Astros Wake Up! Taking The First Game vs Orioles, MLB Realignment Talk, Eddie Nunez Joins The Show

Astros Wake Up! Taking The First Game vs Orioles, MLB Realignment Talk, Eddie Nunez Joins The Show

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross spot.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Ten oh one at h Town.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Good morning, and welcome to a Friday edition of the.

Speaker 4 (00:16):
Mount Thomas Show.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
And Ross there's his Sports Talk seven ninety.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
You cannot take that mistake. If you don't know who
Barry Sanders is, you don't get to host a show
on a SPN.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Can I get a HELLI?

Speaker 5 (00:37):
Yeah, hey, there you go, I gang, Good morning, ten
oh three on a partly Claudie party, rainy, partly sunny
day throughout southeast Texas.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
It is about Thomas showing Ross without Ross. Ross is
shooting barbecue videos of places he goes. You know what,
I don't even know what every meal you're having their
Ross Hew's going on. You folks do not need to
follow Instagram is an Instagram account. It's just plates at barbecue. Okay,
I know what brisket looks like now. I did it
the other day when we went to Ruth. But because

(01:13):
you guys think that I don't like brisket, which is
just not true. It's not my top shelf, top of
the list thing. But I figured, you know what would
enroll you put the food up. I don't want to
look at that. I don't need to look at his food.
I mean, baked beans look good, Colsa looks good. Sausage, brisket, onions, pickles, boom,
that's barbecue. If you really want to follow something interesting,

(01:38):
follow my Instagram account. That's sports MT. We're gonna have
a massive party at three thousand, massive, massive, massive party
at three thousand when I get to three thousand. So
there you have it. Hey, I hope you guys are
in a good mood. I would hope so, because your
beloved Astros now have a huge two game lead in
the America League West. Come on, now there you go.

(02:05):
Let me see a few of you smiling. You know what,
I notice a few of you bumping around town today,
fist pumping your buddies at the office. Those are you
that going to work on Fridday's Our sales staff is not.
But that's not here or there. Uh, come on, now,
you gotta be happy. You gotta be happy. The Astros
exploded for twelve hits and beat up on a picture

(02:26):
that you nearly got perfect hit by a week before
Brandon Young and that long.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Maine of his.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Astros got to him, and hey, Sue Sanchez, give me
the parallel on this that cat goes oh for twenty seven,
I mean oh for twenty seven, and then he goes
five for five last night, Jonathan. That's like me in

(02:56):
college at two hundred and fifty plus pounds, trying to
go get some loving and striking on every single time,
and then a supermodel wants to hook up with me
the next night.

Speaker 6 (03:08):
I man, I'd be the greatest analogy, but I was like,
I don't know where we're going with this.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yeah, there's nowhere to go with it. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I can live with that, you know me.

Speaker 6 (03:15):
They call me mister Analogy. Oh no, we're miss Texas
all I got no no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
I'm all the above. Okay, I am mister Texas and
mister Analogy. But yeah, it's fun. And Christian Walker gets
the two run home run early in the contest. Astros
are up seven to one after three. That will score
again after that bets on the here nor there, and
again the Astros with the win. The Mariners were off
last night, so that means it is a half game advantage.

(03:42):
Is Jason Alexander get you another win? Is Jason Alexander
low key are like Cy Young of the second half
of the Astros, I mean five and a third innings
yesterday giving up three earn runs, I should say two
earn runs and what three strikeouts give it? The one
home run? That cat's four and one. How many of

(04:07):
you on your Bingo card had Jason Alexander at four
and one as the Houston Astro. How many of you
on the Bingo card had Jason Alexander on her Bingo card.
It is going to be a fight to the finish gang,
and it's gonna be a lot rougher than I thought

(04:29):
it would be. I thought, I think I told you
all about a month to two months ago out of
the Astros were gonna win the American League West by
five games. That ain't happening, I don't think. Unless the
Astros go on some sort of halatious run ally Milwaukee
or the Mariners continue to lose, and by the way,
they Sullivant once and CJ put the cap on. Now,
that might change because they have the A's in town
this weekend, but one can hope. All right, So that's

(04:54):
topic A on the radio program today. We want you
to be involved in this radio show all the way
two o'clock again, Ross is off today, So when in doubt,
let's make fun of his Instagram account. Let's get him,
Let's get some followers dropped off of that, because again,
do you want to look at how many pictures of
brisket do you want to look at? Follow me on
Instagram at sports MT and I will we'll have a

(05:15):
big party at three thousand and what we're gonna do
or we're gonna do it, but we'll have a party
today on the show. Gordie will stop by for his
ten fifty stop by and we will discuss with him
the SEC's decision to go to nine conference games starting
next year. I like it. I mean, I have a
dog in the fight because my schools not in the SEC.

(05:36):
But I think playing in your own conference, especially when
your conference is a powerful conference, makes a lot of sense.
And oh, by the way, you still have to play
a power for so that means ten of the twelve
games that SEC teams will be playing will be against
like competition. Now, granty, you can also go get a
Power four school that's not good and particularly I mean
maybe if you're LSU, you're running to go play Wake

(05:57):
Forest as soon as possible. But you get my drift
on this. At least you're playing Power four, so we'll
get to that. Eleven thirty will say our sorries for
the week. I'm gonna have to apologize to a group
of hard working people, Jonathan, that you're gonna be a
little dismayed at. It's gonna be those hardworking people that
run spam phone numbers you're going to apologize to this past.

(06:19):
I'm going to apol apologize to them, no way, because
my material this week has been so good. I drove
yesterday to the Woodlands to see my daughter play volleyball,
so I had about a forty five minute drive, and
I'm like, I'm gonna have some fun with this. I'm
gonna turn my non silence off and any spam call
that comes in, I'm gonna mess with their lives. And
I did. And I think I think they've caught on

(06:40):
because now when they ask me how I'm doing, I
say I'm doing fine, and they hang up on me
right away. Actually I think so, So I think I've
got to owe them an apology for being rude to
them and saying crass things to them so they can
call you back. Okay, I don't know, because I kind
of missed them like they asked me the name of
the insurance company I'm with, and I would give them
some vulgar phrase. Some go excuse some say excuse me, sir,

(07:05):
and I'm like no, and then I say it again
and then I started better laughing, and than they hang
up at me. So I'll be saying some of sorryes.
So the spam callers out there, all right, we have
the news at noon today and at one o'clock. Very
excited about this. Eddie Nuniez, who's the athletic director at
the University Houston's going to be in studio with this
hang out for an hour to talk to some University
Houston athletics and talk about the big picture of what's

(07:28):
going to happen with college athletics over maybe the next
five to ten years, especially when it relates to University Houston,
the Big twelve and all of college athletics. And we'll
hopefully get a dummy's guide to nil and transfer, portal
and paying athletes. So Eddie Nuniez, athotic director at the
University Houston, will stop by in studio between one o'clock
until two now, as the case every Friday in this

(07:49):
radio programming isn't anything goes Friday, and that means you
get a longer leash on this show than you normally would.
We get the longest leation in to business Monday through
Thursday as it is, but the leash is even extended
on Friday's even more so. If you want to get
into anything, whether it be your astros, whether it be
showers and thunderstorms all throughout Southeast Texas not hitting your area.

(08:11):
We haven't got a drop in ring in Kingwood yet.
All we do is our grass is all brown. I
mean I've been watering if but still that's that's big money.
And keep seeing this thread of rain every day. We
hadn't gotten jack squats in so far, so if you
want to get into that, If you want to get
into a little preview of Iowa State Kansas State, the
big college football game of the weekend, I use big
as a relative term. If you want to do a

(08:31):
deep dive into Texans Lions preseason game, remember if it's sports,
if it's not sports, it doesn't really matter. It isn't
anything goes Friday, especially with Ross not being here. I'm
gonna give you probably the longest leash out there seven
to one three two one two five seven nine zero
seven one three two one two five seven Honey. Also

(08:54):
one of our great uh listeners and Twitter folks at
King Tarot thirty four created and this is the second
time it's ever happened in the history of this show.
This show has been on for fifteen years, about to
hit sixteen in January. Jonathan, I don't know if you
saw my Twitter count earlier today, but uh, there is
a Matt Thomas Show with ross Bingo card that was

(09:16):
put out there. Actually it actually was, and I'm going
to those of you that don't have Twitter, I will
read to you what's on the Matt Thomas Show a
Bingo card, and of course you can play along. But
it's a second ever Bengo card made for this radio show,
which means we've got great listeners and for that we
certainly appreciate it. Remember it isn't anything goes Friday on
the show. So if you want to get into the
Tour Championship, if you want to get into baseball, you

(09:37):
want to get into Texans, you want to talk about
your beloved Texas Longhorns or your Houston Cougar's. You want
to get into Micah Parsons controversy still going on in
Dallas as we speak. It isn't anything goes Friday. It's
seven one three two one two five seven ninety seven
one three two one two five seven ninety Nothing can
stop me.

Speaker 6 (09:54):
I'm all away, up, away, all away.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Carlos Korea two for five, couple of rivies. Christian Walker
with a home run his two RB, Eyes, Hey Sue
Sanchez five for five. It's kind of crazy, isn't it, folks,
that you're middle line up. That's four five six Walker, Sanchez,
Diez Combine for eight hits, five RBIs kind of crazy

(10:27):
how things work out in Major League baseball? Is it not? Today?
Eighteen Sports Talk seven ninety is a Mott Thomas show
without Ross today and we are looking forward to hanging
out with you at seven one three two one two
five seven ninety seven to one three two one two
five seven nine zero. All right, So the Astros made
a movie yesterday, signing Craig Kimberl to a deal. And

(10:50):
not only is it a deal, but it's a major
league deal. After he only pitched one time for the
Atlanta Braves this year, then he got released. I guess
the I don't need you or we don't need you
was in play. He then gets signed by the Texas
Rangers and spent two months in ron Rock, where he

(11:12):
had twenty eight strikeouts over twenty one innings with an
e area three point eight six. I mean, I'm not
holding any sort of celebration. I'm not necessarily going, man,
this is the missing piece of the puzzle. This is

(11:34):
a flyer, this is a does lightning strike twice. This
is a let's take a chance, and if it doesn't
work out, he'll be gone, like Hectrnaris. I mean to
be brutally honest with you, this bullpen has been used
a lot. It's going to be used a lot more,

(11:55):
especially if the starters don't go deep in games. And
as great as Jason Alexander has been, you know, I
think he's got a couple of six inding appearances under
his credit, five and a third yesterday. So you're gonna
be asking a bullpen that has been used a lot
to be used a lot more of the next month
and change. Realistically, there's only two guys in the current

(12:17):
rotation that you'd consider guys that we could give you
at least six on a regular and I'm yeah, I'm
including Frobber, but boy, he has looked very sketchy of
the last month or so. So put it this way,
when I saw the announcement yesterday, I didn't go, oh,
what are you guys doing. I was like, all right, Dana,

(12:39):
scrap heap time, and that's what you have to do,
hoping that something you bring in on a veteran minimum
gives you some sort of help. Now, back in the day,
when Kimber was closing games for variety of teams, he's
one of the best, and now the Astro's got to him.
But hell, the Astro's got to all the great relievers

(12:59):
back in the day. So my expectations, honestly are minimal,
as should yours. But we see this all the time
in sports, whether it's an additional linebacker or an additional
wide receiver where they our team grabs a running back,
or a NBA team grabs a guard and signs up

(13:19):
to a ten day contract or something. I mean, you
do this because you're trying to find some combination. You've
got guys okert ort King. Those are three guys that
were used yesterday that are being put into situations where
they probably haven't been overly familiar with. They're probably pitching
more than they ever had before in their professional careers
for the most part. And you can't use Brian or

(13:40):
Burrow every single day. And you know, is Bennett SUSA
the next best closer in terms of getting get leverage
guys out in games if if for some reason Brian
Bray You is unavailable, you know, I don't know. That's
the problem when you lost Josh Hater is that your bullpen,

(14:01):
which was good, was also slotted properly in terms of
who could do what. Now you move everybody down a spot,
and then that sixth inning guy becomes the seventh inning,
higher leverage guy. That seventh inning guy, who is a
bridge guy to your two big guys, becomes a guy
that now needed to get crucial outs in the eighth
inning of games. That's where it hurts. You weren't worried

(14:23):
about whether or not, at least as I see things,
You're not worried about whether or not Brian and bray
You can do the job. You're just perhaps more concerned
about the guys behind him and whether they can do
the job in probably more crucial situations that had been
put in in previous appearances over the course of the year.
So Kimberoll signs it'd be nice because here's the thing.

