The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - The Matt Thomas Show : No Sports, and It's Surreal

Episode Date: March 12, 2020

The Matt Thomas Show with @SportsMT, @SportsRV and @ProNickLow 3/12/20All Sports Being Cancelled and It is Surreal (0:00)Kelvin Sampson Joins Matt to Discuss AAC Championship Cancellation (24:36)How long do we wait before returning to normalcy? (47:24)What should we talk about with no sports? (1:07:28)

It's larger than life. Yeah. Lunch timers is the Matt Thomas show. 1201 in H-town. I'd say what's happening in lunchtomers, but you by now know what's happening. Nothing.

Not a damn thing. Literally. And I don't want to be over dramatic radio hosts, but as the kids would say, this is surreal A.F. I mean, it really is. There's really nothing to really compare this to. I was thinking about this. By the way, that's Niccolo.

I'm Matt Thomas. Good afternoon. Ross will join us here shortly. I was thinking in my 47, almost 48 years of my life, I have lived through some pretty incredible things. And I'm trying to compare it to what my parents lived through, what my grandparents lived through. But just in the last 20 years,

and look, everybody's going to have trials and tribulations. In the last 20 years, we had 9-11. We had the 800-year storm that devastated our city. We've had wars. And now we have a coronavirus that has, through we don't know what the official count is, shut down America. Now, malls are still open in restaurants and grocery stores.

I was at a H.E.B. yesterday, north part of town where there was normally probably 13-15 aisles of availability, and they were closed, half of them were closed, maybe even two-thirds of them were closed, because it was a Wednesday night at 7.45 at night. No one's, you know, that's not a prime shopping spot. But I happened to go there because we had dinner with my mom, And we decided to go to the grocery store afterward to pick up a few things, not to hoard hoard toilet paper or to hoard water. It was normal in grocery shopping time.

We waited in line for 45 minutes in the checkout line. So this is something that I cannot speak to as an expert, nor could anybody that's listening to my voice, nor can Nick Lowe, nor can, frankly, our elected officials, our sports leaders, our heroes, celebrities. We don't know how to handle this. All I know is, man, the world that. I try to get away from through sports and my career and my excitement, it's all going away. Now, granted, we don't know how long it's going to go away, but it's gone.

Tournaments are being canceled by the minute in conference basketball. The NBA season came to a grinding halt yesterday. My guess it'll be any matter of moments that Major League Baseball will cancel the remainder of spring training. Maybe not even start the season. And then we're going to get to at some point where we're going to be basically told by whether it's our president or civic leaders or government officials or doctors that we should stay at home as often as possible. Go out when you have to, but come right back. How are we supposed to do that? How are we supposed to do this?

How are we supposed to try to raise families, work, get our kids educated, us to bitch him own about our various sports teams? We can't live this way, right? For the long term, but nobody knows how long it is. Everybody, every show I've watched today, everybody's got their hands in the air. And at the end of the day, the decision to cancel these things is the right decision. because there is so much unknown out there. But at the end of the day, for as much as some people may say,

and I may be in that mix, that this coronavirus conversation is out of control, but at the end of the day, if we don't know what's going on, it's better to be safe than really sorry. And last night, after I got back from the grocery store, where I waited, you know, 45, 50 minutes in line to get stuff, I got home and I put on ESPN I don't think I moved from my couch, Nick, for four hours straight

because everything was so fluid. Everything was changing by the minute. Then to find out late, you know, relatively speaking, that Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz had the coronavirus. And then on top of that, to find out this morning that his teammate, Donovan Mitchell, has it too. And that there was this grandiose debate about what we're going to do about these tournaments and the NCAA and the March Madness and the Rockets and the NBA season.

I mean, this is, I don't even know, I wish my vocabulary was better because Surreal just isn't going to cut it. And probably if I was all fair, we were at a bar having a couple of drinks, I'd probably say a few more saltier terms than surreal. But since I'm on an FCC radio station and I got to keep my eye clean, I'll keep it right where it's at. So I don't know if this show in the next handful of days is supposed to be, well, we're your toy store department. So let's focus on something else besides this.

Or are we supposed to say, hey, sports organizations, whether it be the NCAA, whether it be the UIL, whether it be the NBA or MLS or any of them, take as much time as you want or cancel everything? Because, man, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to go anywhere? I mean, when's the next shoe to drop? Are we going to tell people you can't go to see movies? Are malls going to be out of pocket? Restaurants are only going to do drive-through? I don't know.

I was not prepared to do a radio show today. We were supposed to have the University of Texas versus Texas Tech on these airwaves. And Ross and I, we were kind of joking the other day. We were going to, I was going to do a post-game show off of that, which again would have been zero interest. but point being is that we were going to kind of have fun and call it the final horn. Instead, I'm here with you trying to figure out where does sports come into this. And since we are a sports talk show, we will obviously have a frame of reference to sports on this. So the grandiose pictures, we got to keep people healthy.

The grandiose pictures, we cannot have this virus spread like some are saying it's going to ultimately happen. It's got to be contained as best way as possible. But there is a sports component to it. And that's why we're going to kind of do that here on this show until we have something to sports to talk about. Because right now, we don't have any sports to talk about. Isn't that crazy? We have no sports to talk about. The XFL's still

They're going to cancel too. Trust everybody's going to cancel. Indy was saying earlier today that he thought that Vince McMahon might take advantage of this and shoot for the highest ratings the XFL scene. Because nothing else is on? Right. Yeah, but you know what though?

If that is his ulterior motive in the wake of what's going on here, that would be met with awful skepticism. The minute someone tested positive for the disease, they would have massive, massive clapback from that. Yeah. Yeah. So here are things that we're going to get into.

Does the NCAA just say this season is done? You have kids all across this country. There are 13 conference tournaments that have been canceled. They canceled a game at halftime of the St. John's Creighton game. They just said, we're done. The NBA season, still has 20 or so games left for most of the opponents. We're not any interest in starting up anytime soon.

These are multi-billion-dollar industries that are being shut down by a virus that we have no idea whether or not it is as, it's moving as fast as we think it is. It might be moving a lot faster. It might be moving a lot slower. I don't know. I need to know who is the best doctor. I mean, is Dr. Ozar a guy? I don't think I would go to him for the first source.

Who is the doctor? Like, do you remember when Neil Frank was over at Channel 11? Yeah. During the hurricanes and tornadoes. When the blank hit the fan, we went to Channel 11 because we knew that Dr. Neil Frank was going to tell us to us straight, right? We trusted Neil Frank, a former employee of the National Hurricane Center. Guy goes to Channel 11, it's Megastar. He knew exactly what was going on.

So when Dr. Phil, Dr. Neil told us, this is the time you should be worried about this storm hitting, we believed him. Who's our doctor? Who's the nation's doctor? Because, man, I don't know what to believe. All I know is my toy store, Department of Life, sports, has been crippled. And now MLB announcing all operations have been suspended indefinitely. So we've lost them too. That means you're working tomorrow.

Yeah, that's fine. I can live with that. 713-212-5-790. Walk me through this, please, because I don't have a direction for you today. 7-13-212-5-7-90. The Houston Cougars were on their way to Fort Worth. They have turned their bus around

and are headed back to Houston. Obviously, the American Conference tournament has been canceled. Calvin Samson will join us. us on that bus in about 15 minutes here on Sports Talk 790. Right. Half the workday is done. Celebrate with Matt. Hey, Matt.

Love your show. Look, what was it talking about? By the sound of it, some of you started the party at breakfast. Matt Thomas on Sports Talk 790. Time is 1215. We are live and local here on Sports Talk 790. It is the Matt Thomas show. You were supposed to hear Texas versus Texas Tech and hoop.

but that is not going to happen. Frankly, I don't know of any, is there anything else on? I think everything's been canceled at this point. It's the big E's just canceled. Swack is canceled. Did the ACC cancel? American Conference canceled. That's the reason why Calvin's gone.

They were the last holdout. No, they actually were this morning. Or was the AAC. Atlantic Coast Conference was the one you're talking about. ACC, yeah. ACC was the last. They're done. NHL, by the way, advising teams,

not to practice today. Clubs are being told to not hold morning skates and or team meetings. Huh. All right. So, what do we do? Well, we just saved a listener some money. We did?

Yeah, he just called in to tell me that he was double-checking that we said that the MLB was suspending all operations, and now he's going to cancel his flight to Paul Beach. Well, that's what we're here for. What, you know, Yeah, that's what I just, Jeff Passing on ESPN, just put that out there. Maybe I don't double check his Twitter to see if he's got any more on that. I don't want to read it without having to look at it first.

But yeah, spring training is, yeah, I mean, of all, I mean, those things are hardly, I mean, there's a couple of teams that make a little bit of them. And look, this is obviously in some part financially driven, but we are seeing these mega tournaments. Now, look, let's be brutally honest, the Swack's making no money. The Big West is making no money. this Southland Conference makes no money. I'm sure the Big 12 does pretty well for its tournament. This will be a huge financial hit to them. I can tell you for a fact, the ACC in the Atlantic Coast Conference in Greensboro,

that's going to be a huge. I mean, everybody's taking the shorts on this one. The NBA stands to lose millions and millions of dollars on this. So, I don't know, you're probably not going to feel for any of these people, these groups or these rich owners, but know that everybody's being hit. The people that are being hit too are the workers that work in these venues, the people that work on an hourly basis, that are the concessionaires,

that are the ushers, who I've got to know and got to become friends with many of them at the Toyota Center. I think the Rockets website, somebody put a picture on Twitter, has all the game scratch indefinitely. This is so freaking bizarre. And I don't. Yeah. I mean, we can't put a time table on this, right?

No, there's no way to know how long this is going to affect us. So let's play glass half full here for a second. I'm hoping that if sports goes away for 14 days, in theory, two weeks, we'll have a better handle of how this virus is spreading, if it is spreading, we'll have a better hopefully way more testing kits that are currently being you know that are obviously being manufactured by the second my guess is by those that do that and then we will have a definitive set of medical experts that will come out and say all right here's what we've figured out it's maybe it's in a part of a country it felt like to me that much of this has come from the international persuasion in the state that this is this has a virus that was organically grown here but Again, I'm just, I'm reading everything you all are reading. So let's look at the individual sports for a second. Let's start first with the NCAA basketball tournament.

Now, you know there's canceled, there's postponed, there's delayed, there's all sorts of interesting terms. When someone comes to me and says something is canceled, that to me means it's never going to be played again. Or won't, a play will be canceled. That means they're not going to put the play back up on. stage. When something to me is postponed, that means we're going to not do it on the said date, but we're looking to reschedule. But even those that have said postponed, they don't know if that will be postponed. I think the word the NBA used was suspended. Yeah, same thing. I would use suspension in the same term and the same tone as postponed, would be my guess. When something to

me is canceled, that means to me that they're not going to replay it again. And it feels like to me that everything that I have seen about these tournaments is the word canceled, meaning there will be no American Conference tournament in Fort Worth in two weeks. There will be no Big 12 tournament in Kansas City. The ACC will not have its tournament in Greensboro, that they're done. By the way, the next shoot to drop on this will be that there will be no NCAA tournament. I would expect that to come down shortly. I mean, that's next. Baseball has been suspended. Yeah, it says MLB expected to suspend all in operations. Definitely, Lee could suspend spring training as soon as today.

