. You legitimately jammed this song back in the way. Yes, I do. All of it. Okay, that's fair. And every time I have a chance to go see them live,

I go see them live. What's name of the group again? Incubus. Incubus. And the lead singer's name is Brandon Boyd. Nice guy? Great guy. All right.

You hear the pipes. You can belt it. I mean, it sounds very 90s to me. Well, I mean, it's fantastic music. Why? What do you want me to apologize? It is time for you And you and you and you and you and all of you listening

There's somebody that's bothered you for all these years I'm going to go rando This is in no particular order I pardon the Faisamma Jamma team in 83 That lost to North Carolina State for all the miss free throws And foul trouble they got in And allow that dumbass North Carolina State team to win the national championship

By that miracle slam dunker put back I mean I'll never get over it But I'm going to pardon it So no I love you, Dream. I love you, Clyde, I love you, Reed Geddice, Alvin Franklin, Benny Anders,

you got to hit your free throws. I pardon you for missing those free throws and allowing North Carolina State to hang around on the basketball game. And I pardon you, Clyde Drex, over getting into foul trouble so early in the game too. I pardoned AJ Hinch.

You do? For 2019. For not going to... For Will Harris, huh? For not going to Garrett Cole and having Will Harris. It's all that against him for the longest time. I'm fair. That's fair. And I understand, you know, he made the quip about it's nice to be on this side of the foul pole this time.

That hurt a little bit. But also, though, too, I want to remember the good times that AJ Hinch gave this organization. And also, too, how he treated us, even though I wasn't here. Yep, great guy. I mean, so I think we should remember AJ for the great things that he did here during his Astros' tenure. I pardon Oilers' defense coordinator Jim Eddie for allowing all those types of touchdowns to Frank Reich in the second half of the game between the bills and the Texan. That's a tough one.

I have to do it. These pardons are not going to be easy. They're not, I mean, nothing to forget about them, but you got to do it. Do you think it was easy for President Biden to pardon his son? Probably. Probably worse. It was fairly easy. That was a bad example.

Sorry, son. I pardon you, Jim Eddy, for making no defensive adjustments. I just do. I pardoned Dave Smith for blowing the lead against the Mets in 86 games. Game 6 of the Astrodome. Told you my parents were at that game. They had to leave early. Me.

You were a bad brat. You were a spoiled brat kid. I was not even one years old. So you were definitely spoiled at least. Sure, yes. I pardoned Chandler Parsons and James Harden for not defending Damien Allard on that play in the Western Conference playoff round against the Blazers way back in the day.

Yeah. I pardon Jeffrey Bagwell for giving Jim Crane terrible advice about signing Jose Bray to a three-year contract. Now hold it. You're abusing your executive power. What do you mean? This is endless. I got to get this off my chest. There's no minimum

or maximum number of pardons. I mean, I get where you're going with this because you're ready to move on. But it's also, though, too. I mean, part of the Astros being in the payroll predicament that they may or may not be in right now is because you've got over $30 million tied up in players that you're

probably not going to use. Maybe Montaro. but one of my favorite players of all time who wrote it out through shoulder injuries the back third of his career and Jeff is just trying to live his best life trying to live a straight and arrow after having some off the field issues after his playing career was done and Jim Crane asked for his advice

Jeff gave it to him it was incredibly bad advice I still pardon him but don't break what's not broken like that's that to me was when he gave the whole press scrum there's one thing I know it's baseball and all the analytics stuff. Well, the analytics stuff's been working out. So you're not pardoning Jeff Bagwell? It's your pardon.

You have the executive power. I can't let it live on. I just can't. I pardon Yao Ming. Go ahead. Because I think that Yao is remembered pretty unfairly in this town. Yow brought this organization back to respect the way. But what do you do wrong?

The injuries. You cannot pardon a man because of injuries. Well, I mean, also too. I think in many people's eyes, he didn't live up to the potential that they thought he would have. But he didn't do anything wrong. I'm not saying... Some people get pardoned that didn't necessarily do anything wrong. No, if your president's pardoning is because you did something crime-ridden, right?

Yeah. Not necessarily. Like, give me an example. Who got pardoned for not doing something illegal? You can't. That's fine. We're not a political show. I am going on the spot.

I am going on the spot. You have to do something illegal in crime to get pardoned. Well, what's illegal to some is maybe not so illegal. Look, Yao Ming to me was was underwhelming, but I wouldn't apply. He didn't do anything criminally wrong. Or not the sport's criminally wrong.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. It's all relative. But I mean, I think people thought that championships were going to happen under Yao. And that didn't happen outside of 2009. Really during his tenure, he didn't necessarily believe that this team had an opportunity to be able to reach

that point. I pardoned Dana Holgerson for stop recruiting last year. because I think we're in a better spot with Willie Fritz. Okay. So, Dana, you've been pardoned. I just... I pardoned Jake O'Donnell for throwing Clyde Drexor out of a playoff game in the 1995 playoffs. So Scott Foster's probably not going to get a pardon in this season.

No, no, no. No, but Jake O'Donnell threw Clyde Drexer out in a playoff game against Phoenix and never refereed a game again. I pardon you. I accept your mistake. Move on. I pardon Matt Schaub. For what? Those pick sixes? Well, pick six is, but also I think that he, like many quarterbacks, he wasn't a superstar.

I get all of that. But he also was a huge reason why this team was in the position they were in to be able to win in the beginning parts of the 2000s. I don't think you're getting the gist of this conversation. Oh, I think I very much am. You're partnering. If you're going to pardon Matt Schaub, you're going to do it because he threw consecutive pick six over and over again. It's against the match. Shob sucks crowd. There was always the loud Matt Shob sucks crowd.

And I mean, there was a time in Texan's history where having the early part of the 2010's version, but pre-pick six, Matt Shob would have absolutely been yearned for. Let me give you an example. In the Tom Savage years, the Brandon Whedon years. I do not pardon Cal McNair for hiring Jack Easterby. I do not pardon that under any circumstance. No, no. So. 713-212-5-7-9. I noticed somebody else didn't get a pardon either.

Who? He used to wear number four, played for the Texans. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No pardons. No, no, no, no pardons. No. Felipe, you're in charge of pardoning a Houston sports figure. Who do you give a pardon to? Well, Dan took one for mine.

It was the A.J. Hinge and not bringing in Garrett Cole. I pardon you, AJ Hinch, for that decision. And two, the Rock is I pardon you for missing 27th Street Oh Oh

heartbreaking I pardoned you guys Oh Oh I'm sorry It was a painful memory Yeah I don't know if I can do that See you

That hurt so bad I was at I was at Braves game That night I was hosting the suite For the station I was working for and towards the end of the game I was back in like the little kind of

living room area of there just watching that game angrily watching that game and might have forgotten that I was entertaining clients but that's another story because it was, we're so damn close to making it to the NBA finals

and this is how it happens and against those guys that was tough Trevor Reza all right Anybody else you want to pardon? We're here for you. Now, Connor, is there any Missouri Tiger quarterback you would like to pardon for past discretion?

Sorry, I'd bring that up. No, no. I'm just thinking about that out loud. Now, why is Maddie Mark catching strays? Yeah. All right, you want to pardon somebody? Let's go, 713, 212-5-790. A song is kind of a banger in it.

It's amazing. It's not my favorite, though. What is your favorite? Wish you were here. Really? It's a great song. Okay. 713-212-5-790.

I will give you no pardons if you do not go to Big City Wings tonight and enjoy $1 chicken tenders or $450 big brews. We're talking about 34 ounces of cold, delicious beer. 550 for the premiums, $450 for the domestics. $1 chicken tenders, that's today at any of the 13 Big City Wing locations. Plus, if you are in charge of stockings, I don't buy gifts for my kids and my wife, I'm in charge of filling the stockings up. A Big City Wings gift card is where it's at. For every $25 you buy from Big City Wings, you'll get a $5 bonus to give to yourself. Big on wings, big on $1 chicken tenders, big on big brew specials, big on big screen TVs for tonight's Monday night game, and big on gift cards.

For every 25 you get a $5 bonus. From Big City Wings and 13 Houston area locations to find the one near you, it's big citywings.com. More Matt Thomas. Now on Sports Talk 790. Connor, who you pardoning? I was kind of having a hard time thinking of one, but maybe less Alexander for charging up the, racking up the rent at the Toyota Center, so it forced the Houston Arrow's out. Wow.

You went deep in the weeds on that one. Yeah, the Houston Arrows had the highest rent of any HL franchise, and they had to leave and go to Iowa, and I miss them a lot. Well, we'll get you an NHL team eventually. Maybe a while, but, you know, we're going to wait for it. Okay. But yeah, less Alexander. Tom, you have the power to pardon.

Who are you pardoning? I've got two pardons. One, I'm going to officially for the city of Houston, pardoned Vernon Maxwell for leaving the second team during the playoffs. Got you? The second one is I'm going to pardon former U of H head coach, Tom Herman, for running up the score against my Texas State by having an onside kick and a reverse halfback option pass in the first half. already up by four touchdown. Hmm. Okay.

To each his own. I do not pardon Kevin Summone for not caring about my cougars against Southern Miss to lose the conference USA championship game and a trip to go to the Sugar Bowl. No pardon. Sorry. Yeah, that was a rough one. I don't pardon Bucky Richardson for trying to take Kevin Summon either.

Sorry, Bucks. I actually know what I do. You know what? Bucky, you do get a pardon. You inherited Kevin Summon and what did your program do after that? Buckkiss. I mean a guy won a Heisman trophy. He didn't win it. He did not.

It was the guy that wore number two. On the same lines with Les Alexander, I pardon him for condoning the overuse of Moni, Moni, and I love rock and roll. And who's the Four Tops? Who was the Jersey Boys? They would always play

Oh, what a night? That was part of a bunch of music that was way overplayed. where it's like not really the crowd you want to play to here at an NBA game. Okay. Let's see. Brian. Brian, who are you pardoning?

Hey, Matt, I got to, well, somebody took my Vernon Maxwell one. I was going to give him a pardon. You know what? And as a longtime Houston sports fan and native Houstonian, I'm ready to finally pardoned Brad Litch for the shot heard around the world. Oh. Which is still ascending. It worked out okay because we.

clinched the next night, but we didn't get to join it home in front of the home fans. And Matt, I am finally ready after 31 years to pardon Jim Eddie for his god-awful defensive alignment. I did the same thing. I pardon Jim Eddie. I'm finally ready to pardon Jim Eddie. The players get no grace because you start to perform and perform. But Jim Eddie, you have my full-fledged pardon on your prevent defense in the second half against the bill. Preventative victory. Thank you very much.