(14:45):
You want leverage guys, and you also need guys that
their arms aren't worn out because this starting rotation just
hasn't given you enough. And even if the astro starters
gave you seven innings every single time out, you'd still
be asked to figure out if you can get an
extra arm in that bullpen that's not worn out, that's
got some freshness to it as compared to guys that

(15:07):
are gonna be pitching as much as they have over
the last couple of months. But Alexander doesn't go overly
deep Hunter does fromber when he's on, he's good, he
can get you deep into games. But that wasn't the
case couple of days back. Mcculors hasn't done that, and
you're just trying to figure out that, you know what
Christian Javier bring us to the table, especially after he was

(15:29):
short in his last appearance. So not a conversation point,
not a give me your predictions on what Kraig Kimberle's
gonna do. I would just say give him the opportunity
because I think we know what Hector Narris did and
that didn't work out, and we know that Taylor Scott

(15:51):
did and did not do and now he's gone. You
gotta find something. You gotta keep as many fresh arms
in that bullpen as possible, and hopefully Kimberle can bring
is something over the next handful of weeks seven one three, two,
one two five seven ninety seven one three two one
two five seven ninety Isn't it crazy? Though? And I
saw this on the social streets last night. I mean,

(16:16):
I like to win, obviously, and it was fun seeing
hey Su Sanchez break that over for twenty seven with
a five for five day, and it was obviously a
good scene. Christian Walker hit the home run, and the
Astros score more runs in that first game against Baltimore
and they scored in the previous three against Detroit combined.
And I don't know if it's because my glasses half

(16:36):
full on this and maybe I'm just a nut, but
I was artificially beating my chest because the Astros leads
now two games. You know, the big picture there in
the Hillo Beans, that's nothing that could be erased in
a matter of days. But hell, we were saying that
the last week or so when the Mariners were hard
charging against the Astros, well, the Astros better get on

(16:58):
this road trip. They better win some games, go win
a couple in Detroit. They better not lose a series
of Baltimore at home because Seattle's so hot. Gang, they've
been sitting on this minimal size lead for like two
weeks now, and it certainly isn't because they played well.
It's because the Mariners have been equally horrific. That's why

(17:22):
to me, this next stretch, and look, every stretch is
important the rest of the way. I'm not gonna hide
on that. You guys know the exact same thing. But
you got three more with Baltimore, you got three with Colorado,
and you've got three with the Angels. If it was
meant to be, you're gonna have to go seven and

(17:44):
two against that right now. You can go five and
four and still maintain your lead at the oriole if
the Mariners don't do their job. I understand that, but
just think, wow, how good will be feeling around these
parts that the Astros can win seven to nine, especially
against three teams that will not be sniffing anything close
to a playoff spot, and in Colorado's case, one of

(18:06):
the worst teams in baseball. I mean, last night was
not like, ooh, what a wonderful surprise. It was where
the hell have you been? That's exactly what it was
for me. You're supposed to beat up on the Oriels
like this. You're supposed to beat up on that young
pitcher who's got an ernie of six, who has one

(18:28):
major League win to his credit, or at least this season.
With the Astros, You're supposed to do. That's what you're
You're the freaking Astros. You do have Christian Walker, you
do have Yan Airdas, you have Carlos Kurr, you got
Hosey al Tuova. That's supposed to be, you know, being
no hitting perfect game for seven innings against that JABBRONI
no chance. So I wasn't pleasantly surprised. I was like,

(18:50):
my damn time. And that's why this next stretch of
games is about, you know, let's go. You had your
little phase of ink and assistancies and quiet bats and
self recognition and conversations and whatnot and stay in the
course and trying to stay cool. How about the Astros

(19:10):
be who the Astros are, especially if Jordan Alvarez is
available to this team either late in this Baltimore series
or perhaps as early as next to or as late
as next Tuesday when they take on the Colorado Rockies.
He did have a couple of hits again yesterday. The
slug is there with Alvarez. No, granted's double a pitching,

(19:33):
but at least I didn't hear him waking up this
morning with sore hands. Because that's what I feel like
every time I have seen he highlights of Jordan Alvarez
playing for Corpus Christie's only been two games, the first
thing I think of is how you feeling that a
big fellow have those hands? Can you get a hand massage?

(19:53):
I mean I'm not asking for you know what I mean? No, No,
you know what I mean. If you could get a
foot massage, so you get a hand on me? Does
anybody this is this feels like a loaded question. Yeah,
I had to back off a little bit. I mean,
is there a hand ma seuse out there? I mean,
there's a special that takes care of your arms, your shoulders,

(20:15):
your knees. If you got a sore neck or a
sore back, remembe you want your legs. I mean, you
gotta be something for somebody, right.

Speaker 7 (20:24):
Right.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
Let me tell you when I go get a deep
tissue massage, when I go to my therapist, which is
not very often. Don't you, Jonathan, don't you ever have
your hands massage? It feels good, he put, They pull
your fingers and they rub the midt the palm area.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
I have.

Speaker 6 (20:41):
Actually i've been a chiropractive. But that's a close thing.
That's not the close. That's not close at all. I
don't account that I would like a hand massage right now.
They have, they have businesses for hamousage. That's crazy.

Speaker 4 (20:55):
I'm a Google handsige thing. That's a real thing. But
they put some lotion on there for I'm ignorant right now. No,
it's fine, it's fine. We're all ignorant on the show.
I'm gonna cut these hands. These hands have been through
a lot. I've been writing a lot of stuff in
my life. I haven't been worker hands. I don't have
a worker hands. My hands are actually pretty good. If
if I said I had worker hands, June, that I'd
be lying to you. These hands have been these hands

(21:18):
have been on my head along my life, going what
the hell am I doing. I've been doing a lot
of that, all right, Ted twenty nine, everybody had a
man you know, don't add don't answer that question. I
was gonna say, they've ever had a hand to side.
No no, no, no, no, no no, And don't damn
what you call it. I know what you're gonna say.
Don't do it. We're a pg's radio radio show here

(21:38):
Gang seven one three two one two five seven nut
of you?

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (21:42):
Anything goes Friday? Seven one three two one two five
seven nine zero. I'm sorry, as we're looking for you
to come in and apologize. At eleven thirty today we
have the news at noon and any noon yas I thought,
I correct at the University of Houston will join us today
in studio one o'clock until two right here on these
airwaves that we call Sports Talk seven NT. It is

(22:03):
and anything goes Friday here on a Sports Talk seven unty,
I'm sorry is at eleven thirty one. Strippers up at noon.
Astros with a very impressive win yesterday, humming the nerves
of some Astro fans. You calm down, it's got a
long way to go here. Gang leads only two games.
My philosophy was they played like they needed to play like.

(22:25):
Is there the better team of the Oriols and the
Astros or a team that should be acting like a
first place team? All right? Seven one seven? I mentioned
this a minute ago, King Taro thirty four on Twitter.
Friend of the show put together at Matt Thomas show
with Ross Bingo card, and for those of you that
don't have it yet, you can always get it off
of my Twitter account at sports mteen. If you want

(22:45):
to play the show ever, you're more than welcome to uh.
I'll go quickly through the list of what is on
the bingo card upper left hand corner, going left to right,
b I N G O. Matt references a game show,
okay whatever. Ross says, very busy, that's every damn day.

(23:06):
I say it's fine, that's every day. Listener with an
awful take calls in. Ross uses old timey news at
noon voice. You better'n to hit to ding on the
next one. Bad empty food take. Okay, see where you're going?

(23:33):
Shot taking Adam Clinton's work schedule, that's easy. Ross makes
fun of Matt Matta. Ross makes a movie reference. Yeah
I do Old West bit with names. Yeah we do
that this guy king Tara, we love you. Can you
know this show? Hey listener? Every day? All right? Ross

(23:55):
plugs his Instagram again. Cool, look at brisket. That sounds
very exciting. Fancy Matt moment. I mean it's a lifestyle
I live. I can't control my lifestyle. Believe it. Free space.
Matt has producer play old music. Yeah, but I'm trying
to get you involved in the music of yesteryear to appreciate.

(24:18):
And you usually like the stuff that I tell you
to play.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
No, I've been liking it recently, though You've been missing
a bit. All Right, Well, I promise I'll get you back.
Producer brings show to a halt. Hosts make fun of
cajun An accent. That's true. Brad calls in, well, this
is this show. Seriously, I got a few more here.

(24:44):
Matt and Ross make a bet, no question about that.
Either host uses the Michael Barry voice. He do you
ever play the you ever listened to Matt Thomas show
with Ross bingo game. Ross says that's a shame, it's true.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Believe it.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Matt gets distracted by Lauren she Hotty accurate Gordy drop
us by the show he'll be drunning us in fifteen minutes.
That's an automatic. Here's one for you, Jonathan phone line
technical difficulties. Two more. Hey, yea yay sounder from ice Cube? Yes,

(25:22):
of course. Hey, and Matt rants about the fake media.
That's all I'll say. Act here, I really did list
this well. Isn't that a good list? There's probably fifteen
or twenty more we can get to, but I just
feel for the sake of the show, it's that's pretty
much spot on. So shout out to you, Samuel for
that outstanding Matt Thomas show at Bingo. Card and play

(25:46):
with your friends. Have a couple of pops you can date, drink.
I guess it's Friday. What are you gonna do? All right?
Seven one three two one two five seven nine Zero
is the way you can reach the program again if
you want to join us. Seven to one three two
one two five seven nine. This college football weekend they
call it Week zero. Look. I love sitting back and

(26:10):
enjoying a Saturday college football just like anybody. But here
are the Week zero games. There are a total of three. No,
there's only let me see here, I'm gona look at all.
There's only one top twenty five matchup. But here are
the Week zero games. You got Iowa State playing Kansas State.

(26:32):
That could be for Big twelve bragging rights. That's in
week number one. I bet that's in what that's in Ireland.
I believe other games in the Week zero card Iowa State, Oh,
excuse me, Idaho State at UNOV, Fresno State at Kansas,

(26:52):
Sam Houston at Western Kentucky, Stanford at Hawaii.

Speaker 6 (27:01):
I mean, if it's on right, yeah, I mean, you know,
if the good games close and score is close, you
to tune in.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
There's a better chance of me catching I always take
Kansastity because it's eleven o'clock. It kind of gets you
in the mood for the college football season coming up.
I don't know if I'm in front of a television
for Fresno State, Kansas in, sam Houston at Western Kentucky. Now,
the Stanford Hawaii game could be curious because that's a
six thirty start time. I mean, you're sitting now. You
get the Astros plan on Saturday two, which I'll be

(27:29):
doing the on Deck and tenth Inning show so far,
but I don't know if you're really gonna build this up.
I guess do you do you? I mean, is Ioways State,
Kansastate move the needle. I mean this is two top
twenty five teams. And then after that the next college
football game Thursday, August twenty eight, jam packed TDUCU Stadium,

(27:56):
the Lumberjacks and the Houston Cougars in the what would
you call it the Highway fifty nine rivalry. Yeah, this
kind has a nice nto. It Cougar's twenty two and
a half point favorites. If you want to predict this
is this is Vegas.

Speaker 5 (28:15):
Now.

Speaker 4 (28:15):
It doesn't mean it means everything. But if you wanted
to make a bet Jonathan on your beloved Lumberjacks to
beat the Cougars Europe, if you just said, flat out,
I'm going to go to a betting window and I'm
gonna say SFA is beating Houston. I don't need points,
I don't need any sort of advantage. I just want

(28:36):
to say, straight up, when the game is done, SFA
beats Houston. The Vegas folks would give you plus twelve hundred,
meaning you spent one hundred dollars on the game. They
would hand you back thirteen hundred dollars all in well, okay,
all in, I don't know what your financial situation is.

(28:57):
I mean, I know what you make here, so you
all end of like fifteen bucks there go. Oh you're
gonna bet fifteen Now, that's still a pretty good payoff.
That's not a terrible payoff, you know what I'm saying.
So if anybody would like to help Jonathan win plus
twelve hundred on his bet, loan the boy some money.