So officially it has not been done. This is what Jeff Pass in his hearing. And, you know, even though he's a D, he's pretty well connected. Yeah, his Twitter says that he was on a conference call among owners. And that's where he got this information. Okay. Yeah. So the person that was heading to Palm Beach, even though it's not completely in 100% accurate,

my guess is you're not going to go to Palm Beach. You'd be very disappointed unless you just want to go to beach, which may not be the worst thing in the role at this point. So the NCAA has canceled tournaments, conference tournaments. My guess is they'll never replay those, which would then, if you were to postpone the NCAA tournament, you would then have to go to, well, who, you know, for the automatic bids,

which team had the best record in the conference, which meant if you were in a multi-tier tie, like the University of Houston was tied, even though they were technically the two-seed, they tied with Tulsa for the conference championship, which then means, you know, strength of schedule. I mean, it's just a convoluted mess. Are they just going to say there was no conference champion?

And just take the best 68 teams and forget about automatic bids? Maybe. That's true. That's true. But my feeling is, and again, this is just one prediction, we're not going to have an incidental tournament this year. PGA is still going.

Without fans. They're in Pontreveira Beach, Florida. Where that do with a really hairy, dark beard is usually pretty jovial, but he's not very much in a good mood right now. Sports overview, what kind of moved you in today? Hey, Matt. There's no big, television? No. I have to come into work.

I know you're here. I'm here. Good thing I live close. I'm really on top of the news. Yeah, where have you been? I don't make sure you don't have any sort of virus or anything. Well, they canceled the big 12 tournament like at 11 o'clock. I was not awake.

I was not planning up being here until later. Last check, as of last night, they were still playing games. I thought they were going to do without fans or something. Hashtag single life. Ah, well, you know, I'm here. how's it going? Anything going on? You know, the answer to that is there's literally nothing going on.

Well, that's good. No, it's not. It's not good at all. We're going to talk about, we're going to break down the Rockets Lakers game tonight. Big Western Conference Clash, Rockets looking to prove themselves and win there for a second straight time. No, that's not going to happen. Astro Spring Training. No.

We got any big, oh. Big 12 tournament breakdown, big clash going on right now between the long. Longorns and Texas Tech. Here's a random thought I had that gave us something to talk about for a couple of minutes earlier today. If this does drag out, what's the status of Kevin Durant and Clay Thompson? Do they get a chance to play this season now? Well, you know what? It's funny you brought up the NBA.

I get the feeling from what just kind of the few things that Mark Cuban has said, that their season ends June 12th. But that's just an artificial number because that's what the sling is. that's what the schedule says. They run in buildings that could, we'll have open dates in the month, June, and July and August. Here is my grandiose prediction.

We will not crown an NBA champion until August. I think they're going to take their sweet time with this, two, three, four, five weeks, whatever it is. Get everybody tested, get arenas tested, and we're going to resume a schedule. Now, whether that's a FOIA-2, I don't know. but television dollars are in play player salaries are in play

and I think we're going to get an NBA season but I think we're going to take our sweet time and determining what that is and because there will be concerts there will be other events, circuses and that kind of type of thing that you're going to have to really massage the schedule for the rest of the way

but I believe as long as everything comes into play with this is not an epidemic where we can't go out and do anything anymore, we're going to play an NBA basketball schedule that probably will end in August. And my guess then will be at that point, Ross, that the NBA will have a serious conversation about starting next season

and for future seasons as something I've asked for in the month of December. That's what, I mean, that's what a lot of people are talking about on the old Twitterverse, and it would make a lot of sense. There's no reason for the NBA to not have done that in the regular, I mean, in the regular interim. I mean, at any point in their regular season, why wouldn't they start later? We've always talked about this.

Nobody pays attention to them. The NFL is, I mean, people are heavily invested in that come October. I mean, lately, last thing the NBA did was start their season earlier, correct? That was more of a measure to get more rest days. Previous two years, they started early. This year we started back usually around the last week of the month of October. So this was a regular year. my thought is this you have television ratings that are in the toilet relatively speaking compared to previous years

there is just this feeling that the NBA doesn't have any juice until Christmas Day so and then you throw this delay in this what however long that delay is going to be the stars Ross are in lining plus you have the or the CEO of the Atlanta Hawks saying as much he says look let college football and pro football have their due we'll jump in in in December They're not competing with college basketball. College basketball, to me, very much is a niche sport. So you're not fighting with them. So what if you have to compete with playoff games in the month of January?

You know what? You don't put NBA games on on days where the conference playoffs are. The NBA will be very smart. And regardless of this virus thing, they'll be smart to start the season early mid-December. That would be the wise thing for them to do. But I think now with this virus, because what I can't imagine is

the NBA crowns a champion in August and then has training camp starting up in late September I just I don't think it would be good for the league at all so it's not an intended benefit benefit it's just we got to deal with facts the calendar yeah I mean besides like player rest or I mean what are the biggest hurdles

I mean free agency period or I mean we just need to have a certain level of offseason there's Olympics I think I think the word offseason is a huge part of it you're talking about guys that are playing 82 games, practices, long playoffs. Yeah, I think... Well, they're not playing now.

Yeah, but... So you play the same amount of games, is what I'm saying. No, I just think that if you're ending a season in August and then having the guys show up October 1st or training camp, you're asking for very subpar play. Still in the 365-day calendar, you're playing the same amount of games. But the fact is you're ending one season... No, I mean, I understand what you're saying,

but they're not going to want to end a season. in late September and then have the kids, or not late August and have them back in 30 days. I just don't see them having to do that. Okay. All right. Calvin Sampson is on his way back from Fort Worth. They were stopping in a Buckees, ironically enough. Jeff Conrad.

That's a smart stop. Jeff Conrad, their sports information director is emailing us, telling us that he's at, they're at a Bucky. So we'll see what he got at Buckees. And we'll talk about the seriousness of the American Athletic Conference among 13 other tournaments being canceled today. We'll talk with him. Then we'll get to your phone calls to. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790.

It is the Matt Thomas Show. This is Sports Talk 790. Rockets' PA announcer and sports talk show host. One might get the impression Matt Thomas loves to hear Matt Thomas' voice. Go ahead, Matt, talk for us. 1231 on the Matt Thomas show. I was not scheduled to go with the rockets on this trip to L.A. and Portland. So the family, and this is truth be told, and I just texted us to Coach Samson a while ago,

my daughter, my middle son, and my wife, we were going to come to Fort Worth because we wanted it. We don't get to be fans very much as sports. And we were very much looking forward to rooting our Cougars on to the conference tournament at the brand new Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. to see our Houston Cougars, hopefully win another conference championship, and unfortunately that's not going to happen. Calvin Sampson is on the bus right now. Heading back from Fort Worth.

Coach, it's Matt. Thank you for the time. My family is disappointed. I'm sure your Cougar family is stunned and disappointed that you guys are making your way back to Houston right now. Well, there are thousands and thousands of fans, players, families, disappoint all over the country. I was on the phone earlier this morning with our conference,

and literally met South Florida and Central Florida, were on the floor warming up for their new game, and when they were pulled off and sent back to the locker room. And I think the same thing happened in the HCC tournament, the Big East tournament, and a couple other tournaments. So, you know, it's just uncharted water for everybody. There's a lot of people that make a living, you know, off of this time of year, whether it be concessionaires, parking people, ushers, whatever,

in these tournaments. But, you know, these players, these programs, especially have good years. I was thinking about Dayton and Coach Grant and Obie Topping. You know, it's a shame that the country may not be able to be. able to see him play and they get rewarded for such a great year. You know, we had a really young team this year. Found a way to share a conference championship. And I think you see what our team looked like in Fort Worth.

We were the teams that I think had a chance to win it and maybe improve your seat and go to an NCAA tournament. But, you know, the thing gets in the way called life. You know, it's not something to get mad about. certainly not make fun off. It's just, it's life, you know. When they make these decisions, they're not easy. You know, I can't imagine being on a conference call

with commissioners and presence of these universities this morning having to make this call and then call the AD and coaches and say, we're going to counsel the tournament. That's not easy. But when you step back and look at it from a big picture standpoint, But, you know, you're talking about something that could alter this sport and people's lives forever. So, you know, a lot of people say, well, it's not that bad. Well, if you're not a doctor, I have no interest at listening to you.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, I couldn't have said a bit of myself. When did you coach start hearing about alterations of the event, not allowing fans in? maybe the possibility of cancellation. When did you really start getting involved in the minute-to-minute conversations? Yeah, I was on a call last night about the when they made the call that no fans,

and they had actually said, hey, here's the way we're going to handle tickets. Each school, I think, was going to get 125 tickets. The only people that were allowed to have in the arena was immediate family, essential game personnel coaches, players, that's it. No band, no cheerleaders. I'm sure essential personnel met media as well. So it was going to be a bare-bones operation, but they were going to play the games.

And then this morning, and this morning about 8.30, I got the first call about we were moving down the road to council of tournament, And then they just had to get all, no communication. I think the commissioners from all the conferences were on a conference call and the presence were to. So they made the call, and we literally were two and a half hours, hour and a half away from Fort Worth, and we found the next exit, flipped it around and headed back.

When you got on the microphone or maybe walked back where the kids were sitting on the bus, what was their initial reaction? Well, first of all, I had to wake them up. That's true. I forgot about that. Yeah. I had to wake them up. I think bewilderment.

Question marks. I'm sure there's a lot of, sometimes you're not quite sure what to ask when you have a question. And I really didn't have a lot of answers. I tried to answer the best I could. And the answer is that we are not going to play the conference tournament.

We're going to go back. We're going to be at a holding pattern. I would think if they're going to cancel the NCAA tournament, we're going to hear pretty soon. if they're going to try to find a way to play it, that means it will be postponed versus cancel, and they're going to have to figure out the logistics of that. So we're just in a holding pattern.

I rewarded the team, I said, you know, for having this year ranked 22nd Nation and winning this championship, we're going to stop at Buckees. And what did you get, I have to ask? No, no. I've got a brisket sandwich. nice right. Yeah, that's absolutely the right call on that place.

Visiting with Kelvin Samson, head basketball coach, the University of Houston with us here on the Matt Thomas show. Coach, you are incredibly connected through all your years and so many great friends in the industry. Have you been able to text call other coaches maybe that are outside of the region to kind of see what's going on with their programs? You know, a couple of the coaches in the conference this morning. I got a call from John Brannum from.

Cincinnati. A couple of them texts earlier. I think everybody's just so concerned about their own team. My concern right now is these 12 kids and my staff. I've got to find a way to navigate through this next 24, 48, 72 hours, Matt

to let them know. I mean, we're on spring break this week, and today is Thursday. You know, I'm going to keep them on campus for as long as I can. I know classes have been canceled. So, you know, we're kind of headed into uncharted waters. I don't think anybody has a, everybody's plan right now is or should be fluid. I don't think we can put a nail in to anything or just play it by ear. You know, since I've been alive, I don't recall anything like this.

So I don't know. You know, you got the stock market plummeting. You got NBA players being tested positive for this virus. You've got travel being shut down. You've got tournaments being canceled. The NCAA's got to make a huge decision coming up here. tennis professional tennis is canceled

you know I don't know the easy answer is we're just going to go hour by hour yeah half day by half day day day day and try to make the best decision

for the people around us well clearly Kelvin you would like for this to be postponed and not canceled ultimately we'd like to get these kids an opportunity to play for an national championship I guess the question would be

if they were to say post in your mind, you can keep your kids pretty close, but there's going to be some other kids that are trying to finish up school, graduations, other things going on. I mean, how long can you quote-unquote postpone an event as magical as this without it really ruining the integrity of kids that have been practicing and playing and trying to fight the way in this thing? Well, I think the thing they're going back up against Matt is the Masters.