Tony, a lot of us had to pardon this 93 order team. It's just what it is. Well, I mean, so much promise and you felt like, all right, hey, we're going to get back to the Love You Blue Days, and we're actually going to be able to maybe play for one of those things one day. Brian and Laredo, you have the power to pardon. What are you getting rid of? Who are you saying it's all pardoned?

Hey, I want to pardoned Lovie Smith for winning that last game on his way out. Oh. Yeah, because we crushed him. The entire city had crushed him. How you gave up the chance of the number one picking Bryce Young? How in the world could you do that? Great pardon.

Lovey's sacrificed so CJ Shroud could fly. Otherwise, we have Bryce Young here in Houston right now. Mm-mm-mm. I pardoned Nick Casario for not going to get an offensive lineman at the trade deadline. I've given you my thought. thoughts on that. Just throwing that out there.

Got some good ones coming in on Twitter, too. Dude, what do you got? What are you reading? Joan, I pardon Gary Kubiak for not getting Peyton Manning, because remember Peyton Manning had the story on the Manning cast a couple of weeks ago that he wanted to come to Houston, but that Gary wanted to stick with Matt Schaub. Oh, I pardoned Charlie Cassily for having

and Dom Capers having extra faith in Derek Carr. Not David Carr, excuse me, David Carr. Gary gave it a shot and then Gary said Yeah, not this guy I got one for you This is the Did we pardoned 2017 Astros? Oh easily

Yeah Easy because everybody was doing it They just got caught We've been doing this for the longest time Guess what? I'm not pardoning the damn rat I can tell you that for damn sure No

No he gets nothing and he'll like it Roger who are you pardoning I got a couple of them I'm going to pardon Lewis Lloyd and Mitchell Wiggins For 86 Oh We can busted for cocaine abuse and I'm going to pardon. Danny H.

for smashing Morley in the face with a basketball. We're not in the playoff. We still have the last lap. I pardon. Thank you very much. That's good. That's really good. I pardon the Utah Jazz for beating my rockets on John Stockton's three-point shot. I can't do that. Because you still lost the Chicago Bulls.

Suck it. I can't do that. They, cheap shot artists, floppers, Jersey Tuggers. All of it. You're right. Forget I have said that. Jerry Sloan, that smug look that he'd have on the years. I love Jerry Sloan. I was there during the last years of his coaching

career in Utah. Still, I love the guy. I'll say that. Him, George Carl. I like George Carl, too. I will not pardon Amy Crunk's drunk. No. Not going to happen. Or the entire Adam's family. I will pardon

Texas Darlene for not appearing on national television yesterday. and not knowing who at least five of the Texans players are. No, I think you've got that wrong. They know who the Texans players are, and it's also where it's kind of like, why do you know all of that? Yeah, you know.

Anthony and Deer Park, who do you pardon? Hey, guys, I have a couple of them. First, I want to pardon Cole McCoy for leaving us with freshman Garrett Gilbert in the 2010 National Championship. You should pardon his dad for treating him of kid gloves, too. I mean, I get looking out for yourself, man, but it's the national championship. And I think Texas wins that game if Cole McCoy stays in the game. And secondly, I'd like to pardon the entire 2005 Astros bullpen for single-handedly costing us a World Series championship in 2005.

Now that hurts. I pardoned Jeff Bagwell and Craig Bigeon's October's. They were rough. two of my favorite players of all time. I pardon them all. I do. I pardon Orlando Palmero for grounding into that ground out to end the World Series. I pardoned Kevin Bass for taking

swinging and missing on strike three against Jesse Orozco, 86 game six of the National Championship Series. Terrible. Jesse Orozco throwing his glove up in the air? I don't know, pardon that. I can tell you that for damn sure. No, none of that Mets team. Seth on 790, Seth, who are you pardoning? So, guys, so we'll stick with 2004 Astros.

I want to pardon Carlos Beltrane for leaving Houston going to the Met. A&O really wanted to matter because then he came back in 2017. Not about the scandal, but his World Series ring, what's all straight for that his World Series ring does have the Astros logo on it. So for me, Carlos Beltrane, you hear by our pardon. All right, thank you very much. Last one, Brad? Brad's got a list.

Hello, Brad. I want to pardon McNair for hiring Bill O'Brien as the GM and trading DeAndre Hopkins. I think Bill O'Brien was a horrible GM, but he was a fair coach. And then the second one, it's only if Ross pardoned me, is quit banning me from the post-game talks, man. That's not right. All right. Thank you, Brad. Be like Dave. Well, it's Dan.

Yeah, I was going to say, if you're going to give him some love, you've got to give his right name. You were almost there, and I was about to invite you. But really fast. Bearded something. I pardoned Kelvin Cato for stealing money from the Rockets. That's true. Why is it his fault for accepting it?

Brennan says, I pardoned Chris Paul's hamstring. Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, here's one from Dave, Jim McMullen, family for allowing Nolan to go to Arlington. Sorry, I cannot do that. I do not pardon Jim McMullen for that. No. Is it Jim McMillan's on Gene McMullen?

What's McMollan? What's McMellan's first name? John? John McMillan. It wasn't Jim. Yeah, it was John. Let's see here. I pardoned Jared Culver for collapsing off the drive of the lane instead of guarding the three in the 2019 National Championship game. That's interesting. A little Texas Tech run there. Yeah, it's I mean, there's many that are endless.

I mean, you know, this pardoning of Carlos Gomez? Yikes. I mean, look, he didn't want to perform poorly and you gave up a ton. And you gave up probably the young, not probably the younger version of Josh Hader. What could have been of Josh Hater possibly in an Astros uniform? All right. Let's go. That was pardoning.

That was excellent. We'll do that once next time it was a big pardon. We have to do it again. News at noon is coming up after I, tell you about Uptown appliance repair, wonderful folks that want to fix your refrigerator, want to fix your ice maker, want to fix your wine sutter, want to fix anything that may not be working in your home. The appliances need some TLC and that's why you get with under, not with underdog, you go to underdog, but that wouldn't be worth where you want to go.

You want to go to Uptown Appliance Repair. That's what I was going with. I was going to go with the right you. Uptown Appliance Repair.com. Uptown Appliancesrepair.com is the website. Bobby Fero and his team will take care of all of your appliance repair needs, and you can do that by calling them today at 281-758-99-78. 281-58-9-9-78. Whether, again, it's a sub-zero refrigerator that's not working, an ice maker that's on the fritz, or you've got a barbecue grill, washer, dryer, dishwasher not working. The premium brands they service will be the ones that will be in your home, the ones you want to get fixed, and you can get rid of the aggravation of having to think about buying a new refrigerator or new ice maker when you get the folks at Uptown Appliance Repair to fix it for you.

281-78-958-9978. That's 281-758-9978 uptown appliance repair.com. Lunch timers. This is the Matt Thomas Show. 1206 Sports Talk 790. We go back to your phones. We go back to all things Texans, all things rockets, all things of the busy college. all weekend after we check in with Dan

and the news at noon. All right. You talked about the Texans. They beat the Jags yesterday, 2320. 8 and 5 on the season. Joe Mixon, 20 carries. 101 yards. Touchdown. CJ Stroud. 2234. for 242 yards and ATD.

And of course, Azizal Shire ejected for his hit on Trevor Lawrence. Suspension, strong possibility. My comment is, he should be suspended. I don't think it should be multiple games. I think he will be suspended for the Miami game. I think the video of that is going to be as damning once everybody sees it. Frankly, yesterday Jacksonville and Houston was not on a radar as a big game. Today,

the day after, the day after that, when people were trying to generate news headlines, that hits going to be shown by everybody around circles. And if he doesn't get suspended, there are many people saying, what are you doing in NFL? You're not protecting your players. That's the curse of social media, though, because it's already happened. But it's the right decision, though. I don't care if it's a curse of social media or not. Al-Zisa, I'll show you here. Again, I'm not ready to condemn him for the rest of his NFL career. He should come back.

He obviously apologized. All the right things. But just saying you're sorry, sometimes isn't enough. If that was the case, I never would be punished by my mother. I said, am I sorry to her a bunch times in my life? Oh, I still do. He got grounded. Yeah.

He needs to be grounded. On one game grounding. I'm going to ask him not to play a game in this season. But if the NFL is serious about protecting, it's quarterbacks, which clearly has a protection link of its quarterbacks. I don't care if people are arguing, did he slide too late? Or what was Al-Shea you're supposed to do?

Guess what? There are still plenty of players in the NFL that know how to avoid such collisions. LZ's was not one of them and should face the punishment for it. But I'm not ready to condemn. I'm not saying he's the dirtiest player in the world. I'm just saying the punishment needs to fit the crime,

and the crime was you took a guy out. Well, I mean, it's also, too, in situations like this, it's who's saying things to allow in whom I'm willing to listen to? A lot of former players coming to Al Shire's defense. As you would expect? I mean, I saw one, I believe it was

Manuel Ocho, of course, who played on the defensive side of the ball, said it was an illegal hit. It was not a dirty hit. That there is a difference in terms of a dirty hit, obviously is with intent to injure. I don't think that it was necessarily Aziz Al Shire's intent to injure

to Lawrence. I'm watching to play, and I watch it several times after the game yesterday. don't think as the use is going, I'm going ready to go destroy this guy. But it was illegal and illegal activity. I don't mean to go 25 miles an hour. I didn't do it with intention to go 87 miles an hour on the freeway. You still hit me with your car.

Yeah, you still hit me or I still cause an accident. It is what it is. You got to, you know, this is just being real. I mean, I could be, ooh, golly gee shucks. I'm Houston home radio host. Oh, that was nothing wrong. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to crush him for the rest of his life.

I'm not going to say he's a bad dude. I'm not going to be a terrible thing and all his NFL analyst. I'm going to tell you for what one Houston football person thinks, me, sports guy. Nothing more than that, nothing less. As much opinion is yours value. I don't have any more saying as anything else. I say you got to punish the incident. Just like if CJ Stride would have been hit terribly by somebody else.