Speaker 6 (29:15):
You need to take the law ball here. I know
we're gonna go for it. And imagine coming back to
the studio. I just got I just got paid. Let
me take something four paid.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
Now, if the Lumberjacks, somehow, some way win, I will
not be on the air Friday. I will. I mean,
I'm not gonna take a vacation. I'm just gonna call
because I don't want burn a vacation. I'm just gonna
call him sick because if you aren't gonna annihilate me enough,
the person to my left will be doing it as well.
All right, So we said that if you wanted to

(29:47):
bet SFA to win the game, straight up, you'd win
plus twelve hundred. Let's say that you wanted to bet
the Houston Cougars on them what they call the money line,
that is just with no point spread, right, the Cougars
are a minor US three thousand to win the game. Oh,
it is the line. Yeah, So for those who don't know,

(30:07):
if you bet the Cougars on the money line, you'd
have to bet three thousand dollars to win one.

Speaker 5 (30:16):
Hundred three thousand.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Listen to Vegas, Jonathan. They're not lying to you. They
don't know, know, they don't know.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
They do be wrong, like Vegas is very rarely wrong,
rarely rarely.

Speaker 4 (30:37):
Minus three thousand. That's insane. So how many people do
you know? Anybody's can from your sfanation coming to the game. Yeah,
will be with thousands of mean think about Lumberjacks are
there's a lot of alums here in Houston, right, you
would think of any alum that would give two craps
about their athletic program would be at the game. I
see a lot of like flyers, people going and everything.

(30:59):
So let's so let's put in perspective here. Will there
be five or six thousand SFA fans the game on
Saturday Thursday night? I was six thousand.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Nope?

Speaker 4 (31:08):
Will it be four thousand nope, three thousand, nope, two thousand, no,
no no, that'd be like five hundred and twenty five. Yeah, no, no,
I'll give you seven fifty seven and fifty jacks. All
the jacks in those seven sections. Come on now represent SFA.
Let's go all right, the SEC is going to nine

(31:31):
conference games. Do we read any more into the fact
that they're gonna play each other and give themselves a
better chance to play in the college football Football playoff.
We'll discuss that next ten to forty four Sports Talk
seven eighty, ten to fifty. This is Gordy's time. I
can't believe he's late already. That's fine, can't wait for

(31:54):
to come in and brag about the SEC and all
the nine game alignment and how you're gonna have regional
rivalries and guaranteed games. We'll see what kind of his
initial take on that is. With that a minute seven
one three two one two five seven ninety seven to
one three two one two five seven ninety, we're looking
for you to apologize. Coming up in forty minutes here

(32:15):
on the radio program seven one three two one two
five seven ninety let's talk to James with us on
the Matt Thomas Show with Ross James. Good morning.

Speaker 8 (32:25):
Yeah about the uf H game and the against the Lumberjacks.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
Yes, you know this isn't this.

Speaker 6 (32:31):
Isn't Cougar High.

Speaker 8 (32:32):
We're the the University of Houston. Yeah, we're not going
to lose to a team from the what are they
the Staffland Conference. I'm not sure a conferencer in anymore,
But we're not gonna lose to a team like them.
I know that we lots of Texas State, but this
is the University of Houston. It's going to be thirty
one to seven, it's my prediction.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Thirty one to seven feels about right. By the way,
they're in the Southland Conference. They're in FCS school.

Speaker 8 (32:56):
Okay, Well, and I guess it changed.

Speaker 4 (32:59):
Okay, No, I've been there for a while.

Speaker 6 (33:02):
Okay, I think damn changed to the Whack and then
came back to Yeah, but there's no such thing as
a whack, right, just using it? Oh please, thanks James. Yeah,
y'all wanted the Whack and then you came back I
think for basketball and football reasons. Yeah, they won the
Whack like half conference for football, but every other sport

(33:22):
was flying good.

Speaker 4 (33:23):
That's great. Yeah, you can still considered FCS with the
juggernauts of East Texas, A and M basically Texan and Commerce.
I've already gone through this McNee Nichols, Northwestern State U
t r U, t R GV. I didn't even had
a new had a football team. This is I think

(33:44):
this is their first year. Ain't c U that's formerly
hb U Southeast Louisiana U I W and Lamar All right,
well you don't want I'm gonna do it once around
through a TDCU stadium moment and check out your lums,
just to make sure what you want. You want chuck
out over there.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
Now, a very good friend of mine, she lives in California,
is a big SFA grad. It's a great school for
teachers and education. It's got a lot of a lot
of our teachers have come from s F A. I
don't know what else. Y'all have. Big nursing program, is
that right? Yeah, very big from nursing program.

Speaker 6 (34:15):
And you already know the music program is big, no
question about that.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
Big fine arts over there. You wouldn't expect that. Yeah
you got you got, you got way more celebrities on
I thought y'all would have. I mean, hey, you know
when we looked it up.

Speaker 6 (34:27):
That was my first time looking it up too, and
I was I was surprised myself. You see him on
the wall when you go in the buildings, but you
don't you don't know what they do.

Speaker 4 (34:33):
Are you trying to get him and chairing to get
our guy booked on the show? I'm I'm gonna try.

Speaker 6 (34:36):
I'm gonna try to see because he's a like, he's
kind of cranky sometimes, so we gonna see again.

Speaker 4 (34:40):
What do you mean? So the guy used to be
in for those one of his professors used to be
on Three's company. He worked at the Regal Bigle for
a while. Yeah, and he was also a Tony Allen
on General Hospital. That's a long time deal for him. Yeah,
that was like he was that whole care Now, how
would he feel if he's listening to the show right
now and you just went on major market radio and
said the guy's cranky?

Speaker 6 (34:59):
No, I say, I say, he's a really cool professor,
but he's more those like old guy. When he's not
doing work, he's going to be in his house like
you know, like mine, in his business. He won't responds
to your email until it's his like workout type of thing.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
Oh is that right?

Speaker 6 (35:14):
So yeah, when he turns a computer off, it's off.
You can't reach out the type of.

Speaker 4 (35:18):
Thing you know what that does. By I'm glad you
brought that up. We are in twenty twenty five, right, Ross,
you and Ross seeing him? Right, Jonathan, Right, And I'm
going to assume that everybody has their emails attached to
their phone. Yeah, but I will as what's what's a

(35:38):
good percentage? You think seventy five percent of Americans have
their emails attached to their phone?

Speaker 6 (35:44):
Maybe I want to say eighty five percent, maybe a
lot because it doesn't Gmail already an outload, the mail
app on the iPhone already comes in. I know for
Android it does the same team, same things, just put
your mail in.

Speaker 4 (35:54):
So I don't know, but even if it's not a
company email, you've got some sort of email. I'm gonna
look this up. You talk ver Sue, what percentage of
people to have email on their phone? I do demographic?

Speaker 6 (36:06):
Maybe older people have it on email, or like younger
people because they already know they need, you know, for
like like high school and everything. But or they think
about the people that work in office, like corporate America,
you got, They're gonna have to.

Speaker 4 (36:17):
Have AMI on their phone. That's my point is that
if you work at any sort of corporate world, well
here it is. It is what AI says. Now, you
can't always believe what I am. Approximately eighty one to ninety
one percent of email users access their accounts via their smartphone. Yeah,
I say, I knew it was higher because I was like,

(36:37):
even college you have. That's my point. If I send
you an email at seven forty five at night, do
I have to put on there at the top of
the page urgent important? No, because it should be the
first thing that pops that when you use That's right.
I feel like the percentages of people that I don't
need along, like, hey tomorrow at nine thirty, can we

(37:00):
do this? That can be you can respond to that
at seven forty five at night. I know that most
people that are within our audience are eight to five
workers or nine to six or whatever the case may be. Right,
A lot of truck drivers to you, But truck drivers
don't run the same schedule. But I think if if
you send me a Jonathan, if you send me an
email tonight at six forty five, what are the chances

(37:21):
of me responding to it about one hundred percent. Right, yeah, what,
I neglect that email until Monday morning when I wake
up to come to do the show with you.

Speaker 6 (37:29):
No, but some people do have that mentality, is like,
if it's not where, if I'm clocked out, I'm clocked out.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
They don't want anything. You know what, I'm gonna give
you something for you youngins out there, and it's including you, Jonathan.
You're never clocked out. Now you can be away. You
cannot intimately be thinking about your office and the next
sales call or the next appointment or the next project.
But if it's an email, take five seconds.

Speaker 6 (37:55):
That's a hot take. I don't know it is hot.
I'm gonna tell you that right now. And if I'm wrong,
I'm wrong, you can call me out on it. We
imagine all imagine you're just in bed, or maybe you're
got a movie theater. No no, no, no, forget the
movie theater. The bed's a great example of that. Go
to bed, laying in the bed. You look at your
Facebook reels.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
You're looking at those kids with the AI audio that
are put in there that are really funny that I
know that only does look at now shut up Ross,
you watched it too. I was right. If you coulda like.
I email Gordy sometimes after five o'clock. Gordy works all
the time. He responds, God love him. I respond to

(38:34):
people like our sales manager, Boat Brown. After five o'clock.
I can't get a hold of him. He's off five
o'clock hisself.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Don't talk to me.

Speaker 4 (38:40):
But I can't forget to respond to eleven thirty in
the morning. That's a different. That's a different or So
I'm just gonna say some little Maddy advice to y'all.
As long as it's not in the middle of the night,
and it's not long as you're not at a show
or a concert, if you're just in the bed watching TV,
catch up on your Netflix, look at your Facebook. Real

(39:01):
somebody said an email, Just be courteous and send an
email back. It'll be an hour long. Just acceptance. Oh
got this talk to you about this Monday morning. That's
my little personal key to success is that the less
you spend time working on a clock and the more
you think about your entire career, the better off you're
going to be. And if your boss or coworker sends

(39:23):
an email take the time to respond back, like I'll
be at the volleyball match tonight. My beloved Kingwood Mustangs
are taken on Lake Creek. Y'all send me an email
tonight at six fifteen. Chance, I gotta you'll get some
sort of response back. You've got to respond. Not a guarantee,
but a good chance.

Speaker 6 (39:40):
Is it Is that because you're gonna be boy watching
the game, or is it because that.

Speaker 4 (39:43):
Could be true less, like as we could be down
a couple of points, I could be checking my emails
during timeouts. Ten fifty seven Gordy has made his way in.
He was late for his ten to fifty segment, which
means he'll be joining us. I think at the top
of the hour here on Sports Talk seven.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Is the Matt Thomas Show with Ross all Right.

Speaker 4 (40:09):
I got a little pushback already, and that's fair pushback.
Is Akida life in sports into life by my email take?
Aaron on Twitter says, I disagree. I work as a
caseworker for CPS. If I answered my text and emails
from parents, I'd never have any time off work. Life
balance matters for that job. You know. My response was

(40:30):
sorry for that. It feels like your emails are a
lot deeper than mine, and that's fair. I wasn't trying
to talk about every single thing, but Aaron, you got
a point. I get it. Ryan Fordson says Sports EMT
has insane email policy, Lol, just text or call. Responding
to emails outside of work hours are crazy.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (40:50):
Again, it depends on what your job is. So I
wasn't trying to paint with a broad brush, but there's
just I think there's too How do I delicately put
this to my man, Aaron? I get you. Some of
the others I don't get. Gordia responds his emails for

(41:12):
the most part, unless you're at some Broadway musical. Uh yeah,
did you go to the show last night? What'd you
go see?

Speaker 9 (41:18):
We so we moved our tickets were supposed to go
last night. We moved them to tonight. We're going to
Life of Pie.

Speaker 4 (41:24):
Excuse me, it's a musical. See you guys at Hobby
Center if everybody's going so, Gordy and his lovely wife
Lauren go to more theatrical things musicals shows that I
know anybody else.

Speaker 9 (41:38):
Daryl Morey and I are the only two people who
share an equal love for sports in the theater world.

Speaker 4 (41:43):
No, wait a minute, I knew you before you got married.
Did you love the theater world before you got married. Yeah,
I was a theater minor and much you're an actor.

Speaker 9 (41:51):
I was a stand up comic an actor at fifteen,
sixteen seventeen. That's what I wanted to go do. I
want SNL was the dream. And then when I got
to school did brought ternalism. That shifted over. But it
worked because I was comfortable in front of a TV,
in front of a camera, and comfortable front of a microphone.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
I think that helps. You could be character in SNL.
I could have done something you could have done. I mean,
you go up there and do your shaggy impersonation. That
would have crushed I did see last weekend we saw
James Austin Johnson was in town. Very funny, great Trump he.