CBS paid $1 billion-plus dollars to televise this event. And they're not going to play it without CBS televising it. But they're also not going to cancel. They're not going to postpone or move the Masters either. So I don't know what the, I don't know the flexibility they have. You know, I read something this morning where if you quarantine yourself 21 days, I think you'll be okay. But that's true or not.

I did read that. So I don't know if we have enough time to make a decision where we can ensure everybody's help. And unless they do that, I think they'll count to it. Well, I appreciate you jumping on with me on short notice. Like I said, my daughter is devastated. We went to Academy and bought some new U of H gear for the weekend's events. But, you know, that all pales in comparison to what's going on with our society, frankly, coach, and we thank you for the time.

Safe to turn you back. You tell her to keep that gear and bring it to the Partiz Center next year. Oh, for sure, for sure. Thank you, friend, for the time as always. Okay, thanks, back. You got it. That's Calvin Sampson, head basketball coach of the University of Houston with us here. They just finished it Buckees and are on their way back. You know, Rossi, we could do a fantasy five of Bucky items. I mean, they're not a sponsor of the show, so maybe we'd be a little tempered by that a little bit.

We're going to have to do a fantasy five of a lot of things, I think, during the next couple A couple of weeks. It's a summer of fun in March. Ross and I were just thinking about this during the break. Today and tomorrow are going to be obviously a lot about the coronavirus, but if we don't have anything that really get our sink our teeth into by, say, Monday, we're going to get summer fun going. We're going to have to do a lot of Fantasy Five. Hell, we may do Fantasy Nine just to stretch the segments out. This is an unprecedented territory where we find ourselves here in 2020. We do appreciate. you guys being a part of this. Certainly, we hope that we are a small, pleasant diversion from what is else going on in our society. But, you know, when this dictates the topic and conversation, we have to certainly address it.

If you'd like to chime in on just as you saw things yesterday. And I want to get y'all's perspective, if you did what I did, after I got home from the grocery store yesterday, I had SportsCenter on from about 835, almost 9 o'clock until about 1 a.m. because I was just so intrigued about what was happening with the jazz. What happened in the game between the Kings and their opponent? Who were the Kings playing yesterday? New Orleans. How there was a referee that was refereeing in a Utah game a couple nights before.

These college basketball tournaments being canceled in the middle of it as teams are warming up or at halftime. So if you would like to chime in, you are welcome to do so today as we are here in lieu of the Texas, versus Texas Tech basketball game. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. If you'd like to reach out through Twitter, you can do that as well. At SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Pro Nick Lowe.

1213. Matt Thomas Show continues after this. The Houston Lunchtime Sports Conversation Most respected by head coach Bill O'Brien. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Matt Thomas. In his career here in Houston. of sorts. The Matt Thomas Show. This is the Matt Thomas show.

Our time is 1248. We have some massive sub-tweeting going on from one coronavirus victim to the other. 713-212-5-790. Have you changed your habits in the last 24, 4872 hours? I've been washing my hands and taking Purell and all that. Like the last week or so? I've loved my hand-wash game. two things for me.

I have washed my hands more, and I was also told when you're going to sneeze, sneeze into your elbow as compared to your hand. Okay. It's almost like... Well, you've been sneezing into your hand? You're like, yeah. That's what most people do.

No, I've been elbow sneeze for... I mean, you get... Then you get snot on your hand. Well, then you clean it off. Potentially. You're right. But the first thought is to do it to your hand, most people.

Okay. I think I've been to an elbow like years. Nick, elbow or hand most times? Most of the time hand, because if you sneeze into your elbow, you end up getting snod on your shirt and that's harder to get off. It's more like the high forearm area. The upper forearm region. That's really where I go for.

I just go with the hand and then wash the hand. I got you. All right. By the way, again, at this point, Major League Baseball has not officially suspended its operations, but the presumption is it's going to hear the next handful of minutes. Okay. The NHL has suspended its operations. The season is suspended for the NHL and the NBA.

And college basketball. And the MLB is in the process of doing it as well. My guess is the NFL will not be far behind. I would think the draft is in serious question in Las Vegas. Mike Florio is really upset that the NFL hasn't said anything. Did you see that? No, I don't pay attention to him. Their silence is deafening.

He's an Uber douch. There's like regular douche and then there's Uber douche. Why is he mad that they're not rescheduling free agency? Free agency has nothing to do with crowds. Yeah, in reality, here's the real truth. You can have your draft online. You don't have to congregate. Right.

Do an online draft like our Fantasy League? Yeah. You don't have to boat everybody up to the fountains of the Bellagio like they were going to do. You can do free agency through phone calls and text and emails. And you can do the draft that way. There'll be no pomp in circumstance, clearly. But let's be brutally honest. Las Vegas, to me, would be one of the most coronavirus likely places in America, right?

Yeah, because you have people traveling from all over the world to get there. Plus, they are in smoky poker rooms and in casinos, the handling of chips. Oh, man, yeah. If you're a blackjack dealer right now, what are you, I mean, are you wearing gloves in a Asmat suit? You're getting cards and chips from like every single person that sits down. That's right. The exchange of tip, the dice that are being thrown, the chips that are being...

Oh, heaven forbid there's COVID on the dice. Well, my point is this. That's what I'm saying. Even though it sounds absurd. I mean, my dice have a hex on them, but it's not coronavirus. You are literally the king of rolling sevens. And that's after the point. Yeah, after the point's been determined.

I threw one before the point this last time. In all seriousness. and you and I are avid casino players. Yes. Will this permanently change the way we go to our casinos? And I don't know. In what way? That money will be distributed differently.

That you will have your people that are working at the tables with gloves on. I mean, I'm just throwing this out as just, I mean, this is all speculation. But if we're really going to get becoming. new society after this. The things, I mean, that's why I said. Casinos, to me, would be the Numero uno, number one place to go to wind up being a spot where you're mixing things together, unfortunately. But don't you think all the casino is going to be ghost towns for a while?

I don't know. I think Ross and I should go over the show today and see how it's going. I'm willing to do that, Matt. I'm willing to take the risk as well. I've been hot the last month or so. Okay. So that's where we are with this. Now to my sub-tweet

of the day. Donovan Mitchell yesterday was declared maybe it was early this morning because all the Utah jazz players in Oklahoma City were tested and we first found out that Rudy Gobert had it. And here is Donovan Mitchell on Instagram. And I'm going to just take part of it. Quote, hopefully people can continue to educate themselves and realize they need to behave responsibly both for their own

health and for the well-being of those around them. What's wrong with that? That's throwing Rudy Gober to the bus. You think so? Yeah, there's a lot of tweets even from last night that said apparently Rudy people in and around the organization was being very callous and free about really worrying about this virus. And he's the one that's got it.

I read that and I didn't think of Rudy Goberrere, but I guess perhaps you're right. Didn't somebody come out and say he was touching other people's belongings? their lockers and stuff. Yeah, he was messing around in the locker rooms. And, of course, he was messing around with the reporters and their microphones and their recorders and stuff like that. So my point is, either he was trying to, and you can show both sides of this. He was probably saying, hey, everybody, this is out of control.

Y'all are crazy. We're all going to be fine. And he was trying to show you how we're going to be fine when he in reality was the one carrying it. And some jazz reporters have said that it was kind of a show in solidarity. They're like, hey, you guys, you know, this is terrible that you have to be so far away. I'm going to touch all these kind of to make a joke and make light of the situation. And is it an interesting that just a couple of nights ago in the Rockets upon the Minnesota Timberwolves,

it was the NBA that was trying to protect the players from the media, when in reality, the media should have been protected from the players. Funny how that works. You know what? I don't know this. I have not been told, but my guess is that before the league gets back into play, I will be tested. I am a member of the traveling party.

Okay. I would, yeah, please get tested. I didn't think about that. Should I be up here? I think you should. Should I be near you? I think I'll go to the other room? No, you're here with me. In good times and bad times.

I'm falling. All right, that's enough. Now I'm a little worried. No, in all seriousness, anybody that travels should be tested. Just can't to stay away from everybody from two weeks. Because, I mean, on the rocket plane, there's 60 of us. I wouldn't take a long... But the problem is, there is not enough testing supplies out there right now.

That's why... There's like 300 million Americans in like 70,000 tests or something like that. That's why you have to take your time with this. Get everybody... Figure out where this is being concentrated, how much it's spreading, and can we get enough testing supplies that if we're going to put people back in arenas, and we're going to put people back on courts to play professional sports or amateur sports. We need to make sure for the best of our ability

that they're not carrying this virus with them. But damn, the Utah Jazz. I reached out to a member of the Utah Jazz broadcast team, Craig Boulder Jack, who does their television. And he texted me in the middle of the night and said we were quarantined at the arena. So they eventually left, I think, the arena in Oklahoma City around 1 a.m.

That's after all members of their traveling party were allowed to. And I think they were headed to a hotel where they were, and then I don't know at that point what their transportation situation was, whether they were going to be cleared by Oklahoma to leave the state, whether Utah was going to accept them. So, again,

there's a bunch of shoulder shrugs and I don't know and what's supposed to happen next. Even when we had Calvin Samson on just for the last few minutes. He doesn't know. I mean, how long do you keep your kids around in the hopes that maybe you are going to play a tournament? He doesn't. They're not going to school.

Yeah. My son Cameron, He has an extra week of spring breakoff, and then his classes at Texas Tech are going online after that. For how long? I don't know. But I didn't pay for... It's the rest of the semester? But I didn't pay for online education. I paid for him to have instruction.

No refunds, man. Yeah, well, that's fine. I mean, online classes are fine. No, they're not. Not for my son. They're not. Why not? Because he needs to have instruction.

There's a major difference. You can cheat really easily. No, online. He didn't, I mean, I'll be honest with it. He didn't do great online classes. Okay. It's a motivational thing I did awesome in my online classes

But I figured out how to cheat system Tell them to dress differently Go to the library You get to a total mindset thing with the online classes You can't just roll out of bed in your sweats Tell us what some jeans on And if you go to the library to take your test Everyone in the class can sit there and take the test together

So you just need one smart kid Yeah but don't they're going to check your IP addresses No I don't know Nick has been in archaic technology Maybe it's different these days Don't you think if everybody saw it was in the same IP area world, they would be, they'd catch them? Well, if they're all in the library and all has the same IP, how can they combat that?

They don't, doesn't necessarily, mean they're cheating. The professor has no idea how to even do that. How about me not talking about this anymore? The IP would be the school's IP. I want the IP to be his six foot four body in the classroom, getting the instruction, taking the test. But that's obviously not going to happen for at least for the foreseeable future. Second hour, the Matt Thomas show returns in a matter of moments. What are you doing to change things up?

I'm washing my hands 10 times more often. Good. I'm sneezing into my upper forearm. I'm noticing that I scratch my face like every 30 seconds. Maybe you have it. You're giving it to me. Is anybody else like I? I'm trying not to touch my face, but I just have some random little itch breakout.

It feels like all the time. 713-212-5-790. The second hour begins next. Is the Matt Thomas Show. 102 on the Matt Thomas Show. Sports talk 790. 713-212-5-790 is how you reach our show if you want to get in. Headlines of the day.