Which happened last year? Yeah, but again, that's a mistake on their part. I get it. The NFL is going to let this thing's going to show up. It's going to show up all over the place. They're going to say you just can't give them a $13,000 fine. Well, I mean, you've got to be able to prove a point of saying, hey, look, we've got to take this out of the game.

In a way, we're going to do that is not only are you going to be missing game time, you're going to be missing game time pay as well. And that usually gets people's attention. So that's probably what they'll end up doing. Rockets beat the Thunder 119-16 Fred Van Vleet 38 points out of him off tonight Kings tomorrow night in Sacramento

you excited about going to the Golden State's Capitol City It's fine How's that new arena? Beautiful Yeah They have a hotel right next to it Which is awesome

So I don't worry about getting on a bus And just get there as late as humanly possible I like it I'm Mr. Lake Gagg Late getting their guy Okay And you're going to get there in plenty of time too I mean like what's the

Monday night dining scene. Probably staying in my hotel. Oh, well, okay. See, that's one thing is people always don't comprehend is that we don't, we don't treat these largely as vacation trips. Yeah, thank you. Like that's, that's the thing too is like it cracks me up. You know, hey, you know, are you going to be able to go do this? You can be able to go do that. My response is always, I can maybe do a dinner or like coffee or breakfast or something, but aside from that. Plus, I've been to these cities, I mean, I've been to Sacramento 15 times in the last eight years. It's like, there's nothing for me to go look i guess i could go check out with the ace play but why don't want to do that point

being is this um good dinner good arena i'm happy okay that's fair that's it and it's also too and good basketball team that makes me most happy i mean black out curtains too so you can't sleep incredibly well nah i can't sleep on the road really no i sometimes get better sleep on the road than i do at home oh i wish i could because i know the dog's waking me up at 545 in the morning that's true man is what else you got going still love you pixie still love you love you chaco all right chaco chaco it's our other dog yeah like chaco taco taco so basically you're equating your dog to a frozen treat yeah okay you sweep up uh texas uh texas n m 17 7 they're going to the cc championship game rematch against georgia and texas is going to win the c in their first year

and it took a and m 13 years oh you still haven't gotten there yet oh listen how rude you are don't be mean to those facts are facts facts are facts Don't get mad at me because the truth is the truth. So what did A&M finish with the record of 8 and 4? 8 and 4. If Jimbo would have gone 8 and 4 again? Still would have gotten fired. He wasn't brought there to go 8 and 4.

He was brought there at the very least to have a bad season, B.U, going 9 and 3. So what has Mike Elko been brought there to do? To be able to at least give stability to the program and hopefully do what Jimbo never did. Okay. Still waiting for that SEC championship appearance. Yes.

13 years in counting. Are the Texans the Aggies of pro football? They haven't been around long enough to have expectations. Who hasn't been long enough? The Texans. They've been around 22 years. What are you talking about? Well, but A&M hasn't won a national title since we had young men fighting overseas in Europe in World War II. So they have to not go to the Super Bowl for another 60 years for this to happen.

Okay. I see how you roll. I'll leave that last part. Let you think about it. I'm already in Dutch with Aggie fans. Real quick here. Syracuse football reporter accusing Miami mascot, Sebastian Ivis, of hitting on her during the game. Now, don't we know...

Slow down. I think I love this story. Yes. Go ahead. So Ashley Wiskowski, Winskowski, is her name. She's a reporter for C&Y Central there in New York. And she called out Sebastian during the Orange's 4238 upset win over Miami in the Carrier Dome.

And she threw it out there on X. Sebastian Ivis just kneeled down and asked for my number mid-drive. Feels like he has bigger things to worry about like his team on the ropes in the fourth quarter here at the dome. Did she give the number out or no? She didn't say if she did.

I haven't the rule of me. I mean, you were a mascot. Yes, I was. The rule of the mascot. Don't speak. There you go. There you go. I'm going to give you a...

I can't believe it of doing this. I've got to get to a break. male mascots can pull. Is it like the shroud of mystery? Is that what it is? You don't know what he looks like underneath? I've known a handful of male mascots in my life,

and they've all been able to pull. Interesting. I'm just saying, I think when you put the uniform on, it changes you who you are. Now, meanwhile, I in high school could not pull because I was not the most attractive man in the world. I'm much sexier today than I was in high school. Good for you.

So if you want to put a mascot uniform on me now, I could pull. I don't know if I'd want to be in there. I'm very sensitive to smells, and I feel like those things can really smell. That's true. Yeah, I don't want that. All right.

But you could pull if you wear a mascot uniform. I'm just saying. But I don't need to pull anymore. I'm good. It's throwing it out there. And that's the news at noon. We go to the phones next. 1215.

How about that first? I have a segue. I liked your story. That was good. I knew that it would be right in your wheelhouse. Thank you very much. 713-212-5. If you're a mascot,

If you're a former children, did a mascot ever hit on you? And did you go out with them? 713, 212, 5790. 713, 212, 5790 with a word for quality home products of Texas. I'm thinking about my high school days since I never should be thinking about that. Yeah, call Matt and Dave, as I'm now named. You are. You're looking at Dave.

Quality home products of Texas would like for you to get a Generac standby generator. It's very important because cold weather is going to force the grid to do some crazy things. And if you lose your power, you do not want to be sitting at home when it's 39 degrees outside. You want the heat on. You want your electricity on. You want all the things to power up your home like refrigerators and washer machines and dishers and the dishwasher. And the home essentials like your computer and your cell phone be working. That's where you get to quality home products of Texas.

For a full home generator from quality generaq standby generators, that's where you need to go. 713 Quality. 713 Quality. Quality TX.com. 77,000 plus happy members of the Generac standby generator family from quality home products. You should be one. They've got great financing options, customer service at a second to nine, and you want to be able to have the power when others don't. 713 Quality QualityTX.com.

That's 713 Quality for Quality Home Products at Texas. More Matt Thomas now on Sports Talk 790. A friend of the show. cannot mention his name to protect his anonymity says that he pardoned Charlie Cassily for listening to somebody to think David Car will be a better

pro prospect than Julius Peppers. Mm-mm-mm-mm. Pardon Matt Schaub for not changing a play after Owen Daniels begged him in the huddle right before we threw the pick-six to Richard Sherman in 2013? Hmm. Somebody's got deep-rooted ties over there on Texanville.

some of the minutia that is Texans football back in the day. Interesting. So we're here for. So next time anybody gets pardoned, if we, if President Trump starts pardoning people, then we can bring back the pardons for to tell the truth. We can only pardon when

a president pardon somebody. Is that fair? That's the role. Yeah, that's absolutely. I mean, because you know, if you abuse the power, then you do it too much, it ruins a bit. Yeah, then you start getting you know, it becomes watered down. And nobody wants anything watered down. I'm going to think about this. I got a four-hour flight to

Sacramento this afternoon. I'm going to think about 10 more part of it. I feel like I got a bunch that I'm leaving on the table. There's quite a few that that absolutely could have been thrown out there. All you got to do is think about every bad moment in your Houston sports fandom and think about that and go, okay, I forgive that person. Although I don't forgive, I don't forgive anything that the McNair's did in hiring Bill O'Brien, pompous ass. I don't, I don't pardon them for hiring cash Easterbee. No. I don't condone. I don't pardon the David Cully hire. Nope.

What about, you know, Dome Days, Astros, playoff villains? I mean, you brought it up with some of the Mets. But like Kevin Brown, Greg Vaughn, Jim Lairitz, Sterling Hitchcock for 98. They were all better. Walt Weiss. They all performed. Up the middle. John Rocker. Not good. Gary and Palestine. at 1224 on 7 on it is it is it Palestine or Palestine I always mix it up Palestine Texas my name's Gary and I used to be in radio many years ago I'm 70 years old what did you do in radio mask high school college football for Stephen F. Austin back in the late 80s and I did the SFA ladyjacks back when they were nationally ranked Division 1 they hosted the Midwest region 93 and 96 I did those games and a lot of small colleges like East Texas Baptist and Marshall,

Luterno and Longview. So I'm 70 years old, but still a big sports fan. Well, good. What's on your mind? Thank you for calling. What's up? Well, I love Texas. I love for an underdog.

The SMU Mustangs. I've been following them this year. They're a great team. I just wanted to hang up, get your thoughts about their chances. They're playing Clemson their first year in the conference this weekend. I don't want to take any thing away from any of the Texas teams, but I just really love this team. They scored 66 points earlier this year on TCU.

What are your thoughts about the Mustangs or chances? What do you think they'll do this weekend? That's what I want to know. Thanks, Gary, for the phone call. I'm not watched a lot of them, honestly. I kind of keep it to the super local teams, although SMU has had a fantastic gear. But from what I can tell, they're going to have to beat Clemson.

in order to win the ACC and get a spot in the playoffs. They lose at Clemson. They're going to be on the outside looking in. Yeah, there's only one ACC team coming out. But Ret Lashley has done a great job there, and they've been able to supplement through the transfers. They're spending money up there at SMU as well. Here's my.

I don't know enough about them, so I don't want to speak about them. But I know about the program and what the rumor mill is. There are going to be a handful of schools, Gary, in the state of Texas, that are going to be able to go mono-a-mono with you when it comes to the collective, meaning paying players. Texas, A&M, Texas Tech, and SMU. TCU probably could throw some money around as well. They probably could, but I have been the, I don't want to say rumors. I don't think they're rumors.

I bet you SMU is ready to stay with the big boys and ready to pay for whatever it takes to get players to come play in Dallas. Well, that's the whole reason they went to the ACC, I mean, was to be able to have that chance. And it's a good story right now. I mean, this is a program that literally died. I mean, that was completely disbanded and had to rebuild. And they were awful afterwards. So if you're an SMU fan, you're enjoying this right now. This is kind of like when U of H went to the Peach Bowl back in 14, 15, 15.

But it's so different now because if you don't have money, like for instance, I'll be brutally honest. If the Cougars need a quarterback change, Zeon Chris is a nice young man, is a good athlete, good runner, but he's not a quarterback. He just can't, the accuracy is not there. He doesn't have the deep, big arm.