Speaker 9 (42:23):
And he hates doing it, but he's so good at it.
And he and he's he's pretty hardcore, like he's not
a fan of Trump, but it's so good.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
Is anybody ANSL a fan of Trump's at all?

Speaker 9 (42:35):
But he's so good at it, And it's like and
I mean like we were falling out of the chairt
laughing at how I mean he's got him pegged.

Speaker 4 (42:41):
Okay, so I want you to give me this evaluation.
When what's the name James What James Austin Johnson. He's
one of the middle name guys. Okay, when he's not
doing his Trump stuff. Were you laughing in his other materials?
Some but it wasn't as good as you thought?

Speaker 9 (42:57):
Yeah, I mean, well he at the end he did
all right, I'm to do some other impressions they won't
let me do on SNL or have auditioned or tried
to get on, but haven't gotten him on yet. He
does a really good Billy Bob Thornton. Really, it's really
good yet.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
Okay.

Speaker 9 (43:10):
So I think Saraday night, we're going to see Marcelo
from SNL. He made famous the Domingo sketch. Did you
see that one? No, I'll send you the lake No, No, okay,
I just yeah, you are.

Speaker 4 (43:25):
If there's anything the fine arts of the world, you
are you handle it here on Sports Talk Simony that
an LSU and SEC conversation. Yes, all right, well it's
a big news yesterday. So again, maybe I'm mis reading this,
but I think nine games is a good thing for
the SEC.

Speaker 9 (43:41):
Yes, this is all like understand the two motivations behind this.
One is money because ESPN already ponied up the cash
and said we will pay you for an extra week
of games. That was the big thing, and a lot
of the coaches are pushing for it because revenue share
being a thing. What was that lights Every SEC school
got about twenty million dollars in revenue share to spend. Well,
you go from eight to nine conference games. Guess what

(44:02):
next year is gonna be twenty two to twenty three
million to year. So that's the first part of it.
But two, there's all these questions about the future of
the college football Playoff. Are we gonna expand I think
most people want to go to sixteen? A lot of
the conferences of schools, Well, basically the College FOOTBA Playoff
Committee said, we can't agree on what we're gonna do
with the future unless we have uniformity. But amongst our

(44:23):
power four conferences, like, if y'all all get on the
same page to say y'all all playing nine conference games,
it's this, it's that, then we can agree to move forward.
What the model is gonna be for who makes the
playoff the expanded playoff and all that. So that was
the other dominant of fall. So the SEC said, okay,
we'll fall in line with the Big Ten. We'll go
to nine conference games. And now the next step is
apparently the ACC said they're gonna agree again. I haven't

(44:46):
done it yet, but the next dominoes, ACC will agree
to go to nine, and so the Power four will
all play nine and we have a little bit of
an equal playing field. Now here's the only problem I
don't line. Since Greg Sankee took over, he requires all
SEC teams to play one tough power for non conference game.

Speaker 4 (45:02):
It's requirement. Tough is a relative term.

Speaker 9 (45:04):
Well, but a power four team right right, majority of
them are scheduling tough ones. Ole miss was the only
one who was like, oh, we'll go play wake Forest.
But like LSU's playing Clemson, Texas is playing Ohio State,
Oklahoma's playing Michigan.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
Like they all went out and scheduled.

Speaker 9 (45:18):
And so the SEC has had these big marquee games
in Week one and all this all the Big ten,
the last two national champs, Michigan two years ago played
Bowling Green ECU and like Western Michigan last year, Ohio
State they are three non conference games were I think
Marshall Eastern it was like three slappies. So my problem
is the SEC should not do those anymore. Get rid

(45:41):
of If we're gonna go from eight to nine conference games,
go schedule three slappies as your non conference like these
other like all the big ten schools are doing Indiana.
If you see some of their future conference non conference games,
it's a joke.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
So but you're getting all upset about the difference between
two slappies and three slappies because you have nine conference
games a Power four that's ten.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
Do you get two?

Speaker 4 (46:02):
Do you play two slappy? Well, let me give you
an example.

Speaker 9 (46:04):
Like Alabama's four non conference games schedule for next year
are Florida State, who is Florida State at West Virginia,
USF and somebody else?

Speaker 4 (46:16):
Why would you play those?

Speaker 9 (46:17):
Go schedule the Citadel, Eastern Kentucky, Western Kentucky, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Like, so you're gonna lose.

Speaker 9 (46:24):
Like there's this common misconception that so many SEC teams
in November play some slappy but they've been tested nine
weeks up till that point with tough teams. Yet everybody
wants to harp on the one November. You know, crappy
team that they're playing. So anyway, I just think I
think we're gonna lose a lot of these Marquee Week
one games now because why play them? The Committee is

(46:46):
not giving you credit for losing those games. They say
they're going to now they say this year they're adding
the component of strength of schedule to the college football Playoff.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
I'll believe it when I see it. Say, I do
believe if Vano can you can lose three games now
if you're playing nine game conference schedule and still get
a chance to end the play.

Speaker 9 (47:03):
But forget eight nine game conference schedule. Tell me how
many ranked teams you play, that's what should matter. See,
here's the problem. Last year you had South Carolina played
six top twenty five teams and went three and three
against them. Indiana played two top twenty five teams.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
Lost both of them.

Speaker 9 (47:20):
But Indiana got in the playoff because they went Oh,
ten and two is better than nine and three. But
my argument is, stop harping on who you lost to
and tell me who you beat, who you beat. That's
how you build a resume. We do it in March madness,
right and when we get to the tournament time, we say,
oh you have as they beat Auburn back in November,
that's a quality resume win. I almost think we should

(47:41):
go that run up college basketball and football and say
quad one wins. You have three quad one wins in
football like that? Should that should be how you build
a resume for the college football playoffs, not just oh,
you went ten and two, so you're in. I don't
care if you went ten and two, did you play
anybody good. If you didn't play anybody good, you don't
deserve to get in.

Speaker 4 (47:59):
I think you're gonna see a change of that. They
say they're there's gonna enough, there's enough people that believe you.
There's no way you're gonna go into a room and
and have an Indiana squeeze out somebody else. Now, especially
when you go to ninth conference.

Speaker 9 (48:14):
Well, that's the problem is they they they were hurt
last year with SMU getting their ass kicked, Indiana getting
their ass kicked.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
Boise, you know, was not great. I think they're looking
at going, well, look good teams, Well, college football makes adjustments.
They made the adjustment you don't have to guarantee, You're
not guaranteed the top four spot anymore. So that's gone.
I mean, they're not stupid, you understand, I guess.

Speaker 9 (48:36):
I just I don't like it because every move is motive,
motivated by money, and I get that's what makes the
world go round.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
But we're losing some of the pageantry and tradition. There's
already there is.

Speaker 9 (48:48):
You go to a game day and the band marches
down the hill and all that, and this.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
Is playing Missippi saying for the egg ball. There's no
problem with that. It's just an Alabama playing the iron portal.

Speaker 9 (48:57):
There's like, how many kids grow up in Houston going
I'm dreaming of playing for the Kougs.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
Some of them now to go. You know what, I'm going.

Speaker 9 (49:03):
To the highest bidder. Oh, Baylor paid me more. I'm
a lifelong cooks faan. My mom and dad went to
U of H. But you know what Baylor paid me.

Speaker 4 (49:11):
One hundred kicks. I'm going to Baylor. Yeah. I just
don't like that.

Speaker 9 (49:14):
I think there there should be some sort of allegiance
of you want to go to school because you love
that school.

Speaker 4 (49:19):
No, that's long gone. That's why are you speaking such chilliness? No, No,
there's no Hey, my dad doing there. I want to
follow that. No, that's who's got the biggest check for me.
Why so you, of all people to follow the sport
close to anybody else here? I mean, you know this

(49:40):
is all business. It's not all now. No, here's the thing.
Saturday afternoon at two thirty or six o'clock or eleven o'clock,
what are we doing. We're watching in front of our
televisions or right at the game, and we don't care
about NL. We don't care about the portal, we don't
care about the biggest bidder. That all goes away. It's
the other five days, six days of the week that

(50:00):
we focus on it, honestly, because one Saturday goes around
like Mike Uah Cougars destroy SFA. Next Thursday, seventy two
to seven. I'm not worried about how much Connor Wigman's
making at University Houston. I don't care. That'd be awesome
if they can do that, it's going to happen. But yeah,
don't don't you must win. Don't say, of course it is.
Are you kidding me? I told, I told Jonathan, I'm

(50:21):
taking Friday off if they lose. Oh is that where
Jonathan finished? Yeah? He started at Western Kentucky, which is
the Harvard of Western Kentucky.

Speaker 6 (50:28):
That's a good school, the hilltop person. Yeah, it's a
good media school. Yeah, I have a good media preghim
over there at wes Kentucky. Is that how you learned
to press all the buttons here?

Speaker 4 (50:36):
You know, you don't double stars anymore, do you? It
doesn't sound like it a whole lot. No, you ten
times better than Trey was. Cray You Cray, Chris, you
are me five years ago. I'm I'm just so over it.
I don't want to hear about the purity of it.
I don't want to hear about how their sanctity. I
don't want to hear about there's there's a group of
people out there that are looking for the for the

(50:58):
spirit of the sport. Well, here's it's all gone.

Speaker 9 (51:00):
Here's the other thing that's being rumored about is that
this whole thing of the SEC is requiring their schools
to play a power four team and the Big Ten doesn't.
Is that they're gonna partner up and we're gonna have
an SEC Big Ten Challenge every year in non conference
and that will be your non conference game. Now we
say we love it because Texas Ohio State is awesome.
But you're gonna watch Mississippi State Minnesota.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
Yeah you're not watching that game, but I wasn't watching it.
I want gonna watch Minnesota. You watch Perdue v Andy. No,
but but those people will. I mean they're gonna rotate
it around. Yeah, I do the bottom of the big
ten socks. Yeah, but you can't. You're not gonna get
sixteen sexy matchups. You're gonna get three or four. And
you know what you can give me Penn State playing
A and M I'm in. I'll watch. You want to

(51:44):
give me Alabama versus Michigan every other every four years,
I'm in. I'll watch because I don't have been dog
on those fight, but I'll watch those games. Yeah.

Speaker 9 (51:51):
I think the other tough part is to the SEC
has a lot of those non conference rivalries. Georgia Georgia Tech,
Kentucky versus Louisville, Florida Florida State. What happens to those?
And I think there's a chance that those go by
the wayside. South Carolina Clemson is an awesome rivalry, but
it's probably gonna go away.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
We lived without A and M Texas for twenty five years,
which is but it's back because we appreciate rivalries. Yeah,
but it wasn't. It wasn't back because we appreciated their series.
We appreciated because the Longhorns left to go the SEC. Look, Oklahoma,
Oklahoma State, one of the bedlam, one of the greatest
sports rivalries in college football. It's gone. I mean, I
know people, they are upset at what point?

Speaker 9 (52:32):
Well, yeah, if we're playing non conference games and didn't
really behove you to go schedule in Oklahoma State, All.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
Right, Astros against Baltimore all weekend? You got the college
football I always take Kansas State clash. If you're sitting
in front of your television, what you gonna be doing.
I went to the store Randall's two days ago, loaded up.

Speaker 9 (52:48):
Got some fresh pack of Crawford Box to stock my
fridge upstairs, to watch some Astros action, watch some college football,
and get ready for this weekend. Hopefully you guys do
the same. Enjoy the high school tastes of the Crawford
Box for we're friends at Carbock. Burwing Bird right here
in Houston, Texas goes perfect with Astros baseball. Let me
tell you it went down smooth last night as I'm watching,
Heyzus Sanchez get not one, not two, not three, not four,

(53:11):
but five hits. Let's go Lance with callers on the mountain.
I'll make a prediction five innings to run ball for Lance.
You get your crufford box. That's some serious. You get
some bravado in that voice there.

Speaker 4 (53:23):
I mean, they need, they need something. So somebody asked
if it was a slumbuster that helped the situation with
HAYESU sent that. That's funny. People get kind of wiry
about slumpbusters. Yep, your thoughts generally speaking about slumbusters, Yeah,
do you do what you gotta do?

Speaker 9 (53:39):
You gotta do what you gotta do. Like Brian Lolima
out there, he's he's had a lot of those.