Everything is being suspended, postponed or canceled. And here's one, Ross. Duke University. You know, pretty good basketball program. Yes. Always a title contender in Inc. of LA. Storyed.

Legendary. has suspended all athletic competition for the foreseeable future. That means everything. That would include their college basketball team. So here's the next thing that has to fall. They're going to have to either cancel or postpone the NCAA tournament. That's the next thing, right? I hope it's not canceled.

I hope it's postponed. And what do you, because I'm not a sports business guru. We may have to start getting some sports business gurus on the show. They have to. Which is unfortunate. we're going to. If the NCAA flat out cancels it and says there will be no March

Madden's, there will be no national champion. Does CBS say, you bring me that money back because we're paying you a billion dollars a year. Isn't that what it is? Billions. I think it's in the multiple billions. Per year over the length of the contract. Oh, well, yeah,

you know, maybe for, I'm not sure. What do you do on this situation? Because CBS is going to be like, you know what? Yeah, This is awful, but we're not writing you the check. And then the question is, how long can you postpone it? I mean, here's the question I have. And maybe y'all know the answer to this, and I simply don't.

Who gives the, you know that when there is a all-clear sign, whether it be from the governor of the state or your principal at high school? The surgeon general. Or somebody. somebody gives the all-clear. Yes. Who's going to do that? I don't know that there will be an all-clear.

So if there's no all-clear, then how are we going to resume any of this? I don't know. This is the World Health Organization? Do they have to do this? Because frankly... I think it should be just people, amateur doctors on Twitter.

They seem to know everything. Like Dr. Wexler. Yes. Because here's the thing, Rossi. It could not be an issue at all in 38 of the 50 states. Or it could not be an issue in 46 of the 50 states. I think what you're trying to do is just kind of slow it down and let everybody catch up because the health care system is not prepared for this. Like you said, there's no testing.

They don't have enough staff and beds and hospital beds and all this type of stuff. So you let them catch up and let them be more prepared and then it'll be a little bit easier. I'm guessing that's part of it. Yeah. Because- Let it flatten the curve, as they're saying. Because if this, in theory, could this be gone in three weeks? Doesn't seem like it, right? No, I don't think so.

Could it be gone in three months? Well, it could certainly be contained. Right. And there could be proper testing and maybe some sort of remedy of some sort. The damage could be mitigated, and then you won't have everybody getting slammed at one time, and then that way everybody can get proper care. So let's do this. Again, we're throwing on all these possible scenarios.

If they say we're looking at three months before this bad boy gets under someone of control. Is the NBA going to not start picking up playing games again until June? Do you go right to a postseason based on what's already happened? Do you allow some sort of training camp for the guys to get back together that haven't been to playing with each other? I mean, my guess is they're not going to be practicing for, you know, three, four times a week until the NBA puts the all clear out. And what if the major league baseball doesn't put the all clear out, but the NBA does? Will the other sports organizations have pressure against each other to compete while some are competing and some are not?

Some will may say, well, baseball's handling the right way or basketball's not, or vice versa. I think that's going to happen just like they all got canceled. One's going to start the ball rolling and they're all going to follow suit. Do you have to basically like they did a couple days ago, did they have to act in unison on this? By the way, another little nugget from that. So as you said, Duke is suspending all athletic competitions. Kevin White is their athletic director. He is also the NCAA tournament chair. Yeah. But it's not his call to postpone the tournament. The only person that has the autonomy to do that is Mark Emmer at the Incident President. He was the one that just two days ago,

without asking anybody, said, we're going to eliminate fans and arenas. That was the last time we've heard Emmett speak. He said, we're not allowing fans in, and we're going to try to find a smaller venue than the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta to hold the final four, which at that point would make me think maybe a Georgia Tech where that's a smaller intimate arena as compared to this massive football stadium. You know, I don't know. Yeah, what is the right thing to do? How long do you wait? Because let me tell you, Ross. if this is a two-week holding period,

this is a blip on the radar. If you're telling when we get this cleaned up and get some sort of education about this in two weeks where arenas get cleansed and decontaminated or new procedures are in place where only players can go and only media can go and only fans can go, then this will be the right thing to have done.

But you wait two months, three months, You just called a season and say, we'll regroup and try this again come 2000 in the fall of 2020. In theory, so the biggest reason the NBA has suspended everything is because a player got infected, right? And then that endangers all the players and then it invades all the staff endangers all the people around. My guess is when word went up that Rudy Gobert got, was found having to have this virus, that everything said. They probably said this yesterday before it. If we have one player test, we're stopping everything. Yeah.

That's, and I think Rudy Gobert was the, was the warning sign that said, all right, you hear what I said. We're stopping everything. So, I mean, the plan before that was for, at least in San Francisco and other places or whatever, was to do, still have the games just only with essential people. So now if you have essential, now if you have them quarantined for a couple of weeks, 14 days, isn't that from what I'm hearing? That's sufficient as far as a quarantine. So after 14 days, then the players should all be fine, right? And then we can resume games. Well, that depends.

You would think. If the virus is still spreading in 14 days, they're not. They wouldn't be fine. It's not going to still spread between players if they're all self-quarantined. Well, yeah, but if they come out of quarantine in 14 days and the virus is still actively spreading, then you can accomplish nothing. Don't you think that every player has to be tested? Have them quarantined only, and they can. only go to the arena into their homes.

Yeah, that's going to work. The NBA is going to have to set up like temporary strip clubs. You know you have like tea buildings in school? It's going to be like a temporary quarantine strip club. He means. And various nightclubs with groupies who have been tested and have their temperature checked at the door.

Yikes. That's pretty intense. Those groupies need to be tested. There's not enough tests for that, all that, right? For all the NBA. And by the way, when did we decide that athletes of professional teams are more worthy of grabbing these tests as compared to the general public? We haven't even touched that yet. I'm not as important to society as Rudy Gobert, Matt.

It's not kidding ourselves. Who's more important? He's the stifle tower. Who's more important, Rudy Gobert or Tom Hanks? Tom Hanks. Speaking of Tom Hanks, did you see his son gave the update today? No, what happened? His son, which I don't know his name, and I never know.

Newy Add a son. Colin or something, right? Well, he's got like a fake fake accent half the time. So he goes on his Instagram account or Twitter. I don't know what it was. Yeah, Colin Hanks.

But he's got kids without Rita Wilson, too. This is an older kid. Okay. So he does so, and he does it without a shirt on. Let's take a look. Let me see, make it this name right?

Is it Colin or is another one of them? It's Chet. Chet. Chet. Tom Hanks named his kid Chet. Chet. It's at Complex on Twitter.

I retweeted it. 38 second update, Chet talking about Tom and his coronavirus. Why is he not wearing a shirt? That's my point. He is tatted up from looks like from stomach all the way up to all parts of his shoulders and everything, which is fine. That is what it is. But if you're going to put a tweet out that in theory hundreds of thousands of people are going to see,

we don't need to see your sleeves. we don't to see how many tats you have on your chest and by what turn your head around the right direction too and why does he have the Illuminati triangle on his chest? What is, I got, I have a little... So basically... Just Chet Hank's thing has given me a lot more questions and answers. So basically Chet's like,

how can I put my heavily tatted body out there for everybody to see? I'll give it up to my dad. Okay. With my shirt off. With my shirt off. Hopefully Colin Hanks weighs in on this. Colin's like, I don't know what my stepbrought. others do them, but he don't represent the Hanks family.

I think Colin is Rita and Tom's son. I think Chet is from a previous Yeah, I think Chet Rita Wilson is Colin Hanks' step mom. Who's Chet? I don't know.

I don't really know. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. When Tom gets back from Australia after this, I need to tell his son to put a shirt on. All further updates from Chet Hanks should be without a shirt. Even with a shirt.

With a shirt, excuse me. Chet Hanks must be clothed. Is that going to be declared by the World Health Organization? Well, if he wants to, yeah, if he wants, we want to go see his, we want to see his dad's movies, yeah. I will boycott Tom Hanks movies until Chet puts a shirt on. Well, they kind of screwed him and having a great life because his name is Chet. Because it's really short for Chester. I mean, he's not going to have to worry about money.

Well, shout out to all the Chet's out there. I don't think we have a single Chet that listens to show. 113 as the Matt Thomas show continues on Sports Talk 790 713-212-5-790 7-1-3-212-5-790. If you want to reach out via Twitter, it's at SportsMT, at SportsRV, and at Pronick-Low. Has your office place changed in just the last 72 hours? Because mine has, one of my jobs is done for a while. And how we're going to fill sports talk will remain the challenge of yet a very successful major market radio show.

Well, it needs to be. 713-212. We actually prep our shows. Yeah, we're going to have to... Summer of fun starts tomorrow in the month of March. The morning sports show for those who partied in Midtown way too hard last night. The Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790. Time is 120.

A lot of kids playing college basketball may have. I've never thought that their final game of their life would have been their final regular season games. By the way, Kansas has now said they are suspending all sports operations, which the presumption is basketball being the lead dog on that. So at this point, if the incident and simply tournament starts next Thursday, Ross, there'll be no Duke or Kansas in it. Well, that means a longhorn should be in if enough teams cancel, right? I as a representative of the University of Houston want to play. We're a higher seed. One seed, University of Houston versus two seed Texas.

We could have that dream matchup after all. There's eight teams in the whole tournament. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeff Goodman writes, is he ESPN? I always make some him up with. I think so, or at least he was. I think he's or was a Yahoo. But Yahoo has gone down the drain.

Yeah, he's not with anything, I don't think. Oh, well, that's a shame. Yeah, he's with a stadium group, but no one knows what that is. Aren't they kind of tied to the athletic a little bit or something like that? A little bit. Yeah, the Mount West is just suspended spring sports, the entire conference. Yeah.

The Longhorn baseball was supposed to play a Mountain West team. And now weekend series is canceled. So that's a win, basically. Was it Boise State? I can't remember it was. Here's what Jeff Goodman said. Jeff's a big basketball guy. I know if you saw him on TV, you'd recognize him.

He says, hey, NCAA, just move forward with the selection show on Sunday to give teams that they rightfully earned, suspend the actual tournament for the time being, and look at alternative plans over the next couple weeks, month, and hopes the tournament can actually be held. Thoughts on that? Announce it, but say, hey, when we play it, these 68 teams need to be ready to go. It can't be an awful thing, right? I don't know. I don't know.

But how do you have the sizzle of, you know, because Selection Sunday is a big, big deal? Right. And you get around and you have your parties and you get your alumni base together and you put the kids in the room. They're all into a big arena or a big meeting room. Handshaking, hugging. And it's true. Because you know what? Just because he's a teammate a year doesn't mean he's not carrying it.

Go ask the Utah Jazz how they feel about each other right now. Kisses on the cheek to your loved ones. Well, that's probably going to happen regardless. Yeah. Let's make a little small, no money wager on this. Are we getting an NCAA tournament at all this year? I'll do one, two, three, and we'll have, and Nick, you jump in on this too. one is yet either you say yes there's a tournament

like not like delayed or no they scrap it okay will there be an NCAA March Madness tournament one two three no no not in March no

now with me you prefaced over there Is it going to be April madness Is it going to be May madness I feel like I need to be Should we trademark those right now go to the trademark office hashtag April Madness? Yes.