The Cougars need a brand new quarterback. If the Houston Cougars don't, and their collective cannot have, I don't know, $750 million to throw out a quarterback, we're not going to get somebody that's going to be better at this point. I mean, I've given you who I think will end

up there. I know, but you do have the money. You're mentioning Connor Wigman's name. Connor's going to be able to go where he wants. He's probably my guess, if he leaves, if he leaves Texas A&M. And my guess is he's going to, he's going to open it up for the highest bidder. As he should, I mean, because he pretty much has only one more

year at it. So, you want to be able to give yourself the best opportunity. And, I mean, U of H showed some good things this year, but are they necessarily in position to compete next year? Maybe. Regardless of whoever the quarterback is at Houston, and this is every school that needs a quarterback. I mean, you have to, you know how we have the strange thing in the NFL with all the salary

that is salary cap that has spent on the quarterback? You're kind of doing that in college now for the quarterback position. You may have three or four million dollars to spend on your collective for a particular football team for that next year. You're probably giving the, a high rated offensive lineman $250,000, maybe a receiver, 500. This is crazy we mean talking about this. but you better have

$500,750, a million dollars if you want to go get a quarterback. If you want a legitimate quarterback that can step on the campus and play right away. But no guarantee is going to be any good. And this is going to obviously sound ridiculous, especially with the way the weekend went.

But wouldn't it Ryan Day that said if you want to be in position to win a national title, you have to spend like $12, $13 million a season? But it was Matt Rule that was the coach of Nebraska that said it's going to cost you a million and a half, $2 million to get a quarterback. I mean, if you know, Well, if you know what's expected, then, I mean, you can't really be upset if you don't meet that point.

I mean, look, I was talking about Arizona State. You had their coach after they beat BYU, putting his shirt up of saying, donate to the collective. Let's keep this thing going. Like, that's the game you have to play now. That's why you are seeing general managers, the term general managers, being used in college athletics now, because the coach is handling the X's and O's. the coach is handling practices and the strength and conditioning department

and the food and the training facilities and when they work out and how they travel. You got people handling all of that now but your point's valid though. I mean you have to have a personnel department. But you have to have a personal apartment and you also have to have an department that's going to be able to distribute the funds

properly. Do you know who the new general manager is of the Stanford Cardinal football program? Yeah. Andrew Freaking Luck. Colonel Andrew Luck. with the neck beard. Yes. He is going there to handle everything except the coaching position,

which again, to me means either this is the new trend in college athletics where you need a general manager to manage a salary cap, which is what it is, or they don't trust who is at Stanford right now, who is a former Sacramento State coach, to run things. I would not want to have a general manager be over me as a football coach unless I, unless I knew that person and all that person was doing just making sure there's enough money to be spent on the players. It's also for luck. I mean, this might be kind of a for a and to does he want to get into that at the next level as well. I mean, that's what I think is kind of proving ground for him.

And I think you're going to start to see that too. If NFL teams who say, do I want to hire this GM who's been at two different stops or do I want to give somebody who has maybe been a little bit more open-minded and more kind of, I mean, the amount of information it is out there on the college level because it's not just the transfer portal, it's also the guys coming out of high school too as well that you have to concern yourself with. 713-212-5-790. But SMU wins.

They're going to the college football playoff. Automatic spot. Something that no one would have thought with a powerful ACC in Florida State and North Carolina and Clemson and who else is up in the east. Boston College and all the other Virginia Techs of the world. And it's freaking SMU represent.

in the ACC, only if they'd be Clemson this week. 713-213-5-790. The Shell Federal Credit Union is a company that I've been working with. In matter of fact, I got an auto loan through Shell FCU, and hopefully you will be doing the exact same thing during the holiday season. ShellfcU.org can give you $250 in cash back when you finance a new, used, or refinance auto loan. Plus, you can get rates as low as 3.99% APR for up to 36 months,

with 90 days of deferred payments and the flexibility of two skip a pace for year. Become part of the ShellfCU family by simply calling 713-844-1100, that's 713-844-1-110 or visiting their website at ShellfcU.org. 55,000 nationwide ATMs, 12 branch locations in Harris County, banks banking easy and accessible. And again, the customer service is second than none. That's why I'm so pleased to tell you that I am a Shell FCU member and you can be too. 3.99% APR up to 36 months from ShellFCU and ShellFCU.org. Rockets will be in Sacramento tomorrow night for the NBA in-season tournament. Are you buying any buzz into this at all to you?

I mean, I will if they get to Vegas. Me too. I'll be happy for you if that happens. Thank you, friend. It means a lot. But generally speaking, any extra buzz for you or just a typical NBA November game? No, because it's not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to make the playoffs.

Okay. That seems fair. I mean, if you win it, okay. Cool. But aside from that, it's not going to make me watch any more or any less. I'm going to watch regardless. Listen to me very carefully. If any of you go to Vegas and the rockets are there, we should all hang out.

So when did you do? What was the party that y'all did when you on? 30,000. Okay. Thankfully, I did that before the change in presidency because I had a lot of loss of followers because people dropped off Twitter. That is what it is. Yeah. But yeah, we should go to, if anybody's going to Vegas,

it's going to be cheap pre-Christmas. If you want to go to Vegas, the next three weeks will be the time to go. My grandpa used to live in Vegas, so we would almost yearly go see him that week before Christmas because the rates were always really nice. Really good. There's not a lot of people there. The weather is perfect.

It's in the 60s. Very comfortable. You can walk outside and I feel like you're going to die in an oven. Vegas is awesome year-round. It's amazing. Oh, I'd go any time of the year. I've got at least one trip playing next year, hopefully more than one. But, you know, get the kitchen pass on that.

And then when the A's get there, I mean, that, if they ever do? That needs to be a yearly trip. I don't disagree. I think it'd be our civic responsibility as a radio station for the home of the Astros to be in Vegas for that first trip. Absolutely. Problem is, again, they're going to have, they're still having lots of problems getting that thing done, financed. I just don't understand why they're not playing there right now. It's Vegas.

You can basically build any venue. Just build out a temporary stadium for the time. Well, they've got a AAA stadium, but it's also, nobody wants to play in 150 degrees at first pitch. That's fair. Even if you played the games at 8 o'clock Pacific time, it would be 11 o'clock in the east and 10 o'clock in the central time zone. They would say no. You can't play any day games. Too damn hot.

It's dry heat, though. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. That's true. Steve is with us at 1237 on 7.0. Hi, Steve. in there right now.

Steve. Oh, no. Steve, are you there? Give it like five more seconds. No, this sounds good. Like, this is a good conversation I'm hearing right now. Steve. I said it's 40 seconds ago.

Don't you tell him, Connor, to turn their radio to sound when they call the show? Yes. And they don't listen to you ever, do they? That's right. Oh, here we go. Oh, here we go. It took 50 seconds. next day. Hello?

No. Steve, are you there? Yeah, he told me to take the phone off of Bluetooth. Oh, okay. Hold on. He's talking to us 50 seconds ago. No, he's certainly confused. Don't you tell him, Connor, to turn the radio sound when they call the show? Yes. This is an epic phone call.

Okay. Can you guys hear me on my cell phone? Can you hear us? He's answering. He's literally talking to his radio. Steve, how was your weekend? What did you do for this weekend? How was Thanksgiving? What size did you have with your dinner?

We'll find that out at 1240. All right. We've had enough for this. It's been a good run. Thank you very much. So he's actually answering the questions. He's just answering it 45 seconds after we've asked him. I mean, I guess we took his call.

Yeah, but he wanted to talk about Texas v. Georgia. You can't it? We didn't really get an answer to his questions. Or we didn't get a chance to get his thoughts. Well, I mean, look, the good news is for Steve, if we want to open the door back up for him, is Gordy will be here in less than 20 minutes. That's true. You can break it down that way.

I was going to say. We'll call it SEC this week. Locked on SEC. Locked on SEC. Yeah. So, yeah, just a little note, if you ever call us, take the Bluetooth off, turn the radio. See, he's outing you. He thinks you just turn to tell him to turn the Bluetooth off.

Did you tell him to turn his radio completely? off. I don't think it worked out that way. You know what, Steve, I'm not going to blame you for that. I'm going to blame Connor for this mistake. No, no, no. I'm going to blame his car play. His car play was not hooking up. So, usually when that happens, I mean, you have no choice

that, you know, you're listening to the phone regardless, which is the real time. I get you. By the way, shout out to my Apple car play and shout out to Siri. She is comprehending about 98% of what I'm saying. Including my massive amounts of swear words to people.

I don't do the speak to text as much anymore for that reason. I live for it. And it's also too that sometimes Siri will clown you back. Like I, what is it? I spoke something and it was completely off. And I just go, you're almost not even trying, are you? You talk to your Siri? I mean, not like full conversations, but like, I'll have like Schneid remarks for stuff like that.

You know? No, I always say what I'm in the car. Siri will then say, you know, know that type of language is not necessary. No, she cusses. Really? Oh yeah. And I use very vulgar terms.

And she gets them every time. I'm very proud of her for that. Oh, it's like repeating it back to you is what you're trying to do. So I'll say, hey, Siri. And she'll go, yes, and I'll say, text this person. And she goes, what do you want to say? And I respond. And I try to get away as much as foul language as possible.

And she gets it about 98% of the time. I've also had two lately where I'm getting the dreaded circle of death of please try again later. I hit that one and I'm just like, what are you taking a smoke break? What are you on a union job I don't know about? That's funny. That's funny. What do you get your daily 15? Human series relationship is a lot more

complicated than mine is. It's just not hard to understand what I'm saying. Yeah, but maybe it's your emotions. Like when Gordy speaks sometimes, he gets really high pitch and anger. Like, I'm going to listen to you guys between here and Hobby Airport. How many times are you going to raise his voice in 40 minutes?

Well, I mean, if we get to the SEC, I'm sure that will happen. It will absolutely happen. We're definitely going to talk about the Aggies. All right. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-790. It's no surprise. We flipped on all the ESPNs during the break.

They're all showing the hit on Trevor Lawrence. As I said, it's only going to gain traction. There's going to be pressure on the NFL to suspend him for a game. Especially when you have Adam Schaefter basically saying, all we're waiting for is a number of games, which I, again, honestly, just, trying to be as objective as I can. This is deserving of a one game suspension.

Nothing more than that. It may be a fine. I mean, that's the thing, is you're missing a significant amount of money just for missing one game. So, I mean, that's... Well, the one thing I think, Dan, that the average fan's not going to care about is how much money a player loses. Maybe it's not. Still money lost. And usually the money that I want to be paid to me, I want it to be paid to me.

I know. But when somebody gets fined $50,000 to them, that's like $6 to $6 to us. I mean, I understand the difference in tax bracket here, but it's also too at the same time. You want your money. Well, you want them on the field is what you want. Perin and a story. Well, I mean, you see what your defense looks like with him on the field as opposed to not being on the field. 713-212-5-790.

