The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Voice Of The Longhorns Craig Way Joins The Show

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Voice Of The Longhorns Craig Way Joins The Show

This Saturday, 10 o'clock, Sports Talk 7.90 will be your home for Texas football. Longhorns taken out on the Ohio State. Butkeyes and Columbus, Amanda, will call it longtime voice of the Longhorns. And a great host and a great broadcaster, Craig Way, the voice of Kingwood Baseball and Softball Championships. Is that right, Craig Way? Hey, that was a moment of pride for me, Maddie. I didn't do the softball, but I did do the baseball state championships. Yeah, I guess I was happy to do that.

Yes. They were very happy to have the local school taken care of it. Hey, let me ask you your philosophy. You've called a lot of season openers in all your years of college football. What's it like to have this sort of, I mean, prime time, number one kind of showdown so early. This is something we didn't see a whole lot of 15 or 20 years ago. Yeah, I think I can count the number of times where you had a game even approaching this magnitude on one hand and probably use less than three fingers to do it.

I remember the Charlie Strong debut was in South Bend, but everybody was kind of expecting it to not go well, and it did not go well. It was like 383 Notre Dame winning that. There have been a couple other high-profile games like that. In 2016, they had that Sunday night over Labor Day weekend, that crazy double overtime win over Notre Dame. That's when Joe Tessator uttered the famous ugly words,

Texas is back and the Longborns never stopped hearing that for the next several years. So you had that. But I don't think anything quite approaches this, Matt. It's in the whatever, 38 years I've been on the network, this will be by 25th season in the play by play chair. This is the most excited, highly anticipated hike matchup, I think, that I've ever seen for a Texas season opener. And yes, some of it has to do with the new guy taking snaps under center.

There's a lot of attention and excitement around that. But I just think overall there's a great deal of anticipation based on what Sark has built over the last two years going 25 and 5 and back-to-back trips to the college football playoffs. So there's a lot of things built into the excitement of this upcoming season opener. And I apologize, Craig, for so much future Archmanning conversation. But the reality is the quarterback in college football is such a pivotal part of things. you know, he showed some great scrambling ability during the course of last year, the limited time that he plays. Forgetting about what Coach Sark wants, when Craig Ways calling the game,

how much do you anticipate him using his legs to get some first downs, get those extra yards? Oh, I think he'll do it depending on, you know, the type of protection he has. And also with the play calls that Sark has, because they plan to use his, what is it, coaches like to say, functional mobility. I think they planned to use his legs in ways that they could not do with Quinn Ewers. Quinn was a little more mobile that a lot of folks wanted to give him credit for. But Arch, I think, takes it to a different level. We saw that on that long touchdown run against UTSA.

We saw it on running around the corner against Texas A&M to score the touchdown. You know, he's a big guy and he's a fast guy. And I think they plan to use that part of him as one of the things in his toolkit, so to speak, to make him more effective on the field. Matthew Golden hurt my feelings when he left my school to go to yours. And obviously it was a big impactful part of last year's team. How's the receiving core overall? Yeah, what a great guy and an outstanding receiver as well.

And I hope it goes well for him in Green Bay. I do think that while he moves on to the NFL, they do have plenty of dangerous receivers. Ryan Wingo, I think, could wind up being the top receiving target. He's got great wheels and good hands and that escapability. You have that. DeAndre Moore is a veteran guy. I'll tell you another guy. Parker Livingstone is a guy who could surprise some folks.

He catches about everything thrown his way. And then from the tight end spot, even though they lost, you know, an outstanding tied in. They come back with another one in the Cal Transfer Jack injuries. So I think all of that makes them. if not every bit the equal receiving threats they had last year, darn close to it, I would imagine, going into the opener. Craig, will the portal be a huge part long term? And look, we're balancing NIL money with portal money, with the fact that it's the University of Texas and the great national brand that it has.

How much is this year's roster put together because of the portal? And do you anticipate and how does Sark feel about the next five years? Would he like to have, you know, look, you're going to have money, you're going to have an opportunity? for some kids that really do well with now the $20.5 million new adjustments and all that. Can you go back to not having to spend a lot of time grabbing kids from other schools, or do you think it's going to be a part of college football for the foreseeable future? Yeah, I think it's here to stay. Now, with regard to Texas, Matt, you know, SART likes to use it, I think more as a supplemental piece. And again,

picking up a guy like Jack Endry's to step in to the tight end spot, I think is important. But they're still going to cast their lot with a high school talent predominantly in the state of Texas. And as Sark likes to say, roster retention, being able to take care of those guys who are coming back through the expanded NIL universe as it is. So I think that it'll be a part of it. But you know what it reminds me of Matt? It reminds me of that. What was that famous quote from Ben Scully about use of statistics by broadcasters? They should be used like a lamp post, unlike a.