Well, it could be six weeks or something. So then we're into May Madness at that point. And then kids are graduating from college and trying to declare themselves eligible for the NBA. You can't graduate college. They fill up the whole arenas for that. So at this point, we should speak to this. At 123, the NCAA tournament is still scheduled.

Now, the committee members, Now, I know in the ACC, I've only seen this on video. I've not seen the ACC declare this. So I'm going to have to go double-check this. But there are a lot of Florida State fans bumping around saying that the ACC declared the Florida State Seminoles that the conference champions. Is that right? Whether that means they get the automatic spot, I don't know. What if there are teams?

I'm okay with no automatic spots, honestly. Because here's the thing. The University of Houston was in a multiple tie with the American who gets this spot. Who won their head? Did they split their head to head? Well, I think they were the number one. They were the number two C. I think Tulsa was number one.

Okay. Either Tulsa was insane, one of the two. But whoever's number two. Or whoever's number one seed. But what if, but is that necessarily fair? You can say yes, it is. I mean, what do you get from it besides the trophy? No, you're not tournament.

No, we're talking about it. We're talking about the automatic bid. The automatic bid. Yeah. Well, I mean, they're all both going to go get in anyways, right? That's true. That's true. But the charm.

of a maybe somebody else would have made it. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times you have these teams who go on runs in these tournaments, and they end up as like 15, 16 seats anyway. So really, to me, the automatic bid has disrupted the tournament more than anything. Oh, I like the automatic bid. I like that a team that has had a meh season gets to be special for four days. I know, I think I'm in the minority. No, I understand it and it's fun, but also I don't think it's a big deal.

Because you're having a team that wasn't going to get in anyways. some team with a 500 record going on to some insane run but it didn't like a Syracuse years back go on and go on and make it. But that's part of what March Madness so cool

is that if you can put it together for four days and beat the upstart teams no matter how things have turned out during the regular season, you get a chance to go play in the big one. Yeah, but didn't you, I mean, U of H had a crappy team and they won,

they got real hot and won their conference tournament and then they were out in the first round because they're just not up to par the level of the competition. But also good teams get bounced in the first round too. I'm just saying. Yeah, I think from a logistical standpoint, you know, when you had the automatic bid, the committee knew that they had to put those teams in.

Well, first of all, we're going to find out from the NCAA. And it hurts bubble teams. I mean, I'm not a big fan of the automatic base. See, I like him. And I might be the minority. I actually do like it. I like, if you're going to have a conference tournament, because let's be honest, Ross, the reason why they have these conference tournaments is to make money. Yes.

They're not doing it because they want to give teams a second chance. No. And the reason to make them. care is to say automatic. Audomatic bit is the way to make every team care. Which is, you know what? If you're going to have such an event, then have a price for it. You have to have one and the other. You have to have them both. Right. So we're waiting for that. We're waiting for a definitive word from baseball, whether they're going to suspend their operations. The Astros, by the way, or off today.

So it was moot for them. But Jeff Passum came with fire and brimstone 40 minutes ago, and things have quieted down on that a little bit. I don't know. Ian Rappaport just tweeting, the annual league meeting in Florida has been canceled. for the NFL. That means it will not have it. Okay. And they're pushing it. Well, it says with the matters discussed, they're being pushed to May. James and coaches will likely attend that one.

Yeah, they meet about every three or four months anyway during the off season. So that's not going to be a killer for them. 713-212-5-790. 7-13-212-5-790. One of the things that Chris Gordy, you guys here on The Trenches Show, and we did a special last night here on 790, is concerned about which is big for me too is

Rossi Cabin Fever and I'm not just talking about sports. I'm talking about in life. How long are we going to go before all of us start to hit that little part of our life? We'll discuss that next. 127 on the Matt Thomas show.

713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-212-5-7-90. When will cabin fever start to hit? Us as fans, we as fans want to see that. Houston Sports Talk 790. From the owner to the coach to the players. Your home for your home teams. So Ross and I are having executive meetings in between breaks about the future of the Matt Thomas show, especially with no sports going on.

So to get myself fully prepared, I did watch the last 15 minutes of The Bachelor. I didn't watch any of the season. I just watched the last 15 minutes. To get yourself prepared for what? That kind of talk. Oh, really? So you're a bachelor-educated now? We're going to be pop culture 790 here before you know it until sports return.

How sneaky Pete or whatever they call on? First of all, Pete is a dork. I don't know what the first girl that he supposedly chose and dropped because I never saw her. The girl Madison. I know there's a Madison and there's a Hannah-Anna. I don't know what they look. I only know this from Twitter. I don't know what Hannah-Anne looks like.

Okay. I did get to see Madison, and she's hot. They're all hot. Yeah, but I mean... They don't throw like a three in there out of nowhere. That is true. Wait, the Bachelor is all pre-filmed already, right? So they can't cancel that over coronavirus?

No, it was the season finale. Do you have to quarantine the roses? Or the girls? That may be the worst thing. Some of them should be quarantined. So Madison's hot. And Peter's mom hates her. They're not going to make it.

Interesting. And that's today's edition of the Bachelor update for the the day. I watched 20 minutes of the finale of the entire season. That's all I watch. And I was able to come to the conclusion that what's her face is hot, Madison, and that her and her and his and Peter's mom, they're not going to get along.

And it's going to cause serious strife. Because if you can't get along with your boyfriend's mother, you ain't got no chance. I don't care. Mother-in-law's a big one, yeah. Well, well, some things could be overcome, Matt. I don't know. Breaking news.

Broadway has suspended all performances through April 12th. I was going to see cats. That wasn't. So Broadway's done. Broadway is out. Wow. Okay, Broadway's out, basketball's out, hockey's out, the NBA is out. Oh, by the way, somebody, it was Bruce Arthur, I believe, at an NBA writer, he tweeted

out the, it's going to be a minimum 30 days for the NBA. That's what they're telling teams. Minimum. Minimum. 30 days, Matt. So I might want to, I don't know if you have any vacations planned in the summer. Well, you might want to cancel those.

I'll be readjusting the vacations I had on this rocket road trip. Yes. Well, hell, we don't even know we're going to have baseball. The NFL just canceled their annual meeting. Yeah, well, you mentioned that a minute ago. Oh, I missed that. Thanks for paying attention. That's because you're maybe you're spiking a fever over there for some reason.

I don't know. I'll take two weeks off. No, you won't. You're here. Jesse and Unbelon, 790. Hi, Jesse. Hey, guys. So just a quick question and a suggestion. I'm really curious what sports talk to radio is going to talk about for the next at least two to three weeks.

That's going to be really interesting. But I'm really interested. What is ESPN going to do with their airtime? I'd like to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. And since all these sports reporters, they're not going to have anything to do, I would suggest that they use all their time and effort to investigate all the other MLB teams to see how they cheated. So anyway, I can hear your thoughts.

Thank you. Appreciate it. And also I'll take the first half of the question seriously. We're probably going to have to do as a collective radio station kind of come to meeting and have it kind of come to Jesus about what we're going to do with the shows. Because if there are no sporting events, and we kind of joke about list radio, but I don't want to that that that only will last you so long um i don't i don't know i don't have an answer for you on that espn by the way is in real trouble because they broadcast NBA games three days a

week mm-hmm uh TNT does it twice a week NBA TV there's an NBA channel that does exclude well they can just you know in all honesty they can just put a bunch of old games yeah they do who I'm up for a hardwood class should we do like homework assignments where each of us, if there's like NBA Hardwood Classics on NBA TV, we'll check the schedule ahead of time. We're like, all right, everybody, Seattle Supersonics, Houston Rockets, 1993 Game 7

is on Hardwood Classics tonight. Oh, that's a tough one. Let's watch it. That's not, I don't want to watch that one. Let's watch it, and then we'll talk about it tomorrow on the show, and you call us in. But the problem is so few people get NBA TV or they think they even know it. That's true. Go to a sports bar. Yeah, I don't know. And as far

as, you know, sending investigative reporters out, there's only one thing I need to be investigated. Do you know what that is? What in the hell is taking Major League Baseball so long to punish the Boston Red Sox? Do you think Ross they climbed up? Because that's how I think they've, I don't think they've got the goods on them. Well, John Heyman has said he's hearing that the coronavirus thing is slowing everything down, the investigation. But how would the coronavirus slow down an investigation when you're having interviews with people that were intimately involved with the 2018 Boston Red Soxon? I don't buy. I don't buy. I I don't think you can blame this on the coronavirus.

I really don't. My feeling, you know what I feeling is this? Is that once we found out the Boston Red Sox were being under investigation that they said, do you think you guys want to feel the same wrath that the Houston Astros have felt and how all the players are being booted because they have amnesty and all the team and people thinking they didn't get punished enough? Shut your mouth. Don't say anything.

Because Ross, guess what? If Major League Baseball doesn't have the goods on them, they can't punish them. just like the Major League Baseball wanted the answers and what happened with the Astros and that's why they gave immunity. They must the Red Sox must have

shut their traps. It's possible because there's no Mike fires like Whistled there's no disgruntled ex-Boston Red Sock player that is given MLB the loaded gun on this.

I mean it's in all sincerity. We've been hearing for weeks that this thing was supposed to be wrapped up. I do not believe coronavirus slowed this down. Is there any reason that Alex Cora wouldn't give everything up? Just a code of honor, I guess.

Because he's gone and he's not going to The fact that he's not getting a job in baseball ever again. But in his mind, he thinks he might be able to get it. Well, he's wrong. I agree with you. 7-13. While operations are suspended, they'll have a lot of free time to be doing some investigating. They're not going to be hosting games or doing anything else.

And again, you don't have to have face-to-face large gatherings. You can do this over teleconcouns. You can have these over teleconferces. You can Skype in a deposition. You're going to phone conversations. There can be email evidence. No, I'm not going to accept that. I will not accept the coronavirus to slow down the MLB investigation. What is slowed down the investigation is the Red Sox have closed their lips and said, we're not, we're not saying a word. Which is really going to irritate a lot of you of Astro fans once the, once the hammer comes down, it ever does come down to the Boston Red Sox.

Patrick and Belair at 140 on 790. Patrick, good afternoon. Good afternoon, sir. Matt, I've listened since you came over from Minnesota. I've enjoyed it. And I really do believe that you do a great job out there. I do think that this is a great time to have like a 30-minute bunting talk with Ross during these periods of time. What do you think about that?

A 30-minute what? Bunting. Here are topics. I want to get to. Patrick, you ready? Oh, boy. Patrick, are you ready? Here come the conversations. I'm ready. Bunting is awesome.

Number one. Number two, when fans are back a lot in arenas and stadiums, wave fully acceptable. Oh, no. You must have the coronavirus. What about can we discuss taking Vince Young instead of

Reggie Bush? Yes. Can we relive that? Vince Young or Reggie Bush. Should the Rockets work the Mid-Range more. And are you ready for this one? Is Matt Schob and elite quarterback? Oh, hey, can we also do like a, what would Cal McNair

sound like concept? Like that's like 30 people call in? That's right. It'd be a lot of dead air. Thank you, Patrick. Ross, we're going to think outside the box, my friend. Looking at my, just my ESPN.com, I have a little scoreboard at the top. Canceled, canceled,

all the baseball games. Canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, cancel, cancel. Why isn't it officially expected? What's going to be waiting for? Basketball. Cancel, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled. Look at this. All these tournament games today, canceled. So, wow.