713-1-2-1-7-19. I brought this up earlier. The flag bit to me in college sports doesn't bother me as much as it did the national. pundits. For you college football fans that are listening, did it? Was it outrageous, as Gus Johnson and Joe Klatt mentioned on Saturday, that Michigan

would try to plant their flag at the Ohio State O at the 50 airline? Was it preposterous? Was it super unsportsmanlike? Or was it just two schools that despise each other? Now, the problem is there were five other, six other games that were doing the same thing. and you put all of them in a big ball

and it makes it look like an ugly situation in college athletics. But at the time, when it happened, Dan, I was like, this is why it's one of the most hated rivalries in sports and it's the greatest college football rivalry out there. Ohio State v. Michigan. And if you want to plan a flag

because you beat them on their home turf, at that time, I didn't have a huge problem with it. Do you? 713-212. 5-790. 713-212-5-7-90 with a word now for two Creeks Crossing Resort. 40% off available there, cabins. 4-0. You want a deep discount on a vacation getaway for a couple days up in Lake Leveson area.

Then you need to go to Two Creeks Crossing Resort, 90 minutes of downtown Houston. They have these beautiful cabins. One of them has got one for multiple families and has got a hot tub in it. It's got high-speed Wi-Fi. There's a satellite television. There is a full refrigerator, full kitchen, full stove and oven. just all the modern comfort you'd want, but an opportunity to enjoy the relaxing time of being out in a cabin or in a tree house

or in a glamping tent or in a yurt. And these yurts, I'd never been in one before until I went to theirs at two creeks. They're very, very spacious and kind of fun and interesting. The kids will love being in those type of facilities. But most importantly, there's lots of kids' activities, lots of adult activities, there's a catch and release pond,

there's a swimming pool, there's a hot tub, there's a movie theater on the weekends. There's also a ice house that's open on the weekends as well, and all the things you want from workout facilities to high-speed internet, I mentioned before. There's clothing and washing areas as well, but just a chance to get out and enjoy the modern amenities plus the outdoors, all at two creekscrossingresort.com where you can get 40% off. I repeat 40% off accommodations right now at two creeks crossing resort.com. Craig Ackerman here. When I'm not calling Rockets basketball, I'm following at SportsRV on Twitter. You're listening to the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790.

1251, Sports Talk 790. Gordy's going to step in for the final hour of the show with Dan. You guys will talk about Rockets. Excuse me, Dave. All right, Dave. It's like you're an alter ego. Apparently. You know what my alter ego is, don't you?

No, I don't. Please. Turnbuckle Tom Turner. When I was a young broadcaster getting into the business, I didn't want to have my real name out with these wrestling reports I would use to do. Okay. On these little telephone thing, you'd call up like the info line at 6-5-1,000, and for pro wrestling news, you hit one.

And it'd be, hi, this Turnbuckle Tom Turner with today's wrestling update. Okay. I've told that story before. 80s and 90s wrestling. The promos. The promos cut, just everything. It made it what it was. All right.

Let's try Steve in Houston again. Hi, Steve. What's going on? Hey, guys. How are you? Much better. Much better. What's on your mind? In real time, Steve. How are you? I don't have a face for radio, but what do you guys think? We'll go with it. Yeah, sure. I mean, I'd have to ask your wife, but that's fine. Oh, she thinks I'm handsome. But she's right. She really is. There you go.

So, you know, you're asking about the flag planning thing. I mean, you know, if you do it, you're going to get a reaction. unless people get smart enough not to react. It's like the Horns Down thing, right? Yeah. I really don't get about Horns Down anymore. But if you looked at, like, if you watch the game against A&M, you know, they have their own hand signal in College Station. You wouldn't know it because they all do Horns Down.

Nobody does get them anymore. You know what it's funny. For a Texas fan, for a Texas fan, Steve, it probably is like, why are you so worried about us when it's your own program you should be boasting about, would be my guess. That's how I would think Texas fans would interpret it. Exactly.

And look at their fight song. I mean, we have a reference to A&M in our fight song, but I mean, half of their fight song is about goodbye to Texas University, goodbye to the orange and the white, saw bars these horns off. But anyway, I'm not an Aggie hater. I lived in college station a year and a half.

It's a great place. I met some wonderful people there. I am really glad that Texas won. I think it was critical that you win that last game 12 years ago and that you win the first game coming back. I can I could stand a few losses now really. But what do you think about Texas Georgia? I think Texas wins a football game. Thanks, Steve, for the phone call. Got a much better reception than for me there. I think the first fall, I was, and again, I didn't see all the second half because I was busy with the U of HB

while you game. That defensive line was nothing but a list of grown men out there. Aggie offense could get nothing going. There was no pass protection, no growing. running game to speak of, they flattened the Aggies offense for four quarters. They're looking like the Texas... No offensive touchdown scored, period. They're looking like the Texas program in terms of recruiting that was there from 2004 to 2009, like where there are legitimate NFL players, future NFL players on that roster now, where after that, you struggled to be able to regain that for some time.

And look, I'll give credit where credits do. You pardoned Daniel Holgerson earlier. Yeah. Holgerson had kind of a similar... answer last year when asked about the loss to TCU in their first Big 12 game. And he was like, we're in the big time now. You know, it's going to take time to build this up. And my response was, where have you been?

Like, have you not been recruiting to that? Have you not been selling? Hey, you know, wear it for a year or two in the American. But then you come here for an opportunity to be able to play major power five football. And that's what you try to build up to. It takes effort to be able to do that. But, I mean, kudos does need to. go to Texas for being able to get into the SEC

their first year. Did they play the toughest schedule? No, they did not. But they were able to win at least and be one of the top two teams to get to Atlanta for the SEC championship game. And A&M's never been able to say that. Really, outside of a couple of years, they never even sniff the opportunity

to get to Atlanta. And I know the response is going to be, well, we had Alabama in front of us. Teams got to Atlanta that were not named Alabama. LSU got there. Why aren't you better than them? Auburn got there, same deal. So, I mean, it's been 13 years.

Like, what have you been building up for? What have you been trying to get to as a program other than perennially being at best an 8 and 4 program? And I know that that's not what they want. But when I say things like that and people get upset with me, I'm like, you need to be more upset with your program then. You're not upset with me because, you know, I even had somebody come back at me. You know, oh, you know, LSU, you know, we beat LSU. Okay, fine. I get all of that. LSU fired a national championship coach two years after they got there.

You're not in their stratosphere. And selfishly with an Aggie, I want them to be successful. I've spent a lot of money there. My son goes there. My family's all big Aggie fans. They've got everything in place. I think Elko is going to be a really good football coach of them. I thought the Jimbo hire many moons ago was a good hire because he did have sustained success at Florida State,

which isn't easy because you're in the middle of the SEC territory. When it was not with players named Dalvin Cook and James Winston. But I mean, that you could say that with anybody. You could say it with anybody. I mean, he got them there, did he not? They got to the college football playoff. And I mean, they got to the BCS and they did win. But it's also, though, too, did you sustain that?

And he didn't necessarily do that. And that's why I think hindsight, obviously, you're kind of looking at it at saying, wow, you woefully overpaid for a coach that was not worth that money. But it was applauded. at the time it happened. And it applauded, it was applauded because he was the number one free agent coach out there. He obviously did not want to be at Florida State and he went to an A&M program where the facilities were good and they're now great. There's nothing that's precluding A&M from being ridiculous success, successful for the long term. And I prefer recruiting base, more money than God,

full stadium, huge support, lots of scholarship, lots of NIL money, no more excuses under any circumstance, how A&M can't be as good as competitive as Auburn or anybody else in the is flat out misinformation. People say there's something that's holding them back. There's nothing holding them back. Matt, it's malfeasance. I mean, there is zero reason why they should not be a program that is at worst a 9 and 3 program, 10 and 2, where you can, you don't even have to go two hours outside of College Station to be able to recruit most of your roster.

It's even a question, no, Dan. 10 years ago, it was a question of how long, how far you had to recruit. It's a question of how much cash you have. And A&M's flush with it, even by paying Jimbo out. All right. Thank you, French, for hanging in with me today. I'm going to take off of the airport. I will see you, talk to you tomorrow from Sacramento.

Yes. I will have got feelings as part of the show tomorrow, plus NFL rewind. And up next, Gordy's going to have to come in here and really yell at the top of his lungs about how three SEC schools should absolutely be in the college football players. I'll fire him up. Plus, I'll get him there. Texans recap too, right? Oh, absolutely. Rockets big win against Oklahoma City.

There you go. 158, Sports Talk 790. Lunch timers. This is the max. Thomas show. 1 o'clock gallery here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross. Nope. This voice is not Matt.

Matt. Exiting stage right, heading over to the airport, and then heading out with the team to Sacramento Rockets and Kings tomorrow night. As the Rockets, a huge win last night, we can get into that a little bit here in this hour. But Chris Gordy going to be hopping on with us here in a few minutes. Connor D. McGovern, of course, behind the board, making us sound good. on the air, all those different types of things.

So appreciate him always. If you want to jump aboard for anything that we have covered today, I mean, let's see. What have we covered? We've covered, obviously. The Texans winning yesterday. That's nice. 2320.

Maybe some frustrating parts of the game where, I mean, don't you kind of find it funny that this Texans team this year is mirroring kind of the way the Astros were across the board where yesterday it would be akin to the Astros hit, but then the pitching kind of faltered a little bit later in the game. So that's the Texans defense where I get it. Aziz Al-Shire gets ejected and you have to kind of retool your defensive captain on the field, all those different types of things of trying to adjust to that. And the Texans were able to do it enough to be able to get the win.

But still, I mean, it's one of those things. I know I repeat myself a ton, but that final offensive drive for the Jags, I'm just like, you cannot let Mac Jones get in the end zone. You cannot let it in another completion, another first down. And you're just like, oh my God, do not let this become a three-point game. Which, by the way, Connor D. McGovern, the point spread for the game yesterday was Texans three and a half. So they get into the end zone and the Texans still up by five. You're like, okay, hey, you know, make sure they don't get this two-point here, run out the time, you cover.