Speaker 4 (53:44):
Yeah, but he's also like a little league coach that
he can get slump bust with like divorce as Oh, Brian,
I help. You're listening. I swear to gotta help. You're listening.
Eleven fourteen. Uh, I'm looking for some of my sorry.
He's coming back in a minute, eleven fourteen. Sports Talk
seven ninety. All right, you want to apologize to somebody,
and Lord knows you do, because I'm gonna apologize. People

(54:08):
will be doing it in ten minutes here on Sports
Talk seven ninety eleven eighteen is hard time. Seven one
three two one two five seven nine zero seven one
three two one two five seven nine zero. If you
want to follow me on Twitter, I'd greatly appreciate that.
It's at sports MT. And if you want to follow
me on Instagram, that would really make my day because

(54:31):
I'm not gonna bombard you with food items. I'm just
gonna give you a good stuff and uh, I want
to get some shout outs. So if you want to
follow me on Instagram, god love it. I appreciate that
at Sports MT on Instagram and I'll shout you out
because that's what I'm doing. I'm just a nice person.
Seven one three two one two five seven ninety seven
one three two one two five seven ninety And again,

(54:53):
if you want to follow me on Twitter or Instagram,
it is at Sports m T. Let's go to the
phones and well, my phone system is down, so would
you go, Oh, I can pop it up. Now, let's
go to Aggie, Doug, Hi, Adie, what do you got today?

Speaker 10 (55:10):
Hey Matt, I heard you and Chris knocking around the
whole nil thing and lack of pageantry and all that,
And man, I am so right there with you. I
used to get chills every time, you know, before the
A and M team ran out and all that kind
of stuff. Yeah, it might happen for the first couple
of minutes now, but dude, it's like you're in your
phone checking, Okay, what's this guy getting paid on his

(55:31):
nil deal? The guy that just dropped the ball or
this guy fumble that he's getting paid for As far
as my kid is concerned. If honestly, I think it's
more parent driven than it is anything else with a
lot of these kids, and it's a lot of parents going, hey,
if you can get one more dollar.

Speaker 11 (55:48):
At this place.

Speaker 10 (55:48):
It doesn't matter where you get a degree from, or
it doesn't even matter if you did get a degree.
You're getting paid multiple millions of dollars for an nil deal.
Just from a personal perspective, whenever I always, you know,
kind of advised our college soccer team, I would always
tell them and they weren't looking at Division one schools,

(56:09):
so they were looking at Naia Division two and I
always told them, I said, you got to make the
best deal for you. And it didn't have anything to
do with what's on the front. It's what's the name
on the back. As far as whenever you go to college.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
Look, it's hard for us eighty to try to get
into the minds of every seventeen year old. But yeah,
I would think parents have a huge influence on it.
You know, I went through the process with my daughter,
but mine but she plays in a non revenue Yeah,
but you know, I can't spink to it because my
daughter plays in a non revenue sport, so I can't

(56:45):
speak to that. But if she was playing in a
sport where let's say a school was offering her money
and she couldn't decide which one of the two, what
would I probably leaner towards and say, well, if you
have four or five schools that love you and one's
offering you fifteen or twenty percent more money, I would
tell her probably go to that spot. I mean, I'm
gonna be honest with your.

Speaker 10 (57:04):
Same situation with with with her, like, like, our big
thing was books. Like there was a lot of schools
that offered scholarships, but they didn't offer anything about books
or a meal plan or anything like that. So when
especially like you were saying for non revenue sports, I mean,
you've got to make sure that stuff's taken care of
or that ends up being out of your pocket. So

(57:24):
I can't even imagine if somebody puts down a contract
that's one hundred thousand plus in front of my kid.
I can't even imagine what those what those thoughts would be.

Speaker 4 (57:35):
In my in my brain.

Speaker 10 (57:37):
Yeah, So, I mean, I know, it's just so much
money tained in hands and it just seems so crooked.
But also, Matt, you and I went to school in
the early nineties. We knew that this crap was going
on before, and it wasn't obviously to the extent that
it is now. But I mean, hell, I've been to
dinners with football guys and they it wasn't paid more

(57:57):
for by anybody other than the brown back they got,
you know, So so it's it was definitely I mean,
stories about Eric Dickerson driving around at the new campus
with the with the Corvette, that A and m body,
you know, so it's you know, it's Marien and white.
But you know, so it's been going off forever. It's
just seems so nasty now that it's out the open.

(58:19):
I guess it's like it's like exposing the mob books
and all the mobs business to everybody, and everybody going
it's legal now, yep.

Speaker 4 (58:28):
It's legal. Now, thank you Adi for the phone call.
I mean, I'll give you. I'll give you a case
im poy here, And I don't want to talk too
out of school about my daughter's situation. And so you
gotta be honest. It doesn't it doesn't match the football
side of it. But my daughter had a school that
she went to go visit and she loved every part
of it. She's like, this is my spot. She loved

(58:50):
the coaches, she loved the players, she loved the campus,
she loved the academics, she loved the vibe. Everything was
spectacular until the moment of truth came in and said,
we are willing to offer you this meaning scholarship. And
it took her. It knocked the wind out of her,

(59:14):
because when someone loves on you in a recruiting situation,
that's one thing. But when someone says, all right, let's
put a pen to paper to this, now, what are
you really willing to offer? It made her think and
she was very disappointed. And so you know, she had

(59:35):
to tell them, hey, I might go find something else,
and she did, and she was able to fight. A school,
the University Rhode Island, where she'll be playing college volleyball
next year, did the same sort of thing, loved on
her and took her around campus and met the school
and got to have some nice meals and all the
things that you do on an official recruiting visit. And

(59:57):
at the end of the day when that final offer
came through, that was as an offer that she found acceptable,
which was you know what, we'll take care of your
college boom sign sealed delivered. Now, in college football, it's
significantly different, especially if you're a super high end recruit.
You're gonna be whined and dined. You're gonna have four
or five or six or fifteen schools checking on you

(01:00:17):
and loving on you. And it's not gonna be just
about the scholarship. It's going to be about what we
can do or what we can put you in front
of that can help you get more money. Now, at
this point, I still don't think they can directly send
give you the cash when it comes to nil, but
they can put you in the right direction, and that's
what the kids will want. I mean, how many kids

(01:00:42):
not everyone. I can't blanket statement this, but if you
were to take twenty kids, the top twenty Houston kids
that play high school in twenty twenty five about to
be the two class of twenty six or twenty seven.
If I pulled those kids aside and said which offer
did you take, my guess is, and this is the

(01:01:05):
pure guess on my part that eighteen of the twenty
them said I went with a big where the bigger
money was. There was maybe one where I loved it more,
and there was no amount of money that that school
could offer me. I don't want to play for that coach.
I don't I don't go go to the school. I
don't want to go that far away. Or maybe there
was a parental relationship where my dad played there, so
I wanted to play along the same lines. But all

(01:01:28):
that stuff's gone now, and I think Aggie Doug is right.
I think it's also, Yeah, I'm sure you're you're gonna
give my son a great education. I'm sure you're gonna
give my son a great place to live and work
and thrive and learn to become a young man. But
you know what's again on the side for him, because
that would be a factor for me. I mean, I'm

(01:01:49):
gonna be honest, it's not gonna be because my daughter
doesn't play in a revenue sport that NIL is prevalent in.
But if it ever was, i'd listen and come to me.
And she said, well, if school, ABC and D all
loved me the same and I love them all the same,
which I guess, I guess could happen. But largely kids,
we'll start to separate what they do and don't like.

(01:02:10):
But a lot of this, and I've learned this through
the recruiting process from my daughter, is that the school,
the girls and the boys. These young people they love
the schools that love them the most back. And in
high end college football, it's who's writing me the biggest check.
We're who's going to offer me the best nil deal.
That's what typically loves you back. All Right, we need

(01:02:31):
to say I'm sorry to some people. You've done something
this week that you want to apologize for. You know
where to find us seven one three two one two
five seven. Honey, if you were rude to somebody, if
you were mean, if you were unkind, if you cut
somebody off, if you said something wrong to somebody, time
for you to say I'm sorry. Seven one three two

(01:02:53):
one two five seven ninety seven one three two one
two five seven Honey, time for you to apologize, say
you're Sorry's next here on sports Talk seven ninety. Time
to cleanse your soul. Ladies and gentlemen seven one three
two one two five seven ninety come in, call in
and utter these very very simple words, I'm.

Speaker 12 (01:03:16):
Sorry, so sorry.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
I did know.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
This is a half hour that we take for an
opportunity to, you know what, just tell the people in
our life that we may have wronged.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
I'm made a.

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
Mistake, and that's the key, Young Jonathan. I could try
to give you that we're not always right about everything.
I want to hear this. So I'm just saying the
ability to apologize and say you're sorry will when you
get married. You'll be able to sleep in the same
room for two consecutive nights, You'll be able to maintain friendships.

(01:04:00):
You and I argue with your family, and you'll be
able to get along with general population of the world.
But just once in a while saying I'm sorry. So
I will start with I want to apologize to those
people that work for spam risk companies. They call me
and ask about if they have if I have Medicare
Part A M Part B. And when I they asked

(01:04:21):
me what insurance company I use? I give them violent
this blind laced swear, word laced companies that don't really
exist to see like, I will say to them, They'll
say what insurance company you use? And I will say,
shut the f up, you blanking B, you nasty ass B,

(01:04:43):
suck my B and they hang up on me. I
want to say to those people that I use on
the spam risk to use such a violent language, I'm sorry,
oh sorry, They're just doing their jobs. Of course, they
live in a country that six thousand miles away, and
they use AI to generate the phone call to begin with,

(01:05:07):
and litter my voicemail with let me check my voicemail count, Jonathan. Sorry,
this is is good growth from you, It is it
is right now, I have forty four voicemails. The average
voice voicemail is two seconds long.

Speaker 12 (01:05:22):
Was blood.

Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
So I wanted once again just to be safe and
tell you as I lost my earphones here for a second,
I'm sorry for being rude to those people and violently
swearing at them and attacking their heritage. I'm so sorry.
Thank you my second I'm sorry, and this is where
you this is. I don't have a lot of them,
so come on in. It's seven one three two. I
can't do a half hour by myself here on this.

(01:05:46):
You got some people out, don't need to cleanse your palate.
Seven one three. I want to apologize to some of
the tenth thitning callers really, because some of them like
to call Joe Espata a coach, which is a taboo term.
Some of them want to say the Astro suck and
they'll never watch again, and get that person. Mike, shout
out to you, my friend. You send me ten emails

(01:06:06):
a day about how bad the Astros are, when in
fact you told me two weeks ago you weren't watching anymore.
And then you have the fans that will call in
and say that the Astros would butt more, that they
would win, and I immediately forget about them and don't
give them much time. I'm going to start respecting more
of the butt callers that call the tenth Inning Show,
of which I'll be hosting on Saturday. So for those

(01:06:28):
of you that have ever attacked you for your endless
rants about bunting, in twenty twenty five, I say to you,
I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Wow. You know that
separates me from other hosts. I try to lead by example.
I make mistakes, I apologize. I apologize some of you

(01:06:50):
that have tough jobs that you can't return emails all
the time. I told you that was a hot take.
But it's funny. The same guy who sent me another
tweet said, yeah, I have two phones, one for that
for the work stuff, and he's trying to get at you.
That doesn't count. So what I'm saying is for that
second phone, that's where your bros are. Your host respond
to those quickly, not a long paragraph, but just hey,

(01:07:13):
I got your email, talk about it Monday. If you
got a tough job that doesn't require simple emails like that,
I'm sorry and thank you for your service. Seven one
three two five seven Jonathan.

Speaker 6 (01:07:29):
You don't live a perfect life. No, that was you
know today This week is a little longer. I had
to think about. But then I went to my Instagram.
I have my identifications off all my social media.

Speaker 4 (01:07:41):
Because yes, I don't like that noise distracting.

Speaker 6 (01:07:43):
Yeah, I checked my I DMS, like someone DM me, Oh,
let's see, and my mom has been sending me reels
for the last week and I haven't responded to that
a single one of them. So I got a caller
and I wanted to say I'm sorry. I didn't know
you were sending me reels. I didn't know we were
doing this. I feel bad now, so I just want

(01:08:05):
to say I'm sorry. Sure forgive me. So your mom
sends you dms okay, and she sent me the funny
Instagram reel.

Speaker 4 (01:08:13):
She finally, I know I'm in the same way. So
here's how you solve that. Just send her a love
emoji back or ah or love it.