Ross and I are going to have to maybe re-examine the name of this radio station. Yes. At least for the short term. If we're not sports talk 790, what can we be? Everything talk 790. Guy talk? Okay. Fashion talk.

like prostate health or something? What's guy talk? You know, guy talk like, hey, you see that girl with the big jugs? We don't want to alienate our female listeners. All right, excuse me, see that girl with the beautiful breast? Okay. We can't be offended by that. I mean, we're going to spend a whole segment on that? This whole thing, we're talking about hours.

We spend hours on that? We've got nothing, we got no game previews. Maybe we can have, we'll have some, we should do some fantasy. Fantasy 5's got to come back. We might even have to redraft ones we did years ago. Good news. It's the Matt Thomas show for lunch. Let that boring brown bag lunch rot in the employee refrigerator.

Oh, what's that smell? The Matt Thomas Show on Sports Talk 790. Yeah, man, that's the good stuff. What the hell is this? Kenton Chesney. He's canceled a lot of his dates. Well, Arlington, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, West Palm, Tampa, Braden, Mississippi,

Atlanta. Houston Minutemate Park May 22nd. That's been postponed. A Rock and Roll Hall in Fame induction ceremony has been postponed. Depeche Mode is not going to get inducted now. Which is the right call anyways. Yeah, maybe the coronavirus has...

Let me ask you this. Okay, we've got stadiums being canceled events. We have sports at... are being canceled in all levels. When are movie theaters and grocery stores and restaurants next? I don't know.

I'm not going to any of those. Well, I'm going to a grocery store, I guess. You've got to keep some access to food open, right? Because at some point, this trend is moving towards things outside of what Sports Talks 7 or not

we'll be talking about, right? Malls, libraries, theaters, churches, are we going to be in a point in the next you don't have to answer this. Are we going to be at a point in the next 30 days

where we're going to be all quarantined to our homes for a length of time? I don't know. Basically don't leave your home unless you have to. It happened in some parts of China. I don't know what's going on exactly in Italy. They're in kind of, I mean, I know that they're not doing any sports stuff.

Right. I mean that in all sincerity. When are we going to be told, don't leave your house unless you have to? I don't know. That's going to stop industry. That's going to... This show is going to be difficult to do for both of us from home. You can do it, I guess.

I'll call you in once an hour, Matt. I'll put you on a phone line. Thank you. Actually, you have an access too. We'll put you on a different access. Actually, we could do that. This is... Unlike anything we've ever seen.

And I don't mean to be speeches because you can't be speechless on a radio show. Yeah. I'm just going to literally pray that somebody can give us an answer, a more definitive answer about what this is, how crazy this is spreading if it is within 14 days. If you're going to tell me Rossi between now, what day is this today, the 12th? If you're going to say between now and the 31st of this month is going to be horrible. But the greater good is we have a control of this. We know how it's spreading.

We've got testing kits. We've kept it in a certain part of the country or a certain process. We've quarantined people that need to be quarantine. We've done a better job of cleansing everything from churches, libraries, sports stadiums. If it's going to take us 19 days for us to fix this, we can live through this. But I don't want us to be like this for six months. I don't think it'll be six months. I hope you're right.

Quiet, quiet, quiet. That's enough. Put down the mic. Right, Donnie T. We'll figure it out. And is this political? We're going to build the war. We have no choice.

In what way? Is this pandemic way worse because a few number of political officials are making this way worse than it, than it really is in reality? I think it's a disgrace. What? The political officials in Italy and China? No, I'm just right anywhere. That one person puts a panic button out and that panic button is hit by everybody. It's gone down to tubers.

It's international. It's a pandemic. Yeah. And it's affecting multiple countries. I mean, unless there's some concerted effort by the bias. some sort of the Illuminati and they have the whole world under control. I mean, there have been shutdowns and quarantines in multiple countries. But like in Kansas City, the Big 12th Termin got canceled today.

Yes. Flat out canceled. I don't think there's been any signs of anything in Kansas City per se or involving any of those schools. Now, being preemptive is the right thing to do. The idea is prevention, yes. Yeah. That's what they're doing. So 19 days of prevention is worth this.

It's supposed to be better, yes. That's what we're doing. This is not reactionary. They're trying to be proactive. Yeah. I know there are some people that are upset. Well, it's only 30 deaths. By the way, I mean, you're trying to stop it from being many, many more.

I'm looking at the NFL timeline. NFL not considering changes to draft in Las Vegas at April. Hmm. They're going to have to change their philosophy. It's late April, right? I mean, it's like six weeks from now. Yeah. You know what?

In all honestly, I hope they don't have to change it. Yeah, let's get the floats up to Bellagio Fountains, and let's get everybody up. there in Vegas and everything's cool. Because I like me some gambling, and I don't want to worry about whether or not my chips have been sanitized. They're not sanitized. I think about that every time I sit at a poker table.

Do you think about it more now than you were for? I look at the chip. No, no. I just look at the chips. They're so nasty. Mike in Missouri City on 790. Mike, what do you got? Hey, I've been listening, and I heard this.

I want to kind of tie into this caller that said, what is this going to do to ESPN? And you just mentioned it. what do you think this is going to do to Vegas in the long term? And I'm not talking about just the daily on-site rate that they make from bets for day-to-day sports. You know, what if I'm a guy that went and put long money on the Astros to lose less than 95 games? What if they shorten the season to 80 games, does that mean I automatically win? No. It'll be a null-in-void bet.

Any bet that is not completed cannot, they cannot take your money from you. Maybe they can convert it to like a percentage. I'm not saying. I did that. I definitely didn't. But, you know, I was thinking about it. And I was like, well, at least, you know, they've got their daily rate from the poker and slots and all that. But how can they, how can the big casino stay open if people are being shut out from sporting events that have less, you know, less people that are going to show up at the. Oh, yeah, no question. Books will be affected by this.

Yeah. I mean, in all seriousness, if you're a Las Vegas book right now, and thank you, Mike, for the phone call. Nick, that's a good question. Nick, if you don't check on that far as, can you find out, is there anything you can bet on right now? I think NASCAR. NASCAR and golf, right?

It would be the only thing. Bovada tweeted out that they're going to have virtual camel racing or something like that. Are they still doing horse races? My guess is horse, but that's going to be pennies in the dollar. Let's see. I'm going to the sports. There's some women in basketball. No, they're going to cancel that too.

Oh. There's nobody. This is stuff that's already happening. Okay, NASCAR. Hockey's getting suspended. Golf. MLS is suspended. In horse racing.

Yeah, we can bet on golf. They're still going to have tournaments, right? Right. They're playing the players championship this weekend. Just wipe down your clubs with a chlorox wipe. Well, here's the easy thing you can do. Las Vegas will do one very simple thing. They will just close the books.

And if you really insist on betting on NASCAR, provided it still happens, or golf, then they'll give you probably a two or three hour window to open up and go bet that ticket. But they're not going to stay open for 12 hours, 14 hours a day to wait for people to bet on NASCAR. No way, no way, no how. And I don't know what the horse racing handle does for people in Vegas. But March Madness is a huge week. Next weekend for people in Las Vegas is how, is how, books make it through the summertime.

It's one of the, yeah, the biggest betting weekends, if not the biggest betting weekend of the year. Are they taking action on when sports are going to come back? That's actually not a bad little thing right there. I can tell you where you, if you want to get a little action going, stock market. Well, here's the thing. You buy it now low because the economy's going to pick back up, you would think

eventually. They say buy the dip, but there's a problem. You don't know when the dip stops. Yeah, you've got to have to hold onto it for a while. and just keep taking that L until you feel confident if you can stay with it. Oh, man. You know what? Let's just go in our rooms and shut the door and not come out for months. How's the Dow Jones doing? We're okay? It's closed. Didn't it close again today?

It's completely closed. Yeah, I closed again. They're like, we don't, we're tired of taking L's. 713-212-5-790. 7-1-3-2-1-2-5-790. Vegas is going to be affected. They're going to close books. Now, they wouldn't care if this was April 15th because nobody bets on baseball anyway. but March Madness? Oh, hell yeah.

Is the Matt Thomas show. We are Sports Talk 790. We're probably in four to five days. We'll be revisiting old sporting events. Remember how cool would be to have we replayed our 2017 World Series day after show? We'll be reminiscing. Oh, you just play that? Do we have it?

I bet we could. No, we don't have that kind of show in life. Maybe, actually. We can do non-Florida stories all day long. We're going to get to it, gang. We're going to, oh, man. So, rumor has it that the NBA is going to take at least 30 days off. That is not confirmed.

But look, the NBA is having another set of meetings today. Yesterday, the owners met. Today, it's like team presidents and general managers. So there's going to be some more information coming out of it. And that's why you get to follow Woj and Shams. I mean, those two cats are on. like nobody's business. And they're the ones that announced yesterday that Rudy Gobert was first tested positive

for the coronavirus, and now we've got word that Donaldman Mitchell is the next one the list. When you saw, when I saw, first saw, Woj said the league was suspended for 30 days. What was your reaction? Or would you, I mean, I had to triple check that it was him. That's always a given. But it wasn't somebody retweeting it. I follow him, so I was pretty sure. Right.

I don't follow any. There was a checkmark there. Exactly. And there was a check mark and I still had a check. I didn't know originally why it was. Not for 30 years. But the original tweet was the NBA is going to be suspended. Yeah.

I didn't know the original reason why. And then probably took me two minutes after that to figure out why that was. So what I've done is I put two and two together, Ross, and I thought they must have their meetings yesterday on the phone and said, we're going to play games with nobody in the crowd. The first time we hear of a player, we're going to shut the league down. The puzzle pieces are all just coming together too easily on that. You wouldn't all of a sudden say, we're going to play games and then revisit the conversation hours later.

I guarantee you that Adam Silver said, we will table this for now. But if one of our players gets caught with it or a coach, we're shutting the league down. They did. And now the rockets were half. Some of them were halfway. Some were in Los Angeles. They had to split the traveling part. I did not go on this trip because it was not necessary for me to go.

But yeah, half the trip was in El Paso when they found. You know, you know, you can get GPS, you can figure where you are. And they turned around and came home. You flipped the plane around? I don't know. Hopefully it was more of a gentle turn. You know what I mean? Could you mean?

You didn't do any barrel rolls on the way back? You didn't do like, yeah, Somersault? It is amazing. That's why they obviously have to separate planes, because they want to have a little bit of room if they need to maneuver and whatnot. But it is pretty incredible. I mean, at least if you were in the air and didn't have Internet and your plane was going in a different direction, you would have been really flipped out.

Like something happened where you were going or something happening with your own plane. Well, when planes now have Wi-Fi, they can figure out two-to-two together. And when they saw the end-begated was suspended, the next thing they did is they went to the pilot and said, all right, it's time for us to. What about like Beat Rider? Like, what's Jonathan Faggett up to? He was in Los Angeles. Heard he was there.

Oh, really? Yeah. They coming back? Yeah, he's tweeting about trying to come back. Apparently everybody's coming trying to, I mean, flights out of L.A. are always going to be crammed as it is. True. So he's having, he's just having, he's in the world of trying to wait to get on a standby.

Wash your hands. Jonathan. Airplants are maybe the worst, right? They're fine, yeah. Fingered areas. Flying petri dishes. Yeah. It's disgusting.

People coughing all over you. People taking their shoes off. Yeah, by the way, no more shoes off. No more of that. What if you got flip flops on? That's fine. Not just because I fly with flip flops on just because I don't have to take my shoes off. I travel with someone on our traveling party that takes his shoes off.