Then they get the two-point conversion. and that hook, you know, Blues Traveler told us, the hook will always get you and the hook got you yesterday if you took Texans minus three and a half. So there you go for that. But I mean, obviously a huge topic of conversation today. And I know some of you have weighed in on it if you want to continue to do so. The Al-Shire ejection from the game,

I mean, you know, you've had it go across the board of, you know, just the absolute hand-wringing from everybody. of there's no place for that in the game and, you know, suspend them. I mean, I even saw somebody throw out that he should be suspended for as long as Trevor Lawrence is out, which, by the way, Lawrence has gone on Twitter too as well and has started to react to yesterday's event. I mean, I know that there was video also to surfacing of Lawrence leaving the building. But yes, thank you to everyone who reached out, been praying for me. I'm home and feeling better.

It means a lot. Thank you all. So we'll see how long Trevor Lawrence is going to be out from the hit from Al Shire. But, I mean, you know, it's one of those things that if you just think that it's the dirtiest of all dirty football plays, then you have not been watching football long enough because plays like this will happen time and time again. And it's going to have the same reaction every single time is that, you know, there's no place for that in the game. And, you know, you've tried to legislate hits like this out of the game and try to make sure. sure that you know you don't have the potential for things like this to happen it's still a fast physical

game it's still a game played by some of the most athletic people on the planet and sometimes in the heat of competition things like this will happen suspension sure fine absolutely but to act like that this is just an aziz al-shayr thing i just think is being incredibly disingenuous i i just I don't think that it is a just a, you know, he's a dirty player and that he is out there with the intent of injuring players. He's not. He's out there trying to make a play for his team. And did he maybe get outside of technique and everything that you want to have on a play like that? Sure, did.

But to act like, you know, he's going out there stomping on players and intentionally injuring players, I just don't see that being the case. And I understand too, like I said, there's the video of the hit. on Caleb Williams, and then a little bit of a dust up that he had on the Bears sidelines during Sunday night football, talked about it too. Somebody else shared the video of him with Tom Brady either last year or a couple of years ago. And I mean, if you want to search for, you know, examples that are going to be able to validate your point, then absolutely you will search and you'll share them and try to say,

see, he's a dirty player. But I don't intentionally believe that Aziz Al Shai or is a dirty player. player. I think he had a very overly aggressive play that was handled at least with him the right way of yeah, hey man, like we can't have that. You're gone for the day. And then, you know, the rest of what happened. I mean, did the officials do enough to be able to stop it from spiraling out of control of a brawl and everything else of the sort and, you know, how they handled it with offsetting penalties? That's another topic for discussion. But in terms of, you know, just how, it was handled with him, they did it the right way.

It was a play that warranted an ejection. Don't out of the game. Get them out of there. And of course, emotions are going to continue to rise with this of, you know, people, again, wanting the call for the most, you know, aggressive punishment possible of, you know, I mean, like I even saw somebody else saying that he should be banished from the game. Well, if that's the case, then you're not going to have a league. Because, again, if you think that this is the last time that a play like this is going to happen,

you're going to be sadly mistaken. Because think about it this way. Anybody that's ever played the game, you know that's the way that you want to play defensive football is that you want to be as thoughtless as possible. You want to be able to read and react.

And if you're out there thinking, oh man, you know, how am I going to position myself here, then you're putting yourself at risk of injury. And you're putting even the other player at risk of injury because you tense up, you're not playing, freely, you're not playing again

with just the thought process of hey, you know, how do I see this? How do I react to this? How, you know, how should I go about it? All of those different things. It's paralysis by analysis and that can lead to more injuries. And it was an unfortunate

play. And it was one that you don't coach, you don't want it to be a part of your team, but also too as well. I mean, I think the way that C.J. Stroud and Domecoe. Riance handled it after the game was absolutely the correct way to handle it of we're going to support our guy, we're going to back our guy.

But it's also too as part of coaching. You know, I've said the saying before, you're either coaching it or you're allowing it to happen. I have to believe that Domingo Ryan's probably, even himself, sits down with Aziz al-Shayr and just says, hey, like, that's not the way that we play the game. You know, that's, that's not how we want to play aggressive football. And, you know, you hear the swarm and all those different things that the Texans throw out. But you address it. You move on, you wait for whatever the punishment is, and it's done.

It's over and done with. And in the age of social media, of course, everybody wants to be the first to be outraged. Everybody wants to be the first to be on the right side of history. How many times we heard that all throughout the years? And it's also, too, at times where it's, you don't have to have an opinion for every single thing. All right, you can kind of let some things go. You can take a pitch every once in a while. Trust me, I think you're going to be okay.

I don't think that people are going to look at your timeline and say, oh, well, you didn't condemn Al-Shire after that play. If they are, then they've got other things that they need to worry about in their life. So that's the other part of all of this, too, as well. It's not the worst thing that's ever happened. And Lawrence, for all intents and purposes, sounds like it's going to be fine. But it is also, too, where you have to let the league decide whatever punishment is correct. And if you're the Texans, I think you kind of look at it as, hey, whatever they hand down,

We've got to respect. We've got to go with. And we've got to move on from there. And it sounds like that's what they're going to do. So Texans get the win yesterday. They've got the bye week coming up this week. Then you get the Miami Dolphins in town at the Sunday after next. As we'll also too at that time know who's going to be the 12 teams in the college football playoff, A&M. Sorry, not going to be a part of it. But Texas probably with that win last weekend, absolutely stamped their ticket to be able.

able to be one of the final 12 teams at the end of the season. Now at the same time, though, too. If you win on Saturday, then for sure. They're one of the four teams. They get to wait and don't have to be part of the five through 12 that's going to be trying to be able to make it on to the next round. So they're going to try to do that this weekend against Georgia and Atlanta at the SEC championship game.

First year, Texas and the SEC, first year of being able to make it there. as we had a caller earlier to point out that SMU with a chance to be able to get in. So we'll get into a lot of college football too as well because, I mean, you know, I understand that it's not necessarily the biggest topic of conversation front of mind for many of you out there, but also too. I mean, when you've got a program like Texas that is in position to be able to make it to the college football play and have a chance to play for a national title this year, it enters into the conversation. But, you know, we'll kind of get into that as Gordy gets in here in a few minutes.

You know, I mean, Connor, I think most people know this, that Gordy's big boss man here at Sports Talk 790. So he had to do big boss man things for a second. So we'll get him involved. If you want to hop aboard with some Rockets conversation as well, you can do so. Again, the number two jump aboard here on the Matt Thomas show with Ross, Dan Matthew. in for both at the moment. Gordi will be in here in a second, but 713, 212, 5790. Once again, that's 713-212-5-7-9-0.

But I do want to continue the Texans conversation on the other side because for all of the things that I've said about this one member of the Texans organization, yesterday I thought they stepped up. We'll talk about him on the other side. And again, if you want to jump aboard, do so. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Once again, that's 7-13. 212-5-790. Again, it's Dan Matthews in for Matt and Ross.

This is the Matt Thomas show with Ross, Sports Talk 790. Matt Thomas returns on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show. Dan Matthews in for both Matt and Ross. Ross, back on Wednesday, Matt, back with me tomorrow. So we've got four hours of Matt Thomas again on his way to hop on the airplane to head out to Sacramento with the Rockets. Rockets back on the floor again tomorrow night.

Final NBA Cup group play game against the Sacramento Kings. Already know they're into the knockout round. I guess it's just to see where indeed they are in the knockout round. So we will find that out tomorrow night. Flowers

to Bobby Sloick for yesterday. I mean, what has been the biggest issue for Bobby Sloick? It has been just really inconsistent. results all season long. And, I mean, inconsistency either through play calls that have just absolutely fallen flat on their face or also, too, you don't have one of the most important parts of your offense for a good month and a half of the season, Nico Collins, but he was able to be out there yesterday. But I thought all in all, I mean, if the Texans had gone on to lose that

game yesterday, I know that you would have still probably had the people with the pitchforks and the the torches out there to fire Bobby Sloick. But I didn't come away from that game yesterday saying, oh, this one's on Bobby Sloick. Now, there have been times this year where I absolutely have said that. I mean, the Titans game last week, that was on Bobby Sloic. Second half against Detroit, same deal. The Jets game, all of the above.

And also, too, for those games, you did not. Well, last week you did have Nico Collins, but for the other two, you did not have him out there. But yesterday you're able to get to the end zone twice in the second half where you get a third quarter touchdown from Joe Mixon. You get the touchdown pass to Dalton Schultz and balance across the board, 25 runs to 34 passes in the game last night. So I think you look at that performance and say that's pretty much

what you want this Texans team to be. You do trust Joe Mixon, but you don't want to use Joe Mixen overly too much. And able to get him 20 rushes in the game and also too, you threw the ball to him six times, caught it four times. So 24 total touches in the game for Mixon. So you're able to have him help out in that regard. But, I mean, he's somebody that's been kind of a closer for them this season. And that was on that final drive where, again, I get it.

It's a trained response. You go into that after the touchdown and the two point by Jacksonville to be able to pull it within three, that you're like, all right, we've got a little over two minutes here, two minute warning. You want them to be able to burn their timeouts, which I think they had burned, they had one remaining, if I'm not mistaken, but still able to get a crucial first down to be able to ice it away,

and that's what the Texan is able to do, able to kneel down. But, you know, I talked about the balance that they had offensively yesterday, also too as well. I think if nothing else, Slowick's real issue, this season has been kind of overthinking it. And I think once he got into crucial parts of the game yesterday said, all right, how do we simplify this thing right here? Like how do we make this thing go the way that we hope?