Speaker 6 (01:08:23):
What if she asked me about the video to the phone,
I'm not asking. You're trying to say, I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
Sorry you taking you more intro No, no, no, I
wouldn't do that to you. I mean I kind of would,
but oh man, goodness. Yeah. The key to having a
great email slash text relationship with someone and just give
us a quick response back, like I always say, If

(01:08:53):
you respond to me with an emoji back like a
like or a love, that means I got it. I
don't have time to have a deep conversation with you
about it, but I got it. Yeah, I'm glad to
add that feature in the apples. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's all good. So yeah, but not responding, it's just
that's what I'm saying. My national policy on texting is

(01:09:14):
if you don't text me back within two hours of
me sending you the text, you your phone gets locked up.
Not a long conversation, but just a hey, acknowledge or text,
especially if you have a red feature and I know
that you read it, didn't respond, Oh lordy, not good?
All right, So if you want to apologize again seven
one three two one two five seven, honey, I want

(01:09:36):
to apologize some of you that don't like the term slumpbuster.
Oh you had some negative had a few couples. I
don't thinky were tongue in cheek or they were really upset.
But we kid here on the show. First of all, Jonathan,
as you know, everybody needs love. If I need I
need love. And if you're a little heftier than others,
it's you know, it is what it is. You kind

(01:09:57):
of know your role. You still gotta find love. Yeah.
So if a guy is on an zero for twenty seven,
like HEYESU Sanchez and he went to go run around
Baltimore last night before the game and found a little
afternoon delight. Did it work out for a five for five?
I say, I'm pro up slumpbuster. But for any of

(01:10:20):
you that finally the term slumpbuster offensive, I want to
tell you I'm sorry and I'm not sorry that Cracker
Barrel's stock prices fell fifteen percent yesterday. You get rid
of the logo. You deserve a massive penalty. So there

(01:10:40):
you have on that. What else I want to say
I'm sorry for. I'm trying think what else I've done,
because I feel like I've done a lot of wrong things.
That this is the half hour amount trying. Don't apologize
to Oh, I embarrass my daughter all the time at
volleyball games, which is one of for volleyball budies other teams.
So to Carly, my beautiful daughter who's playing a high
school volleyball right now, when she's playing her opponents and
they beat us unfortunately, and I go over there and

(01:11:02):
tease them. I say to Carl's opponents, I'm sorry, and
I to apologize my daughter as well. I tried to
dad joke my way through life because my squad's not
very good. So I say I'm sorry. M M.

Speaker 6 (01:11:21):
I think I cut off somebody again this week on
the free way or on the phone lines. No, not
on the phone lines. I did that all the time,
all right. I apologize y'all. But sometimes sometimes it has it. Yeah,
sometimes you get a little talking.

Speaker 11 (01:11:34):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:11:35):
I can say sorry to this color early. It was
yesterday and he started out the show. It was ten
minutes in and he just I feel like he just
wanted to rant about the show. And he was ranting.
He was mad at Ross and I was gonna let
him on the air, mad at me. He was mad
above you guys when I do what I do. He
was just saying, how rude you guys were, how you

(01:11:56):
were apologizing earlier about yeah, did say stuffing?

Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
Yeah, And he was.

Speaker 6 (01:11:59):
Just going on and on on and a guy like
forty seconds in, he was just yell at me.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
So I hund up the phone. But then I thought
about him, like, huh no, no, no, you you don't
need to apologize that guy. First of all, you gave
him forty seconds of his life that he probably didn't deserve.

Speaker 6 (01:12:12):
But I'm just, you know, I'm just feeling it. I'm
feeling a forgiven mood.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Right now.

Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
You know, okay, So let me I'll say this, I'll
I will join you in this. If I've ever treated
you really on this show, I'm sorry. Oh I'm sorry.
I just gotta get my apologies out. But you know
what the problem, miss Jonathan. This is a little balance
we have here. If we don't attack certain callers, people
go on our social media and say why did you

(01:12:37):
let that guy talk? Why did you let that guy
go on?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
On and on and on.

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
So we have to balance between what is right for
the normal sports fan and the caller that was tried
to come on and with his perhaps awful take. A
man who never has a terrible take is Roger with us,
who's been calling five times? You got a bad phone line, Roger,
what's going on with you?

Speaker 8 (01:12:58):
Probably all right?

Speaker 5 (01:12:59):
What's just?

Speaker 4 (01:12:59):
What's the matter with you?

Speaker 13 (01:13:00):
What?

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
Who do you want to apologize to?

Speaker 14 (01:13:02):
I want to apologize to my wife. I usually call
her on the Archery Friday. She don't tell me what's
gonna happen for dinner tonight, and I didn't realize she
was on the speakerphone.

Speaker 11 (01:13:15):
So when I asked.

Speaker 14 (01:13:17):
Her she wanted pizza and she said yes, I said
pizza these nuts. She was on the UH and the
office on the speakerphone, so I did not know that.

Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
Sorry, so you dropped these nuts on a speakerphone.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Lord, I am sorry, no comment.

Speaker 4 (01:13:44):
Oh yeah. I try to step away from speakerphones in general,
because you'd never know who's there. And even if they
say are you by yourself? They could be lying, right,
that's true, they could be lying. I didn't even think
about that. So just I would say, anytime you're on
a phone, make sure you can you get full clearance

(01:14:06):
that you're talking to just that person. That person loan,
so the speakerphone does not work. Thank you very much
for that, all right, eleven forty three on Sports Talk
seven ninty. If you have an apology to get to look,
let me tell you some'm Houston you got We got
six million people in this town. You guys are not
that nice time to apologize. You want to apologize for
the Astros and how rude you were to them this
week after they've only scored a handful of runs seven

(01:14:29):
one three two one two five seven ninety On Twitter,
Brandon says, I want to say I'm sorry to my wife.
Are ignoring her tomorrow because of college football. I'm so sorry, Brandon.
First of all, I get it. I think she gets it.
But damn, dude, it's not a great set of games.

(01:14:51):
If you're gonna agnoy your wife, you're gonna annoy your
wife over Iowa State, Kansas State, Idahost State, UNLV, Fresno State, Kansas,
Sam Houston. It's in Western Kentucky and Stanford, Hawaii. No, no, no,
you gotta save that for like a week one where
you don't want to speak to her, like week one
of the seasons gonna have like Texas Ohio State. You

(01:15:15):
don't talk to her that week? What else is in there?
A top twenty five? Let's see if games that means something?
Here Syrahcuse Tennessee. You don't speak to her during that.
You don't talk to her during uh anything? What else

(01:15:35):
does he don't talk to her during? Mmm, there's a
bunch of crappy games North Carolina, North Dakota. I mean
there's maybe Week one isn't as good as I thought
it was gonna be. Let me look at the top
twenty five. In week one, do you speak You can
speak to her during Western Illinois versus Illinois, oh Alabama, Florida,

(01:15:56):
state you don't talk to her, that you don't talk
to anybody. You just watched the game. So Brandon's wife
shot out to you. But man, I pulled in. I'm sorry,
I'm not talking to you. Cart into a game of
some decent matchups. Uh, Ronnie on seven ninety Ronnie, what
do you want to say? You're sorry for him?

Speaker 13 (01:16:12):
For what?

Speaker 8 (01:16:14):
Well?

Speaker 7 (01:16:14):
Matt, I called my daughter. My daughter called me. She
had a flat tire.

Speaker 4 (01:16:18):
I fold her.

Speaker 7 (01:16:18):
Okay, dat, get the lug wrench, get the donut. I
don't have a donut, I don't have a jack, and
I don't have a lug wrench. And so I chewed
her out, went and took care of her. Everything's fine,
but Karma came back and bit me. But I did
call her and apologize. After this, I bought a used
car and had a flat on it. About two weeks later,

(01:16:41):
opened up the trunk. There's no jack, there's no lug wrench,
and there's no spare tire. So to my daughter, once again,
I apologize, I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:16:50):
Sorry, I'm sorry. Did you say this to her? Are
using the radio station for this opportunity? Did you talk
to her about this? Since?

Speaker 13 (01:16:57):
Oh?

Speaker 11 (01:16:58):
Both, because I know she listens to y'all.

Speaker 4 (01:17:00):
Okay, Well, Ronnie, first of all, uh, you're a good
father for doing that. You know that if my kids
asked me to change our tire, I couldn't do it. Well, Matt,
do you have talent with your vocal cord? I know,
but but I'm a lesser man because of Ronnie. I
don't know how to change a tire. Ronnie, and I
feel like I, you know, I'm gonna apologize to my

(01:17:20):
kids right now and my wife. You know what I
would tell him, called triple A. That's what I would say,
because I'm sorry kids, I'm sorry wife. Ronnie. I applaud
you for knowing how to do it. Well, thank you, Matt.

Speaker 11 (01:17:33):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:33):
By way, y'all still have the best show on the rank.
You very much shot up. What's your daughter's name? Kelsey?
All right, Kelsey, shout up to young lady. And your
dad called to apologize on a major market radio show,
and for that we appreciate that. Thank you. Ronnie. There
you go, Jonathan, you know how to change a tire.
You know I do not. Actually, you know, I like

(01:17:55):
you more and more because when I told Ross I
don't know how to do it. He was like, you
have to know how to do but it.

Speaker 6 (01:18:01):
Does make you feel less of a man because he
don't know how to do it. Like, so I get that, Like,
but I just never no one taught me.

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
I mean, you know, you and I are born to
say my friend brothers from another mother. Can you ride
a bike?

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Though?

Speaker 9 (01:18:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
I can ride a bike? Okay, okay. Do you know
how to ride a bike? Of course, I know to
ride bike. I'm just make sure. What's the most simplistic
thing in your life that you cannot do juggle? Juggling
is not simplistic, like you can talking about daily activities.
Do you want to swim? I know I swim? Okay,
me too.

Speaker 5 (01:18:34):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:18:36):
Do you know how to cook a turkey? Can't cook
a turkey? Nope. By the way, I try to cook
bake potatoes the other day for the first time in
a while. I didn't put him in long enough and
they were not ready when the stakes were ready. I
heard it from the family. So I want to say
to the family that was looking forward to steak and
baked potatoes, I'm sorry. It's almost like I'm using this

(01:18:56):
show as an opportunity to speak to my family in
a collective group sounds like it. I just realized now
that if it's a big baked potato, like you know,
the big ones, you got to put them in for
ninety minutes, sixties night long enough you're telling me this
is more out. The more I know, see, I'm here
for you. I want to make sure you don't make
those sab mistakes.

Speaker 6 (01:19:14):
Because cooking isn't isn't my fortete. I like to say
I can like I can. I can grill, you know,
gro chicken, right. I can't make an omelet.

Speaker 4 (01:19:21):
There you go. Always you can't make an omas, always
mess it up. I got to really practice it on.
I can't make French toast about that? Okay, okay, I see,
look getting somewhere. We're getting somewhere, all right. I don't
know how to change an oil in a car.

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
I don't think.

Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
I don't think most people know how to do that.
M yeah, I would think the biggest efficiency in my
life is I'm unable to change an air to change
the tire. Now, I can put air in the car,
but I like to go to those places that have
the automatic where you put the pressure in what you
got on your pressure and tires should be and you
need to stick it in there and you just wait

(01:19:54):
for it to go be beat be beat.

Speaker 6 (01:19:56):
Like on the side of the gas say yah yah yah, yeah, yeah,
that's that's that's the play, all.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
Right, before we get two wake We got wake strippers
up in six minutes. Are they ready? Are they awake?
This weather's kind of dicey, yeah, Cloud you got there?
Oh god, Jill.

Speaker 15 (01:20:10):
Hey, guys, So I'd like to say sorry to someone.
So let me preface this by saying, I bought my
pregnant wife a brand new Manda CRV twenty twenty six,
beautiful vehicle, and it's gonna last us. So you know,
when you go to the dealership, the sales rep is
all you know butterflies.

Speaker 7 (01:20:31):
And walks in the park.

Speaker 15 (01:20:32):
But once you get to the financial finance office, though,
those guys really try to grind you for everything you got.
So he asked me for a cashier's check to make
it easy on him thirteen thousand dollars down payment that
I made. I just told him to hold on real quick,
let me go to the bank and I'll get him
a cashiers check.

Speaker 11 (01:20:50):
But instead I.

Speaker 15 (01:20:50):
Asked the bank tailler for thirteen thousand dollars in off fifties,
and I went back and gave him thirteen thousand and
off fifties.

Speaker 8 (01:20:58):
So I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:21:01):
Who are you apologizing to the bank, the person who
works at the bank, or the guy you get the money?