I'm not going to mention who it is. Craig Ackerman. But hopefully he's changed his ways on this. Is it Tyson Chandler? I'm not telling you who it is. You're just not going to know. Daniel House? All I know is that I'm going to miss the NBA.

I'm going to miss. We're all going to miss Marchman. I've been 30 days of no NBA. I really don't know what I'm going to do with my life. Let's make sure. Let's make sure a premise. Minimum. There is a report out there that says that. I mean, Bruce Arthur from the Toronto Sun.

He's broken stuff before. What is this exact tweet? He's a Toronto Star. I'm sorry, not Toronto Sun. Toronto Star Sports columnist, father of four. He tweeted 49 minutes ago, the NBA has told its team the league will be suspended for 30 days minimum. That's an aspirational timeline, to be clear.

It's a minimum, and it's almost certainly not in their control. Okay, if we indeed believe it to be true, which I don't have any reason not to believe. That's right. Am I right about this? We're going to crown a champion in August. What if they shorten game? What if they say we're eliminating 10 games of the season? Something like that. So let's do this. If John Heyman just has a tweet out that Nick wants us to look at right now. The MLB is pushing this from John Heyman. MLB is pushing the start of the season back by a minimum of two weeks. and we'll continue to monitor and see when is best to resume.

And it is official that Major League Baseball has canceled spring training. Wow. Wow. What if you booked a trip to West Palm? Well, we had a caller. Yeah, I was listening on the way in. Because you were show pumping at home and lost right at time. Yeah, exactly.

We were not supposed to have the first two hours of the show. To really, in fact, I was two hours early. That's, you know what? I never quite thought of it that way. So I was super early. I wonder if, you know what, should we try to call, is there somebody down in Florida we can call? Is Chandler down in Florida? I think so.

Yeah, but he's the property of the A team. I don't want to steal their guest. Well, all we have right now is Dusty. He's not going to talk to us. No, Dusty's not going to talk to us. As far as regular baseball guests. Right. I wonder who's down.

We can, well, let's think of this. I'd like to get somebody. Julia down there? You know what? Close personal friend of the show. Julia Morales. Let's call Julia. Do you have a number, Nick?

Let me check. Matter of fact, Ross, go in there and give Julia. We'll take a phone call here, and we'll see if we can give it to her. Let's go to Larry and Galveston at 210. Larry, how are you? MT, I'm doing great, man. How about you? Yes, I'm doing just fine.

Well, I tell you what, I have one big suggestion. And the big suggestion is that Michael Connor, a wonderful, revival to pull the United States of this nosedive that we're in with respect to this coronavirus. Because, I mean, if they can pull the Astros out, they can pull the NBA, the NFL, college, college baseball, and the Astros out of a nosedive. And, you know, you and Michael just get together and do the trick and everything will be just fine. And that's all I got, but thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Tomorrow show. I'm not doing a revival for the entire country. It's too much pressure. That's a leash you can do. I was thinking about doing a Rockets revival when they lost four straight. I actually meant this suggested to you, but we just didn't. We don't need to do it. They beat Minnesota.

They're not playing for 30 days. How was the defense against Minnesota? There was. I chanted defense a few times. You chanted it now, but did they play it? Good to end the season on a high note. They did. They're one of the hottest teams in the NBA.

There's no denying that. No baseball. Yeah. What? Florida. Florida, Florida Evans. Florida Evans need to weigh in on this. Florida, we've got no NCAA tournament.

None. Zero. Well, that's not official yet. Damn, damn, damn. That's true. We've got no Major League Baseball for at least four. weeks. We have...

No NBA for 30. No NBA for probably for 30 days. And I had to wait 45 minutes in line to get my groceries paid for at H-E-B yesterday. Did you? Oh, yeah. You were also show-prepping when I mentioned that. Hmm. Were you...

Was the people who are panic shopping? No, it was just way busier. It wasn't panic. It was regular shopping, but there were only... There was, you know, like 13 or 14, you know, different rows. Yeah. And only like three of them were... three or four open. So it was, it was, we waited probably

comfortably 30 minutes. I didn't, uh, there were still plenty. It wasn't like it was abundant, but there was not like it was like, we grabbed the last two rolls. No, we, we, we got three or four sets and we were fine. Are you sure? Well, I might have to go down like a one square rule or something. Says who? Um, maybe I'll just do my panic shopping at like CVS.

Just to avoid the lines. Yeah, you can't buy, you can't buy sanitizer or toilet paper on online. I got a full thing of Purell at home. I'm good. Okay. And soap. You should actually do a e-ban that and see what kind of money you can make. You gave my Purell.

Yeah. It's like, it's about an eight-ounce joint. It's probably got like seven ounces in it. 214. 2014 on Sports Talk 790. 7-13-212-5-7-90. Matt Thomas. We'd like to thank his parents for only giving him two first names.

Because who would listen to Billy Ray Thomas talk about Houston sports. The Matt Thomas show on Sports. 790. 220 on 790. Major League Baseball has suspended all operations, canceled the remaining portion of spring training, and will have delay Major League Baseball for at least two weeks. Oh, boy, wow.

Are they just, does that, so let's say, for example, I've been planning on possibly going to a game in May in Boston. Right. It's going to be Astros and Red Sox. Do the first two weeks of the season just get tacked on to the last two weeks Or does every game get pushed back two weeks? How does this work? Let me give you the scenarios

One, they don't play the games that were affected by this And they're just off the schedule? Off the schedule. A lot of the reason, a lot of that is not because they don't want to do it, not because they're not available, but the weather plays a huge factor. You do not want to be playing regular season games in mid-October, would then push the postseason back to late October to the early part of November when snow and more importantly, cold temperatures kick in. Could you imagine a Twins-Yankees playoff series?

Twins-J-N-A-L-C-S in December? No, no, no, just a vision series. Oh, I'm sorry, AL-D-S. There you go, much better. So, yeah, of course. It could happen. So my guess is they will pair the schedule down to 140-something games, would be my guess. Okay.

maybe you can stretch it one extra week, but that would be... Shorten up the... I mean, you would... The players need that all-star break because the season is such a point. And really, that all-star break is not even really a full week anymore. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's just... I'm just trying to get some misinformation. Trying to get to Julian to join us down and forward. That's option one. Option two would then be... Boy, if you tacked it on, you're looking at whether being a major factor in November. John Heyman tweeting again, while spring games are canceled, players will not be immediately leaving camps.

There's thought being given to teams holding practices at their own sites to remain in playing shape. Logistics are still being discussed, but word is now that the players will, quote, hold tight for now. So players who already think spring training is too long are going to have to be at the spring training facilities a couple extra weeks or what? This is I see you I see you getting overwhelmed I just saw what washed over you Matt was the realization

there's just so many questions and so many things to work out So the earliest we will have a sporting event to talk about Yes would be next Tuesday if they play the field of 68

Which it seems at the very least it's going to be postponed at the very least. If they scratch at all, the earliest were watching a sporting event of any sort. Yes. And the X-FL is not canceled yet. Well, that's true.

But of a major sports league, which I'm sorry, XFL, it is not. Sorry, Nex fans. Sorry, yeah, Nex fans are just overcome with, we should be everything on page one, would be the Masters. A tradition unlike any other Because the PGA is still competing Mm-hmm The Masters is like four weeks away

Do we play the best We don't put the Do we have enough best of material for four weeks? I think of the I meant I think you're funny and interesting And available to talk about various other topics And I think you'll do a good show And I'm going to test our abilities

Of course, yeah, that's fine I'm not worried about it We're hey Nick We're gonna have a good time for the next four weeks Even though we know sports talking about We might have to talk about curb your enthusiasm or The Wire or like a Game of Thrones or, you know, my show is coming back. Ozark will be back in the month.

So we need to do like a book club or like a homework assignments and stuff like that so that we can talk about certain things the next day. Because the problem is talking about shows in 2020 is there's like 6,000 shows and not everybody watches. There's not one show that everybody watches. No, there's not. Even as much as I love curb, I know that most people do not watch. that show. Let's go to Jimmy in the Heights at 225. Hi, Jimmy. Hey, how are you doing? I was just going to ask about the X-FEL. My Ruff Nex, I mean, are they going to screw us out of that, too? I mean, I know it's not so what's so-called

a professional team, but they are 5-0, so are we going to get screwed out of that? I'll hang up the list. What do you mean screwed up? What do you mean screwed out of? Well, you know, they're going to, I don't know if they're going to cancel it. I was kind of looking forward to watching some sports, but we have nothing going on. I was hoping we can at least watch XFL football. Yeah. My guess is the XFL is going to take the lead off of this, too. I can't, Rossi, I cannot imagine Vince McMahon going,

screw everybody else, we're going to play despite this. Because then you're going to want to filling up stadiums. Not grand, they're not going to have superintendents like they would say baseball games or even basketball arenas, but you're still putting 15,000 people in these facilities. And you're going to end up with somebody getting sick and suing Vince McMahon in the XFL. That's one of the reasons that the sports leagues do have to stop this is also because of illegal liability. Yeah. That's just a reality.

So hopefully we'll wait for, is he going to wait for Smackdown to make an announcement? What's on Friday on the WWE, Matt? It is Smackdown. Okay. Is he going to make an announcement? Is there a halftime? Is there an intermission? How do these things work?

Well, you know, WrestleMania is coming up in early April, too. Uh-oh. And that's multimillion-dollar thing. Where is it? Um, I don't know. I don't watch it anymore because it's, it's just, it just doesn't grab my intention before.

Yeah, I know. It's gone downhill ever since you invited me over the house and I just made fun of wrestling for three hours. You made fun of wrestling and you made fun of how far I live from the city. Hold on. I was, I will maintain. I was under instructions from you to do that.

All right. Let's go to, uh, Steve and Tom Ball, 226. Hi, Steve. Hey, how you doing that? I'm well, thank you. Pennsylvania is in Tampa this year, and they are not going to cancel that. Oh, hell no.

All right, well, are you sure of that? Yeah, I'm sure of that. Okay, because everything else has been canceled in my life in the last 48 hours. Well, y'all can start watching wrestling now, go back to that, and we can talk about that on Monday, Tuesdays and Monday. So Monday and Tuesdays is WWE recap. Okay.

Yes. This will work well. All right, I got you. You'll be Turnbuckle Tom Turner all over again. Let me tell you something, Steve. If we were doing Mid-South recap, I would do that every damn day. You know that, right? Hey, I've been watching wrestling since the early 80s. I'm all in mid-south, NWO, NWA.

Perfect. All right, what else you got? That's it? That's it. All right, we'll see you later. All right. Appreciate the phone call. Calvin Samson's Cougars have made it back to campus.

He has a gut feeling about what's going to happen with this tournament. We visited with him when his team was coming back. they had just finished a stop at Buckees. They were halfway to Fort Worth when they found out the American Athletic Conference canceled, flat out canceled the tournament. So with that being said, we're going to let you hear a little bit of what Coach had to say

about talking to his kids and what to do next when it comes to the NCAA basketball March Managed Tournament. Should they have it? We've heard nothing yet from the NCAA. Launch timers. Launch timers.

This is the match. Thomas show. We will move things around a little bit. We'll let the Calvin Samson conversation go on our final segment of the day. We're not in the mood to play, believe it or not today. It's something worth goofing around about. Tomorrow we'll feel better about ourselves, I think. We've got some folks that want to talk about news the day, which is everything's been canceled, right?