drunk. They should use the lamp post for illumination, not for support. And I think that in this case, you would be looking at Texas wanting to add a piece here, add a piece there, but not to make up the bulk of the roster, or even the most key spots in large number of the roster. It's to supplement, not necessarily to build a roster. Greg, way, voice in the Longhorns with us on our sister station, KVET in Austin. Of course, you'll have a game right here on 790, beginning at 10, clock. If I looked at the Ohio State practices in which you're not allowed to and very few people are, compared to the last time I took the field winning a national championship, how different are the Buckeyes from year to year? Well, there's some differences and there's a similarity in the

differences if that can be said between these two teams. And here's what I'm talking about. Texas, of course, is replacing as starters all of their offensive linemen except D.J. Campbell. but the guys who are going to be playing have a lot of experience. They were in the rotation. Trevor Goosby will start at left tackle. He had to start a couple of games, including the game, the SEC championship game, because of the ankle injury to Kelvin Banks. So he had to step in and do that.

So there's a lot of guys with skins on the wall who played quite a bit in the rotation, even if they weren't starters. That's on the Texas offensive front. The Ohio State defensive front is in a similar situation. Their four down linemen are all gone. But the guys who are stepping in the play are all veteran experienced guys who drew a lot of snaps. And I think, you know, with the larger power for programs, especially the ones near the top of their leagues like these two are, you're going to see that be the regular thing because the depth is built in and the depth is such that they can rotate a lot of guys in to keep. their starters fresh. And so by the time those guys who are rotating in become starters,

they've had enough experience where they can step in without it being too much of a learning curve. As a voice of the team, Craig, you get a chance to go to a few practices of the squad that you are covering. What was the one group, position group that perhaps surprised you? Not necessarily that it was poor going in, but man, exceeded what you saw when the limited time you were able to check out the team practice-wise. Well, I do think, like I said, I thought the offensive line performed well. I was also really curious to see, Matt, how the running backs would do because, remember, CJ Baxter had a really good freshman season and then had the knee injury in fall camp last year,

had to miss all the last year. But what happens is Trey Wisner rushes for over 1,000 yards. Well, to see how those two will work together in combination. And there will be times where they'll be on the field together even. I was very curious to see how that would take and how that would work. and it seemed to work out really, really well. So I was quite impressed with that. The way the secondary has become multifaceted,

where a guy like Jalen Gilbo, who has played the starback, that's the nickel position or safety, and he's set to be a starting corner. And all of these guys have cross-trained and a lot of those areas. Same thing with the linebackers. Anthony Hill has played in the middle. He's played on the edge, and he's a preseason All-American. So the cross-training of those guys, I think, is really, really important.

And that was one thing that was impressive in the play. Paul can't work out. Last question. Which moment will be hopefully not too big? And I'm meaning in terms of, look, your squad has played in national semifinal games and have been in the tournament and done all these types of things the last couple of years. But still going to the horseshoe is going to be big for some young men. So are there one or two guys that you're kind of curious about, whether they're transfers,

whether they're two freshmen that are getting rotation time in the depth chart, that you're kind of curious to see how they handle being in front of 105,000 people that are going to hate you? Yeah, I think there's always that curiosity. You know, the question has come up the last few years about, you know, how will a Texas defensive front perform? And that question comes up every single year because of the guys that moved on to the NFL. But the guys who are stepping in, I think, are ready for that challenge.

And then obviously everybody's going to be watching Arch to see how he is in the moment. But he's got a great calm demeanor about him. He's very laid back, but he's very much a competitor. and he's dialed into being prepared for this thing. So I'm looking forward to watching him like everybody else is. How many games have you done at Ohio Stadium? How many over your career? Uno. Just that one.

And it was pretty doggone memorable 20 years ago. I was going to say, man. How does this happen? How do these two, I mean, franchise-type schools only play each other once every 20 years? That's crazy. And when they played in 2005, it was the first time they'd ever met. Then, of course, they had the rematch here in 06. Ohio State won that one.

Then they played in the Fiesta Bowl in January of 2009. It was an incredible performance by Colt McCoy in that one. And then they didn't play again until the Cotton Bowl last year. And so they have this home and home. They'll play this year in Columbus and they'll play next year in Austin. In fact, Matt, the non-conference schedule for Texas, pretty impressive when you look at it coming because it's Ohio State will be, here next year. Then Michigan for the return game in Ann Arbor from last year, Michigan will be here in 2027. Then they have a home and home of Notre Dame in 2028 and 29. And then after that,

I think they've got a home and home with Arizona State. And of course, the SEC when they announced last week that they were going to a nine-game conference schedule, they wanted also to mandate that all of their schools play at least one power four opponent per season. Well, Texas already has that taken care of with their schedule through the end of the decade.