Speaker 15 (01:21:05):
To the finance guy, because he was kind of grinding
me for everything I had, and I didn't like the
way he was kind of, you know, trying to pressure
me into getting this, that and the other thing, you know,
so to make it hard on him, he had to
literally count thirteen thousand dollars in fifties while I sat
there and watched him.

Speaker 4 (01:21:23):
Hell, I you know what, Ijio, I kind of got
respect for you. I like it. I don't know what
you're apologizing for.

Speaker 11 (01:21:34):
I mean, hey, man, you know life shooting me good.

Speaker 8 (01:21:37):
I just like having fun with it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:38):
Man. But great show man.

Speaker 8 (01:21:39):
I love this show man.

Speaker 4 (01:21:40):
Thank you show.

Speaker 5 (01:21:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:21:42):
I don't think you need to apologize. If the guy
was being add on him.

Speaker 6 (01:21:48):
Make his life difficult. Uh, that's that's that was nice.

Speaker 4 (01:21:54):
Are you ready for something I've done in the past
that makes me mad that I'm not sorry for. It's
a kind of reverse is when you go to the
drive through and you order something and it's four dollars
and fifty sixty four cents. Right, you give them the
sixty four cents first, then you hit them the ten
dollar bill, so you get six dollars back, right, ten
sixty four minus four sixty four six dollars. And then
you come back and she's giving you a five dollar

(01:22:16):
bill with a bunch of change. I said, I just
gave you sixty four cents. Oops, I'm sorry, sorry, And
then she gives me the right money. I roll my
window up and I swear at her. If I had
real stones, i'd swear directly to her. She just messed
it up a little bit a bit, how do you
know a little bit? I say, here's the sixty four,
here's the ten. But yet I don't have the stones

(01:22:41):
to tell her what I think about her to her face.
I rolled the window up and tell her to her
off so she can't hear me. So for that woman
at the Rick Ronald's at Weslet, York in fifty nine,
I say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's probably gonna happen again.
Though I didn't even think about doing that.

Speaker 6 (01:22:58):
I would just give just trying to find four dollars
and just put the coins on top of her.

Speaker 4 (01:23:02):
Well, I don't I like change. I just know that
I have to be careful with it. And so if
I had the change and make a nice even six
dollars out of it, I thought I would do it
like I'm helping her. That's true. Yeah, you're right. How
old was she?

Speaker 8 (01:23:15):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:23:15):
She was like a young teenager, Like, yeah, you know
they're working the drive through. They're seventeen, eighteen years old.
So I used to work in the drive through back
in the day, really, and McDonald's absolutely did. For I
worked all throughout high school McDonald's. Do you remember the like, uh,
what you say when they come to the yes, walking
to McDonald's for I rode my take your order place.
I did everything I haven't. I've told you my off off.

(01:23:36):
I told the audience before, if you've messed with me
in the drive through, I get you back.

Speaker 6 (01:23:40):
You spend their food or something. Oh hell yeah, see
I tell people that, and they don't believe me. I
tell people don't mess with That's why.

Speaker 4 (01:23:47):
That's why I wasn't rude or to her face, because
I was thinking, if she's mad at me, she's going
to tell the guy organizing my food. You know what
you can do with Matt's fries. You got a spit burger? Ugh, Oh,
I've done it all. I read Fride food. I've done
it all. I'll see you all fair more stuff? Oh
all right? The news and noon is up next plus

(01:24:07):
we Wake the Stirpers up eleven fifty eight on Sports
Talk seven ninety Jesus is the Matt Thomas Show.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
With Ross twelve three age down, Good.

Speaker 5 (01:24:39):
Morning, extra reports and welcome Tom a number.

Speaker 4 (01:24:44):
Three other man Thomas Show with Ross.

Speaker 3 (01:24:47):
There's his Sports Talk seven ninety. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:24:55):
I don't want to ever reference the big Take Misser
theme ever again. That just gives us a trouble. Hope
you guys are any good mood. We are down the
home stretch. The weather looks terrible. What the hell is
going on outside? Is it armageddon?

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
Or what.

Speaker 4 (01:25:13):
Says right at our Sorrow Studios is light rain with thunder?
I mean it's dark, it's pitch black. I'll finish step
outside and see mc don't leave me Ross loppy for
a few days. I need you to stick with me,
all right, seven one three, seven ninety It is our
number three of the show. We got some phone callers

(01:25:34):
to get to We've got coming up at one o'clock. Uh, Eddy, noon, Hey,
as I thought, a director at the University Houston's going
to stop buying and visit with us for an hour
to talk all things University Houston, the college football landscape,
college athletics in in general. And I'll be with us
coming up at one pm. Right now, it's time now
for the news. And dude, such good news if you're

(01:25:57):
an Astros fan. The Astros beat the Orioles last night
by a final score of seven to two. Couple of
hot lights Brandon Walker with a two run home run
as the Astros score two in the first, two in
the second, three more in the third, and a five
hit day for Hey Sue Sanchez, who went er for
twenty seven before going five for five yesterday. Jason Alexander

(01:26:21):
gets the win again for the Astros five in the
third innings, giving up two runs, eight hits, three walks,
one home run. He's now four and one. Astros back
in action tonight on Deck. Show begins at five. First
pitch will be just past six o'clock. Jon and Alvarez

(01:26:41):
the couple of hitch yesterday for Corpus Christiana's second rehab appearance.
Don't know if he's gonna make it to Baltimore by
the end of the weekend, but if not, I would
think it's the very latest he makes his way back.
Is the Astros game Tuesday against the Colorado Rockies. The Astros,
by the way, gaining a half game on the Mariners
in the American West because the M's are off yesterday,

(01:27:02):
the Astros one. So right now your beloved Astros owning
a two game lead in the American League West. Other
news College Front I mentioned there's a Top twenty five
matchup tomorrow between Iowa State and Kansastate that will kick
off the college football season. That's we played in Ireland.
Those are two teams in the Big twelve and in

(01:27:22):
the Big it's in the SEC. They have made an
announcement they're gonna go to nine conference games next year.
You'll play a tenth game against an a fellow power
forward school, So schedules starting to tighten up. Reaction generally
is positive because you do want to see your schools
playing more of the same teams in the league every year.

(01:27:42):
By the way, they'll they're going to keep three guaranteed
regional rivals. The regional rivalry in one quote unquote quad
will feature A and M Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas playing
each and every year. And one other baseball note that
I want to bring along to you, and this is
kind of thinking about what you do with a guy

(01:28:04):
named like Bryce Matthews. The Baltimore Orioles had this young
catcher who's been a major leaguer for exactly one week.
He was a number four overall prospect. He went from
low A to double as an eighteen year old, triple
A after last year, and just after his twentieth birthday,
he gets called up for the Orioles. He signed a

(01:28:26):
new contract locking him up buying out arbitration years at
eight years and sixty seven million dollars. Well, the Astros
do that was somebody like a Bryce Matthews. That'll be
one of the things that I'm sure Dana Brown will
be discussing in the offseason for the Astros. And that,
my friends, is your news. At noon, twenty years old

(01:28:48):
making eight sixty seven that's not about eight years sixty
seven million dollars. Not bad, But you know these NBA
players are making crazy money too. They're nineteen years old
they got, they're out of school one year. They're making
the big first round money. Hmmm mm hmm. Samuel Bissello
is his name. He is a brand new member of
the Baltimore Orioles. Big contract bind our arbitration. You know what, Uh,

(01:29:13):
the Astros might have been able to keep some guys
around long term if they had bought some arbitration years.
How they did buy arbitration for Bregman, they did buy
arbitration out for Altuve. They certainly bought some arbitration years
for Jordan Alvarez, Christian Javier. It's not like the Astros
don't do it, but they've been a little bit more selective.
But that's something to be keeping an eye on in
the offseason. If they tried to maybe even buy out

(01:29:36):
some years of Jeremy pay New, who's got a couple
of years of arbitration left after this season. Seven one
three two one two five seven ninety. If you want
to jump into the conversation seven to one three two
one two five seven ninety, as the case each and
every Friday here on the Matt Thomas Show, would ross
it isn't anything goes Friday meeting and you want to
get to and again the leash is a little longer

(01:29:57):
on a Friday than it is during the course of
the week. Let's talk to Mike calling us from Lake Charles. Mike,
what's going on?

Speaker 16 (01:30:06):
Hey, I'm actually in Cyprus. I was at Lake Charles,
Ambily when I coached you last time.

Speaker 4 (01:30:09):
Oh how did you do? By the way average?

Speaker 16 (01:30:16):
So that was a few weeks ago. So anyway, I
want to talk to you guys about MLB aligne. When
I keep telling these social media posts everything I got
in a proposition for you, please, so let's dump AL
and NL. I know the baseball peers will turn over
in the grave, but just let's up for a second.
Just dump AL NL, call it done. Have eight divisions
or whatever you want to call them. Yeah, divisions will

(01:30:37):
be good, like they're propositioning, and then just short it
like a typical playoff one four, five eight on one side,
two three, six seven on the other side. And then
the question goes, do we add like four more teams
to have like a round one? But put it more
like a college football playoff series, because the problem is
when you go al NL, let's say you get three
stacked teams, like right now, the NLS loaded. Okay, Well,

(01:31:00):
if you just call them eight divisions in America and
name the divisions whatever one through eight and categorize the geography.

Speaker 7 (01:31:06):
I like that.

Speaker 16 (01:31:07):
But then just pick the division winners, get one through eight,
and sort them one, four, five, eight on one side,
you know, two, three, six on the other side by records,
and then possibly add the four next best records, so
you get like nineteen eleven twelve, and then create a
bracket as such, maybe the top four get buys and
the bottom four got to play a three game series
something like that. But I want to dump the al

(01:31:27):
NL and just go record storting period by division winners.

Speaker 4 (01:31:31):
Well, I'm gonna uh fight back a little bit on
some of the things, Mike. I do believe that you're
right that American League in nationally, if it gets in
leiminated people, that the old school baseball fan will lose
their mind. I think you and I would agree on that, right,
I do have they believe their mind. But also right,
I don't know. I don't know if it's a I

(01:31:52):
don't think it's all limits. Put that way, so I'll
agree with you on that. The thing that I got
from the conversation involving commision Rob manfriend Mike was they
want to keep teams playing teams in their fellow time
zone as long as possible, and I think that's where
we're headed. They do not want Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,

(01:32:17):
Washington playing an opening round series in San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle.
I think we're gonna see a situation. This is just
a pure got feeling on my part where you're gonna
be playing as many teams in your neck of the woods.
You're part of the country as long as you can
until it gets to the Championship Series and the World Series.

(01:32:37):
So whatever you said, which I could certainly make some sense,
but you gotta remember I think they want to keep
people playing in the time zone as long as they can,
So just keep that in the back of your mind.

Speaker 16 (01:32:51):
Now that makes sense. I hear what you're saying, and
it makes some logical sense. I'm sure there's a way
to even do the just one through eight ranking and
probably still try to keep at least the opening rounds local,
but I have to think about that one. But if
they're gonna do that, yeah, you're right, they won't do
that because one versus eight could be New York play in.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
A LA career.

Speaker 4 (01:33:11):
Yeah, and they want no part of that. Thanks for
the phone calling to sorry about your trip to Lake
Charles Hey. So here's my situation now. It all depends,
I think, first and foremost. If they do a massive
re alignment in baseball, they're gonna have to go to third.
They're gonna they're gonna expand to thirty two teams, and
you can do exactly what they do. In the NFL.
You could have eight four team divisions. My thought would

(01:33:35):
be this. Now, again, this is just me thinking out loud,
and it may be hard to comprehend because you're driving
around trying to fight this weather. So I'm gonna say
it as slowly as I can. You have eight divisions
based on parts of the country you play. If you
win your division, you play the second place team in

(01:33:59):
your division in a wild card okay, the winner of
that represent your division. You then would play the division
next closest to you in a division series. The winner
of that matchup you would then play the next closest
in a championship series best of seven, and then you

(01:34:25):
then play the other league's best seven who went through
the same process and play in the World Series. So
for instance, again I'm probably losing eighty to nine percent
of you, and I apologize. Astros play in the Southwest Division.
They played Let's say the Astros won the division, they'd
play the Rangers. They beat the Rangers in a wild card,
then they would play the Mountain Division. They would play

(01:34:47):
the Arizona Colorado winner. Let's say they beat Arizona. Then
they would play the winner of the Pacific, which would
be Seattle or San Francisco. Then they would go play
the World Series against one of the teams in the East.
So you could have sixteen teams in the West, sixteen
teams in the East. You play the rounds as close
as you can to the opponents closest to you as possible,

(01:35:09):
then ultimately you'd have an East versus West World Series.
Did I confuse you? Yes or no? Have I confused myself? Absolutely?
But that's how I think you do it. I think
the tenor is they want as many Dodger Giants, Dodger, Mariner, Astro, Ranger,

(01:35:32):
Astro Saint Louis, New York, Philly mets Boston series as possible,
keep it regional, as long as you can and that's
where I think the rat the complete overhaul of the
divisions and leagues would come into play. I'm sorry for
confusing in Houston, Texas, but I just had to get
that off my chest. Jonathan, I am blessed. You are blessed.