Short of the PGA, short of March Madness that's still in play. And NASCAR. And Rasselin. Everything else has been canceled. Wrestling is going to be just fine, Matt. I mean, let me preface it. Everything has been postponed and or canceled. There is definitely a difference.

Right. We're going to make sure we know that. Conference tournaments have been canceled. NBA season has been postponed. The Longhorns robbed of their chance at a Big 12th title. Major League Baseball, at least a postponement of two weeks. The rest of spring training canceled. Back at it, let's go to Wayne and Humbold on the Matt Thomas show.

Wayne, how are you? I'm doing fine, guys. I just wanted to make a comment about how wonderful I think the decision about canceling the Major League, well, not counseling, but putting it off a while until they figure out what they're going to do. But I was listening to the Miami ball game earlier, and it was Carpenter, the third baseman for the Cardinals, who stated that it was the first time that he's ever been. to a major league game to play that it was meaningless. And I thought about that.

And thinking about those gentlemen that were infected in the NBA, and then knowing that they have children as well as parents and wives, just imagining how, if they were infected, how severe that can be. and I was listening to those radio broadcasters on that game said that David Price of the Dodgers said that this is greater than baseball and that each one of those players have family members. So after listening to this and seeing how Major League Baseball is looking now knowing about their employees, their players, their players, and their fans, I think it was a great decision for them to do this. Thank you, guys.

Appreciate it. I don't think it was a great, it would be a strange terminology. It was the right thing to do in lieu of everything else being canceled or postponed. But, I mean, MLB is not beating their chest by doing this. Yeah, they're not happy about it. Nobody's happy about it.

No, this is going to create a massive, scheduling conundrum with workouts, practices, getting guys ready, the type of style of play. I mean, look, the NBA will suffer because of this. Major League Baseball will suffer because you're going to have to give these guys warm-up periods, days, practices. The quality of competition is not going to be good. And in the NBA's case, it's really going to be a tough spot because they're going to pick up wherever they left off with only about 15 or 20 games left in the season where playoff spots are up in the air. This could not – I mean, there's never a good time for this, but especially towards the end of a season. where in baseball, if you wanted to say,

all right, we're going to start this thing at game 25 of the year, and you're going to play 134 games, then no one in theory has been hurt, nobody's having to have competitive advantage, no one has to make up ground in a short period of time. In basketball, if they cut the schedule down to 9 or 10 games, there are two or three teams that are two games out of a final playoff spot that may not get that opportunity because of the lack of number of games.

We'll see. I feel like they'll still play 82. I have a feeling. I have a feeling. also, I mean, during, especially during the finals, sometimes they're like, oh, they play a game and then they don't play for like two or three days. Oh, yeah.

Some of that's going to go away. You're going to see postseason games played every other day with maybe a travel, two days in between days of travel. But short of that, there'll be none of this playing on Sunday, not playing end up Thursday. It's like the finals take like a month

almost, it feels like. There won't be any of that. They're going to be like, as soon as a series or with, let's get the next one going. Let's go to bed and college station at 239, the Matt Thomas show on Sports Talk 790. Ben, thank you for holding. Yeah, no problem. So two questions. One of them was just brought up to me right now while you were talking about that. Do you think that in the NBA, they're not going to be able to

practice or have organized team events? I mean, is that what the postponement means? There's no organized events at all? No, the NBA, from what Mark Cuban has said, now granted, Mark Cuban does not speak on behalf of the NBA. but he's an influential owner. He's a guy that's out there. He has been given not assurances, but the thought of that teams would be able to practice when they won't want to,

that facilities that the guys normally go to would still be open. So whether that's organized practices or guys can just go find a basket and shoot, they'll still be able to go to a team. But my guess is that will also be up for conjecture. That's what these team presidents and general managers are meeting about today. Okay. And then the other question was with the NCAA, if they do go through and cancel March Madness totally and don't, you know, don't play it at all. And they're just not really a national champion. Do you think there's any chance they might go back and look at giving like seniors an additional year of that ability? Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. That would, I would, I would, I would, I would, um, now that's just my, that's just my, that's just my, that's just my first. first blush answer. Thank you for the phone call. Help me think about this for a second, Ross. Is there something wrong with that? Is there something wrong with giving seniors another year? Is that a dangerous precedent you set by any unforeseen conditions, guys being granted next year of ability to play? First of all, how many seniors are there in college basketball anymore? There's not that many. Probably a lower percentage.

at the big name teams. Yeah, I bet there's quite a few. There's lots. I think there were literally zero. For example, Texas Longhorns, I think there were zero seniors. Okay. So let's say there were seniors in the TCU basketball team, not making the tournament,

already been limited from the final four. I mean, do you? Yeah, are you granting everybody? Yeah, I mean, I don't think you selectively grant it. I think you do it for everybody or do it for nobody? Do you go to that, well, life's full of hard lessons? Tough, you know what?

is not fair? Life's not fair card, or do you go, you know what? It would be easy to give seniors one more year because this was an atypical, unforeseen situation that you could not have, you couldn't prevent us closing the year down. We didn't ask you, you didn't take a vote, we told you your season's overwork. That's why I feel like it's got to be postponed and not cancel. Can cancel the NCAA tournament?

Yeah. I would think canceled is way more. is way more of an option than postponing it. You canceled conference tournaments, Ross. It's crazy. You canceled the PAC 12, Big 12, Big 10, ACC, huge moneymakers. Now, the only difference is in this is,

as I talked about in the first hour of the show, there's a big old contract that CBS is ready to pay out. CBS hang on pay for if they don't get it. And you can't bump the Masters, unless the Masters bumps itself. Yeah. I don't know. There's a lot of layers to this.

Rockets PA announcer and sports talk show host. One might get the impression Matt Thomas loves to hear Matt Thomas's voice. Go ahead, Matt, talk for us. The NBA Board of Governors meeting has been pushed back to, it started just about 15 minutes ago. Presidents and general managers, I think some owners as well, on the conference call. So any news about what's happening in the NBA won't come until later on this afternoon or evening. College basketball, the American Athletic Conference tournament,

one of 12 conference tournaments to be flat out canceled. We caught up with Kelvin Sampson earlier today to discuss what it was like telling the kids and the disappointment level when they were halfway to Fort Worth only had the bus turn around and head back to Houston. There are thousands and thousands of fans, players, families, disappoint all over the country. I was on the phone early this morning with our conference, and, um, literally Matt, South Florida and Central Florida were on the floor warming up for their new game. And when they were pulled off and sent back to the locker room. And I think the same thing happened in the ACC tournament, the Big East tournament, and a couple other tournaments. So, you know, it's just uncharted border for everybody.

There's a lot of people that make a living, you know, off of this time of year, whether it be concessionaires, parking people, ushers, whatever in these tournaments. But, you know, these players, his programs, especially have good years. I was thinking about Dayton and Coach Grant and Obie Topping. You know, it's a shame that the country may not be able to see him play, and they get rewarded for such a great year. You know, we had a really young team this year. found a way to share a conference championship.

I was anxious to see what our team looked like in Fort Worth. We were the teams that I think had a chance to win it and maybe improve your seat and go to the NCAA tournament. But, you know, the thing gets in a way called life. You know, it's not something to get mad about or certainly not make fun off. It's just it's life, you know. When they make these decisions, they're not easy.

You know, I can't imagine being on a conference call with commissioners and presence of these universities this morning, having to make this call and then call the AD and coaches and say, we're going to counsel the tournament. That's not easy. But when you step back and look at it from a big picture standpoint, you know, you're talking about something that could alter this sport and people, people's lives forever. So, you know, a lot of people say, well, it's not that bad. Well, if you're not a doctor, I have no interest in listening to you. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, I couldn't have said a better myself. When did you coach start hearing about alterations of the event, not allowing fans in, and then maybe the possibility of cancellation? When did you really start getting involved in the minute-to-minute conversations? Yeah, I was on a call last night about the when they made the call that no fans, and they had actually said, hey,

here's the way we're going to handle tickets. Each school, I think, was going to get 125 tickets. The only people were allowed to have in the arena was immediate family,

essential game personnel, coaches, players, that's it. No band, no cheerleaders. I'm sure essential personnel media as well. So it was going to be a bare-bones operation, but they were going to play the games.

And then this morning, about 8.30, I got the first call about we were moving down the road to council of tournament, and then they just had to get all, no communication. I think the commissioners from all the conferences were on a conference call, and the president's work too. So they made the call, and we just turned the buck. We literally were two and a half hours. hour and a half away from Fort Worth, and we found the next exit, flipped it around, and headed back.

When you got on the microphone or maybe walked back to where the kids are sitting on the bus, what was their initial reaction? Well, first of all, I had to wake them up. That's true. I forgot about that. Yeah, I had to wake them up. I think bewilderment, question marks. I'm sure there's a lot of, sometimes you're not quite sure what to ask when you have a question. you know, and I really didn't have a lot of answers. And I tried to answer the best I could.

And the answer is that we are not going to play the conference tournament. We're going to go back. We're going to be at a holding pattern. I would think if they're going to cancel the NCAA tournament, we're going to hear pretty soon. If they're going to try to find a way to play it, that means it will be postponed versus cancel, and they're going to have to figure out the logistics of that.

So we're just in a holding pattern. I rewarded the team, I said, you know, for having this year ranked 22nd Nation and winning this championship, we're going to stop the fuckies. And what did you get, I have to ask? No, no. I've got a brisket sandwich and a nice fight. Yeah, that's absolutely the right call on that place. Visiting with Calvin Samson, head basketball coach of the University of Houston with us here on the Matt Thomas show. Coach, you are incredibly connected through all your years and so many great friends in the industry.

Have you been able to text, call other coaches maybe that are outside of the region to kind of see what's going on with their programs? You know, a couple of the coaches in the conference this morning. I got a call from John Brannum from Cincinnati. A couple of them texts earlier. But I think everybody's just so concerned about their own team. You know, my concern right now is these – 12 kids and my staff. I've got to

find a way to navigate through this next 24, 48, 72 hours, Matt, to let them know. I mean, we're on spring break this week, and today is Thursday. You know,

I'm going to keep them on campus for as long as I can. I know classes have been canceled. So, you know, we're kind of headed into uncharted waters. I don't think anybody has a, everybody's plan right now is or should be fluid. I don't think we can put a nail in anything. Or just play it by ear. You know, since I've been alive, I don't recall anything like this. So I don't know. You know, you got the stock market

plummeting. You got NBA players being tested positive for this virus. you've got travel being shut down, you've got tournaments being canceled, NCAA's got to make a huge decision coming up here. Tennis, professional tennis is canceled. You know, I don't know. The easy answer is we're just going to go hour by hour, half day by half day, day, day by day, and try to make the best decision for the people around us.

All right. I didn't realize that coach and I had to blunt end of our conversation but it's not here nor there Ross is tearing up Are you okay? Oh, I just touched my face, Matt. I've got to go watch my hands.

I'll be back. On that note, let's end the show. Might want to wipe this microphone down, wax. Why is it smelling here? Don't even. Don't start the hysteria. Get some of your wipes that you wipe your ass with and bring them in here and clean off this room.

That's what you can do. Oh, there they are. Perfect. Smells fresh. Lemony. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. The A team is up next with a chalk full of sports between now and 6 o'clock. Back with you guys tomorrow at noon right here on Sports Talk 790.