Number 12, yep, let's involve him in the game. Let's put the ball in number seven's hands. Well, it goes there every single time, unless you run a wildcat player or something like that, which I'm glad that they didn't try to break out the gimmicks too much in the game. because that's been another thing too is kind of that just a real, you know, just overthinking it

that Sloick has had at times this season of, well, you know, let's have a trick play to get us going. You haven't even been doing the basic things right. So why are we trying to get exotic with this thing when you can't even necessarily have guys lined up properly, which some of that's on the players, but also though too,

I mean, where you're screwing up the most basic parts of your office, offense that then you want to try to get exotic with this thing and confuse this thing even more. No, don't do that. So I do applaud him for that of, again, whenever you're in a situation where it's, you know, kind of the tension is there, the pressure is there. What is the, you know, normally human response that people have? They try to do too much. But people who are rationally minded and people who look for solutions,

in situations like that, they say, okay, how do I make this thing even simpler? How do I slow this thing down for me? How do I give myself an opportunity to be successful here? And that's what he decided to do. And that's why they were able to pull off the win that they did yesterday. And the offense was able to be what we'd hope they would be. And I get it too, like I said, on the defensive side where you don't really get a ton of pressure on the opposing quarterback in the game yesterday.

and it wasn't necessarily as a strong a performance by the defense as you would like to have. But you're still able to get an interception. Derek Stingley, nice little one from him. Nice little run back, too, 31 yards out of him. But all in all, though, I mean, you know, third down yesterday, you're 5 at 13. You go for it on fourth down once and you're able to get it. So that was nice. But, you know, Gordy, I mean, I came away from yesterday's game of, you know,

thinking about the way that this Texans offense played. and I said, hey, you know what? For one week, Bobby Slowick, I'm not going to crush you. You actually put together a pretty decent game plan. You simplified it when it mattered the most, and you were able to be the reason why you won this game. Were they really the reason they won the game, though? Well, I mean, yeah, especially when you give up that touchdown late to Mack Jones.

It's not the defense. They're not the ones holding up their end of the bargain at the end of the game. Because if it's them, you salt that game away. You don't let him get to the end zone, and you don't give up that two-point conversion. I agree with you at 23-6. Yeah, it's 23-6 with, what, the start of the fourth quarter, and, yeah, I mean, you should not give up this place to make it any bit closer.

But, I mean, I just go back to it was 6 to 3 at halftime. This is a terrible Jacksonville team. Like, why were you not able to put up more points in that first half? Punt, punt, field goal, field goal, end a half. And then the three and out starts the second half. Yeah, I just, you know, I've heard some national people say, you know, we've talked about it for the season. Sophomore slump potentially for CJ Stroud. It just does not feel cohesive.

And yes, it has hurt you since you've lost Defon Diggs. Nico Collins is still awesome. But I don't know, man. I just like last year, it was like us against the world with C.J. Stroud. Like, give me Stroud. I know he's going to win this game for us. and he's one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL as a rookie. This year, I don't know, man, like the confidence level in Stroud,

hey, this guy, he's going to go win us every big game. It's not there this year. Well, I think that a lot of that is also, too, the sum of the parts around him. I mean, I think that that has kind of entered into the equation, but, I mean, offensively yesterday, the offensive line, probably having one of their better performances that they've had in recent weeks, where you only allow for a couple of sacks. in the game. They do hit CJ three times in the game yesterday. So able to keep those off of him as

much as possible. Joe Mixon running the way that he did. But that was also to what I was talking about with the kudos that I gave Sloick after a little bit of a slow start in the third quarter, where you come out of the half, you get the ball first, you go three and out, and you're just kind of like, man, it's going to continue to be one of those days in it. But he simplified it down to, all right, who can make plays for us? We know number 12 can. We know number 28 can. And we know that if we allow him to,

that number 7 can as well. And they were able to do that. And that was the difference. That's how they won the game. This just feels like those early season games, like the one against Jacksonville back in week four, where you won by four. You know, they'll be in Chicago by six,

being the Colts by two. I mean, it just feels like, you know, where is this dominant Texans team we're supposed to see this year? But it's also two. and I get why Kansas City gets the benefit of the doubt. But, I mean, you look at the Chiefs are winning games the same way. But again, you win a couple of back-to-back Super Bowls.

That's going to have people saying, see, they find a way to win. I mean, the Texans eight times this year, six times this year. They found a way to win. So I do think that credit needs to be given to them for not finding a way to lose those games because otherwise we're not talking about a team that's in first place. I agree. But Denver Broncos get a win tonight. They'll be 8 and 5.

The Ravens are 8 and 5. You're 8 and 5. The Chargers actually move ahead of you at 8 and 4. Pittsburgh is, I mean, look like a legitimate force at 9 and 3. Bill's 10 and 2 Chiefs 11 and 1. I mean, this is not where we thought. I did not expect to see the Texans sitting here with several teams ahead of them. Like, okay, the Ravens, you want to say they were under.

even a little bit sure, but like to have them in this collective grouping of the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers and behind the Pittsburgh Steelers, like, it's not where they're supposed to be. Because it's almost kind of a, you're stuck in neutral here. Like you were supposed to be past the getting in as a division winning wildcard weekend team. You wanted to be able to be one of the top two teams and be able to skip that weekend, get a home game for the divisional round, which you've never had, and be able to take it from there. And it just seems like that it's not going to be the case, but it's also, though, too.

I mean, I'm curious to see what this team looks like coming out of a by week, of actually being able to probably do enough self-scouting to say, all right, why are we making these mistakes? How can we correct these mistakes? And the final month of the season is going to tell you a ton of, does this team have a push to be able to get into the postseason

and be able to get past the divisional round? This is your toughest stretch of the season to come. And again, you better be ready. Because if you're not, I mean, you lose to the dolphins, you lose to the Chiefs, you lose to the Orioles. I mean, you're literally going to the game against Tennessee. Maybe the Colts are snuck up and are fighting for the division at that point. Magic number now down the two.

And the Colts do have a little bit of an easier path to finish up their season. They've got, I believe, both Tennessee and Jacksonville still left to go. but you've also got games against the Broncos as well as you've got to go across the country. Well, actually, in their case, not across the country. But you take on a Giants team that's pretty much done. I mean, they showed you that on Thanksgiving Day. But, I mean, outside of this coming up game against Denver, I mean, that's an easier path for them to be able to try to run the table

and maybe try to catch you too as well. I thought they'd be sitting there with nine, maybe even 10 wins at this point. There's a couple of games you can go back and look at and say, yeah, that should have been the case. But unfortunately, you are where you are and the Texans are 8 and 5 on this season. All right, coming up next, since Gordy's here, we've got to react to the college football weekend that was.

Tons of fun, angering people on social media. Well, I was. And I think you were too. So we'll get into that too as well. If you want to hop a board, you can do so. 713, 212, 5, 7.7. Once again, that's 713-212-5-790. Dan Matthews, he's Chris Gordy.

We're in for Matt and Ross. This is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross. Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show with Ross, both of the key parts of the show. The one constant is Connor D. McGovern. He's still here. But Matt on his way to Sacramento.

And Ross, back on Wednesday. So we will have a lot to catch up with Ross when he comes back on. Wednesday again. Dan Matthews here. Chris Gordy here with you for less than 30 minutes or so for the A team hits the air at two. Rivalry weekend, Gordy did not disappoint. It was a ton of fun just from not only the Texas and Texas A&M perspective, but also too for, you know, Ohio State Michigan. That one, I mean, you got a fan base that's feeling it right now. A buddy of mine that was there, I asked him, I go, were there

fire day chance, were there all of this? He said, yeah, no, there were. But he did say that a solution was being thrown out by fans as they were leaving Ohio Stadium. Mike Vrable. Chance of Vrable were starting there.

I mean, you lose for the fourth straight year and I mean, that was just torture for Ohio State fans to watch that game. And you're just kind of like, all right, when do you guys finally break out here. Maybe you don't cover the 19 and a half, but you're going to finally score a touchdown. Then you'll score another one, and you'll kind of remind Michigan, like, hey, you've gotten us

the last few years, but you're not getting us this year. It never came. Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you know, this was one, like, okay, Rye Day's lost the Michigan game the last handful of years, but that's when Michigan was at its peak and you had Jim Harbaugh and all that. You were, what, three touchdown favorites or something? And it was something stupid. and for you to find yourself in a game like that, and you spent all this money out to go get Will Howard in the offseason, the transfer quarterback from Kansas State, and your offense can't do anything against Michigan,

you're at home. You scored 10 points at home. Like, that's just ridiculous. But I'll tell you this, I was Saturday morning, I was placing my bets, and I was like, why is Michigan such a heavy under, like, huge underdog? I'm like, it's a rivalry game. I thought they could probably keep it close.

I threw some shekels on them, it paid off. Well, I mean, it was 19 and a half, and I think it got that like all the way down to like 22, didn't it? So the sharp money was coming in on Ohio State. But it was also, though, too, I mean, you just kind of like felt like they were in position to finally take that next step and be able to get further than C.J. Stroud. And those teams did back when Marvin Harrison Jr. was there. And they got to the, you know, college football playoff one year and should have beaten Georgia in that game, but did not. But I mean, for the fourth straight year, I mean, there's reasons that coaches get fired. And one of them is if you don't win that game, like, I mean, look at it from, you know, all the coaches, all the years that got fired for not being able to beat Alabama. And that was programs who were trying to say,

hey, we have to be able to mimic what they're able to do with their physicality and the way they recruit and the way that they just sustained success all throughout. And really, there's a reason why they were the only ones who were able to do it consistently year in and year out. But, I mean, that, That's something that they've not been able to do. Now for A&M and for Texas.

Boy, real quick, for ABLE, like, it's so funny how our perspective changes on a guy. Like, after, like, it's, the best thing you could do as a failed football coach is go do TV for a year or just go sit out for a year. Because suddenly you become a hot commodity just by being out of the game. Because we forget all your flaws and we remember the good times. It's like an X. You're like, when you've been separated for a while, you just don't remember all the good times. You don't remember the reason why you broke up.

up and all the bad things about him. Eventually you knew. But like, Rable, okay, he had, what, two good years in Tennessee? The last two years were debacles, 7 and 10, 6 and 11. It's not like the AFC South was some juggernaut conference that you couldn't compete in.

And I know he was an assistant coach at Ohio State before before he became the head coach, you know, jumped to the NFL. But like, I don't know. Is that the guy who's really going to lead Ohio City? The problem with becoming a college coach now is it's not just, X's and O's. It's not just can you be a good leader. It's NIL. It's, you know, recruiting, transfer

portal, all this other stuff you've got to be really good at. And then having to re-recruit your guys every single season. I mean, it's the reason why you're seeing coaches who are leaving the college game instead of getting into the college game. But I think that it's more or less that they just, they perceive that the program under Ryan Day lacks physical toughness and defensively what we saw, they were not the reason that they lost that game. It was the quarterback was terrible. The offensive play calling was just awful. I mean, it was one of those where it was like, are you trying to intentionally go away from your

best receiving options here? Or are you just being so stubborn into thinking, oh, eventually we're going to break down this brick wall. We'll be able to run the football. And aside from a couple of runs in that game, they really couldn't. And it was just like, how do you continue? continuously just go out there and bash your head against the wall. But enough on them.

A&M, Texas, Texas getting into the SEC championship game in their first year of existence. I get it. They didn't play anybody. All of those different things. Soft SEC schedule. Fine, whatever. But for the Aggies. After the game on Saturday night, I threw this out on social media.

So Aggies, why is Texas more prepared for the SEC than you have been? And I got this last part wrong. It's 13. But I said for the last 11. years where you've been in the SEC now since 2012 and you haven't gotten to the SEC championship game. I followed up. I twisted the knife a little bit, if you will. Seriously, I'm done hearing from Aggies. You're an incredibly embarrassing program. You should be perennially better than programs like LSU, yet you are not. Stop talking bleep. You're an embarrassment.

I think embarrassment is a bit of a stretch. I mean, you would say they're not as good a program as LSU. They beat LSU this year, so there's that. But yeah, I mean, we thought the Aggies with all the resources and all the money that they had that they would have at least gotten to Atlanta once, at least won the SEC. Now, look, they

came into the SEC in an awful time when Nick Saban was dominating and doing his thing. LSU jumped up with the Joe Burrow year. He had Auburn, you know, had a year or two here or there, and then Lane Kiffin doing what he did in Ole Miss. So it was It was a tough, it's been a tough 14 years in the conference for the Aggies.

But yeah, you would have thought once. Even that COVID year were they, were they 9 and 1 or whatever, still lost to Bama? And then you still have Jimbo Fisher complaining about, we need to expand the playoffs. No, you need to be able to win the game that you need to be able to win, get to Atlanta playing the SEC championship game, and be one of the final four teams at the end of the season. But you're looking at it as a glass half empty. I would spend it to a glass half full. Mike Elko, I mean, expectations come into this year were, I said maybe go seven and five, eight and four at best.

Would they go, eight and four? I think that's on the high end. Now, granted, you know, it sucks to lose to your bitter rival that you've been waiting for this game. By the way, the game was awesome. Like the atmosphere, the lead-up, everything. I think the Aggie Faithful showed up. Now, I did hear from two people who said it wasn't as loud as they thought it would be in the stadium. I chucked that up a little bit to cost.

Like, the country club, you're going to put a country club, price on it, you're going to get a country club crowd. You're going to get the rich people who don't like to yell. They like to sit on their hands and clap politely. Like, the blue collars who can't afford it, those are the ones who sit there and scream their heads off the whole

time and all that. I did think it was weird. Every time they cut to the crowd, I saw nothing but core members. To the point where I'm like, if I've watched you this game for the first time, I would go, is A&M just a military school? Like, is everybody, is this like Army, Army, Navy, A&M? Because

everyone was in uniform. Where were the casuals? Where were the people like us just wearing maroon and white? And then if I could give one piece of advice, and I know this is going to fire up Aggie fans, maybe like, you know, with the comedy scene in Austin now has started to rise a little bit. Can we maybe send next year's crop of yell leaders to go meet with a couple of comedians and up their, up their material for midnight yell? It's getting worse and worse, man. Like I'm all for traditions, but sometimes some traditions are made to die. Some people just should not be on the mic. Or just adapt. You can still do midnight yell without Chuckles the Clown Comedy Hour. I mean, and that's the thing, like where it's just like, you know, you can tell me about O'Rock the Good Ag. I'm good with O'Rock the Good Ag.

But, you know, it's just also, though, too, it's like soon enough. Like, is there nobody with a real sense of humor there in College Station that can kind of be like, hey guys, you know, when videos like this get out, it could possibly hurt us in recruiting because there could be a kid who looks at it and says, yeah, that looks weird. I don't think I want to be any part of that. Austin, man, that looks awesome. I definitely want to be a part of that. Baton Rouge, same deal.

In Athens, let's go. Why can't they deliver it just like normal? Like, you know, guys, the other day I was talking about the longhorns. You know, like, it said it's this weird cadence of nothing tougher than the longhorns schedule is nothing. Like, you know, it's like a weird delivery. It's also, too, it's the cadence. Yeah, the arm motions. The punching up in the air and kicking the leg up, all of that.

Yeah. Hey, look, I mean, Tony Hinchcliff is in Austin. Shane Gillis, he's a longhorn guy now. Actually, he's a Notre Dame guy. But regardless, go to the comedy mothership and say, hey, look, you know, everybody here. We need help. Like, like, we need to up our game a little bit. Can you all help us out?

And I'm sure that Joe Rogan and the crew there will be like, yeah, hey, Let's get to work on this. When everyone keeps looking at your quote-unquote traditions and calling and saying it's weird and laughing at it, I think sometimes it's okay to put some traditions to bed. Well, I mean, you know, it's also, too, as Aggie fans have reminded me about, you brought it up to about them beating LSU this year. I said, good. I can't wait to see the commemorative cup that comes out for it. It'll be just tremendous next time I'm back Kyle Field.

So I had that to look forward to. All right. I hadn't had a chance to get into the Aziz Al-Shayr hit with Gordy. So we'll do that as well if you want to weigh in on the phone lines. Anything that we've talked about. It's fair game. Please. 7-13-212-5-790.

Once again, that's 7-13-212-5-790. We'll do that to wrap up this edition of the Matt Thomas show with Ross right here, Sports Talk 790. Lance McCullors. Hey, Lance McCullors. Back to Matt Thomas. Curve ball swinging a missed track three. On Sports Talk 790. your home for Houston Astros baseball.

Sports Talk 790. Be nice to see him back on the mound this season. Lance McCuller is bringing us back. Appreciate that, Lance. 7-13-1-2-125-7-90 is the number to get in on the phone lines. You know, of all the things we've talked about today, Gordy, no Astros news because there hasn't been any. But league meetings coming up next week.

So I know we're going to do gut feelings tomorrow, which, by the way, no believe it or not today. Sorry, kids. but Matt will have double the pleasure for you tomorrow from Sacramento. So you got that to look forward to. But we're going to do gut feelings tomorrow and I already have one gut feeling for you. We will have finality to Alex Bregman before Wednesday of next week. Before when?

Wednesday. Okay. Because I think that probably Juan Soto will get done. And then once that happens, I think that probably he and Scott Boyd, have had enough conversations with everyone they want to talk to that they'll go ahead and decide there in Arlington. All right. Let's make the announcement. Let's have the press conference. And hopefully it's a press conference of everybody back here in Houston and Alex Bregman. And, you know, we get a video message from Jim Crane of saying he's an astro for life.

And you really think that's going to happen? I go through waves with this. I initially felt like, not really a chance, but then once Jose Altuve said what he said and how adamant he was, I was like, there is a good chance. Well, let me rewind it. Do you think that's a wise investment? Six years, yes.

Any more than that? Probably not. See, I don't even know if six years is, I don't think that's smart spending. And people make the whole case for, well, it doesn't matter what he is on the back end. Well, no, I mean, I'm the GM and I'm paid to make smart decisions. I do have to take

that to account. Baseball is fully guaranteed contracts. There was no getting out of it. If he breaks down in year two and he's never the same player, guess what I have to pay him? All of it. Fully guaranteed. So, yeah, I mean, it's just I've been on board with if they decide not to make it. And this is partly with somebody wants to give him a King's Ransom out there, but like, I'm on board with not doing it. And it sucks because he's still got some good years left in him. But if it's going to take a massive contract for six years. What I don't want to happen

is the asteros to become irrelevant in two, three, four years. I want to keep this sustained success rolling. And here's the thing, though, too, is, you know, I've given the Giving Tree example numerous times. You've been tempting fate for the longest time. Losing George Springer

didn't necessarily hurt. Losing Carlos Correa, for the most part, it's not hurt because Jeremy Pena has been able to give you good things there at shortstop. But soon enough, like, that credit card bill comes due. Like soon enough you keep plucking away from this tree. We'll use those two guys. You just use this example.

Ask the Toronto Blue Jays if they think they made a wise investment in George Springer. Has it paid off for them? Well, no, because now they're trying to, I mean... It's been a terrible deal for them. But all reports are they have the highest offer out there to Juan Soto. Ask the twins if they're happy with what they've invested in Carl's Correa. I think now they are

after the last season. He had a really good year last year. Okay. Has he lifted them at all? Has he elevated them? Has he carried them to a postseason success? No. So my opinion like these were all the right decisions. Now a Garrett Cole thing, they were never he was always going to leave for the Yankees anyway. So you couldn't even

offer him what he'd always wanted to be a Yankees. So that was that. But like, all these other moves are smart. And the problem is let's say Breggis goes to signs with the Red Sox or the Diamondbacks. And they make the postseason once and they lose and then the other years they miss it. You look back and go, we made the right

decision there too. I just, I get worried about continuously losing guys that are so counted on in that clubhouse, and he's obviously one of those guys that's incredibly counted on. Would you like for, you know, faster starts to a season? Sure, would you like for more offensively? Same deal there. But, I mean, I just, I feel like Bregman would be the one that would hurt the most for the reasons that just threw out real quick here.

We're going to wait and see what happens with the Zs Al-Shayere. I mean, I think I probably know where you come out with this. I mean, you're one of the more irrational ones. You're not going to be one of the, you know, let me feign my outrage for everybody out there to be on the right side of history here. But, I mean, what are we necessarily talking about other than it was a bad looking play? The result of it was terrible. But aside from that, like, what are we doing here with all the hand-wringing? Yeah, I mean, again, it was an ugly hit.

He deserves to be suspended. And we'll see what that will be. So breaking news, by the way, Parker Jenkins, you have a. running back hitting the portal. Oh, okay. Well, I'm surprised that Connor didn't have the breaking news sounder right there. He had 34 yards this year for them. So not, you know.

Do you think there's even guys, too, that, you know, we'll close out on this? But do you think there's even guys out there too as well that they go into the coach? Hey, I'm going to go into the portal. And the coach says, I don't really think that you're thinking this through. Like, you're probably going to the FCS level if you do this. I think some people just want to get a little bit of money. Okay. I've been told by multiple people.

They've ventured the portal just simply for the... They don't want to leave the place they're at. They just want the place they're at to ante up a little bit. So they want for people to start dazzling them with offers. And, you know, hey... Not dazzling, just something. Well, go out there and get yours. See what you can do.

Gordy, I appreciate it, buddy. Adam and Adam, the A team, Adam Clanton, Adam Wexler coming away. Connor Dee McGovern, you're the man. Me and Matt, back here tomorrow. Right here, Sports Talk 790.