(01:35:56):
We have the greatest audience in the world. We don't
always agree with them hundred percent of the time, but
generally speaking, we love them. Correct, of course, of course,
of course we got another Matt Thomas show with Ross
Bingo car that was just created. Yes, okay, shout out
to R.

Speaker 5 (01:36:11):
S j R.

Speaker 1 (01:36:12):
D K.

Speaker 4 (01:36:13):
I know what that means. But bless you, my brother.
Here we go real quick to Matt Thomas Show, and
we'll go back to the phones in a minute. Here
Gordy saves the show. Not no one ever hits that.
Gordy don't save the show. He's just come up with
sec takes. Matt walks out of studio after a terrible take.
I do that quite a bit, that's true. Ross loses

(01:36:36):
composure off Mike audibly. Yep, nil talk duh. Late Charles
mentioned yes, celebrity death segment. Yeah, do we know a
lot of celebrity death. I guess we do NASCAR and
the moon reference. That is a deep that's a deep

(01:36:58):
cut instant poll which is really install but it works.
W F A N for our friend James and garden
Oaks during break convo spills into segment that's absolutely the truth.
If you guys, let me just tell you something. If
you ever heard of Ross that I discussed alfair, I
would have lost my job many moons ago. King Wood

(01:37:20):
Studios mentioned, I love the king Win Studios. MATC complains
about traffic, Yes, free space. Ross brings out the no
stor wrongest file. That's not true. There's no such thing
as the nost wrongest file that McRae has mentioned. Mcgrabe
is mentioned, of course it's America Sandwich Ross the computer freezes. Yes,

(01:37:43):
of course it's our engineering. Excuse me, Matt, that's excuse me, Yeah,
I do that. Wait, volleyball talk. We've already had that today.
That's on the bing go card. Matt tries to get
Ross the job in a small market. Mm hm. He

(01:38:03):
argument about what's on the studio TV. It's fair hosts
Rhyme's name and brand. What did that yesterday with? What
did that yesterday with raq rrel Airline hotel points talk. Yep,
he pregnant pause certainly crush City trademark. Yeah, I've lost

(01:38:29):
hundreds of thousands of dollars on that, you know, Jonathan,
that's me that did that. Yeah, you told me that
that's a god's honest or ruth. I created crush City
and I got nothing out of it. I was like,
you told me that one of your biggest regrets. Oh
my god, I got a lot of regrets. That's one
of the biggest ones. And the last one is the
cal McNair slash Forest Gump, which again I don't think

(01:38:49):
it's a good impersonation. Don't think so. No, because Ross
sounds like Forrest Gump. It didn't sound like col If
he took his Forest Gump impersonation and bet it up
a little bit, it sounded more like Cow. But it
doesn't lets me down asking to improve it every day.
He won't do it for me. Andre At twelve twenty
six on seven on Andre Good afternoon, Hey.

Speaker 11 (01:39:12):
Good afternoon.

Speaker 8 (01:39:12):
How's it going good?

Speaker 11 (01:39:15):
Hey, thanks for letting me on the air, man.

Speaker 9 (01:39:17):
I just I just wanted to weigh in on.

Speaker 11 (01:39:18):
This MLB talk, this playoff talk. Sure, Yeah, I mean
the only thing I've really that really sticks out to
me is the fan experience. I mean, I know TV
ratings are big, and I know it keeps the league going.
But if you if you really think about having to
play the same four teams every year, I mean, the
typical fan is gonna go to the game. I mean,
it's gonna get quite boring, you know, a year after year.

(01:39:40):
I think that's one of the best elements of having
the league rankings is not really knowing who's coming to town.
And it's a good way to you know, encourage tourism
and all that good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:39:49):
Too, tourism emi like going to different cities. No, I'm
not saying that. I'm not saying that's gonna that's gonna
be gone for the regular season. But here's what I
do believe, Andre, I think you will be playing if
you massively relign. This is a This is a big
if here. If you are in massive re alignment, you
are going to see more local regional rivals. You're gonna

(01:40:10):
play Texas more. You're gonna play the Cardinals more. You're
going to play the Royals more. If that was where
the astros quadrant is, and you're still gonna play the Rockies.
You're still gonna play the Orioles, You're still gonna play
the Nationals, You're still gonna play the Marlins. But I
think that Rob Manford wants to keep these rivalries close.

(01:40:30):
They want to they want to limit the travel. Now,
that could be just Manby Pamba athlete saying that, or
he could be saying, hey, I get more value of
watching the Yankees play the Red Sox fifteen times a
year than I do having the Yankees played Tampa Bay
ten times a year. You see, I'm going with us. Yeah,
I do.

Speaker 11 (01:40:47):
I do completely, But I mean, like just talking about
the Rangers and the Rockies, I mean, you know, they're
not the same franchises as as like, for example, the
Red Sox coming into the town or Anaheim or things
like that. So I mean, I'm curious to see yaw
Gooes too, But right off the bat, I couldn't imagine
having to see these teams more frequent that don't have
the same star power.

Speaker 4 (01:41:06):
Well, but what if all of a sudden, Kansas City
and Saint Louis are always winning ninety games every year
and it's a nasty rivalry for the next decade, you
you would change your mind on that. I mean, look
the Astros five three years ago, we're playing the uh,
We're playing seventeen times a year against the A SO
or seventeen times against the Angels. It wasn't out of
the ordinary. I like what it is now. I just

(01:41:28):
know that when you do expansion, it gives you a
pause and opportunity to rapidly change things around. And I
do believe again, I don't disagree with Rob Manford that
he would rather have Seattle play the Giants in a
Round one of the playoffs and having one of his
East Coast teams go west to play the Giants because
he's gonna lose a large segment of his population that
are gonna say the games are on too.

Speaker 2 (01:41:47):
Late at night.

Speaker 11 (01:41:49):
Yeah, yeah, man, I completely agree. Actually, I mean, I
I see where all sides are coming from. I'm curiously
how it plays out. I think my mind kind of
jumps to I mean the NFL, for example. You look
at like the the NFC South, where every team in
that division is just kind of sorry, I'm just kind
of working on the changes.

Speaker 4 (01:42:06):
Yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, thanks thanks for letting
wag in.

Speaker 11 (01:42:08):
That's really all I had to say. I mean, I
love the show, love you it in.

Speaker 4 (01:42:11):
Thanks Andre, have a good week. I appreciate you joining
the program. Look, I you know, the hardest thing I
think is going to be whether or not they get
rid of the American and National League. It's baseball. It's
got a few people out there that are like, we've
been watching baseball since the nineteen forties, and we would
ever believe is what? Yeah, things change. They didn't have

(01:42:33):
the DH in nineteen forty three, they didn't have one
hundred and sixty two game schedule back in nineteen forty three.
Everything changes. If you don't adapt to things in sports
and in life, you are going to be the outside
looking in. If you change the way of the game

(01:42:54):
is played, that's where you lose.

Speaker 11 (01:42:56):
Me.

Speaker 4 (01:42:58):
Like if the as if the wing to seven in
games screw you by if you said we're going to
add two more position players on the team to make
it eleven guys in a line of year, you're done.
I'm not for it changing how a game is played.
Subtle things can be changed. Pitch clock, instant replay abs,

(01:43:20):
those are subtle things to me. But if like, I'll
give you an example in basketball, if all of a
sudden I'm calling a Rockets basketball game, and there was
a spot on the floor with a big circle behind it.
You can make four point baskets. I screw you. I'm out.
I'm not doing that. I'm not going to make a
touchdown that's more than fifty yards worth. Eight points is

(01:43:42):
compared to six. I don't need those kind of drule changes,
but subtleties, scheduling, making the game fan friendlier, making it
more technologically advanced for the time in which we're in.
I'm all for that. Twelve thirty on Sports Talk seven
nine eighty seven one three two one two five seven

(01:44:04):
nine zero And y'all are is some creative mood today, Jonathan.
We have a Adam Clinton Adam Wexlert bingo bar that
was just created. Now they're competing against It's only three
by three. Though they don't.

Speaker 6 (01:44:17):
They don't, They didn't come on. Now, you' all gonna
get better than This'll put that name if you're gonna
do it.

Speaker 4 (01:44:22):
Uh here it is. Clinton talks about argument with his wife.
Clinton does a Trump impression. Clinton trashes Jeff passion. Clinton
rants about how other teams cheated to Wexlert challenges Clinton's
take Wexler narrates an entire segment. Clinton makes a movie reference.

(01:44:49):
Wexher is sarcastic. Clinton tells wex And he can't stand him.
That's why I love you people. By the way, Eddie
Nunia is our great I direct to the University. Houston
is sending me traffic text. He's in the same situation.
He hates traffic too. You let me tell you something.

(01:45:09):
When we are making oodles of cash, I'm gonna get
to Eddie, a full time limousine driver after me, seriously,
if I could give something up, if you if somebody
came to me and said you could never drive again,
even if I was going to the cornerstone to buy
lottery tickets and milk, I would give it up. Now

(01:45:30):
what I mean? I always somebody at my availability to
take me somewhere. Yes, what I do it absolutely. I
picked the wrong city to hate traffic in because this
is the worst. Let's say this is probably the worst.
LA is. The only city I've ever driven in that's
worst is Los Angeles. Chicago I can live with. I
don't drive in New York. I've ever driven in New
York in my entire life. But Los Angeles is god

(01:45:54):
awful in Houston's We're right there. Even Dallas traffic doesn't
piss me off like Houston traffic does. So thoughts and prayers, eddies.
He makes his way over here to the station. Let's
talk to Charles on seven out of twelve thirty eight. Charles,
thank you for holding a good afternoon.

Speaker 13 (01:46:10):
Good afternoon, how are you doing good? Just want to
weigh in on the Major League Baseball realignment. I think
you're on kind of the right track with the East Division,
West Division or whatever. But one hundred and sixty two
games is a lot different than seventeen, so I think
they're going to have to follow more like what the

(01:46:31):
what the NBA does with their alignments and their playoffs
and things.

Speaker 4 (01:46:39):
Yeah, I don't know, you know, I don't know what
they're going to do. I think it's going to take
a long, exhaustive situation because it's going to be very
hard for me to convince thirty owners or thirty two owners,
what will be best for baseball if indeed they expanded
thirty two. You know, I think maybe you know, if
you're an old school owner of a if you're a Steinbrennery,
do you want to maintain the rivalry being an American
League team, or do you think about the fact that

(01:47:01):
playing the Mets every year sounds cool and playing the
Phillies every year. So I think it's going to be
a very long, exhausted process, and a lot of it
also has to do, Charles, with what two cities get
the expansion teams. Whether those two cities are in the
Southeast or if they're in Salt Lake City in Portland.
It's kind of up in the air right now, but
it's kind of fun just to kind of think about
it at this point.

Speaker 11 (01:47:22):
At this point, I think one's going to be in
Mexico City.

Speaker 4 (01:47:26):
That I've not heard. I mean, that wouldn't surprise. But
the problem is, Charles, that it's going to be hard
to get a baseball team in Mexico City because the
scoring is going to be astronomical. You're not going to
find any pitcher that's going to want to go there
because the era is going to be ten times what
it would be somewhere else, No doubt about that.

Speaker 13 (01:47:44):
But just you know, with the way things are today,
I mean, I've been watching baseball since nineteen seventy. Wow,
with the removal, I mean, with the designated hitter being
in both leagues now and the ri mention every day
alignment makes sense just from a statistical and a cost
standpoint for traveling things like that.

Speaker 4 (01:48:07):
But you know, the league really.

Speaker 11 (01:48:09):
Doesn't matter that much.

Speaker 13 (01:48:10):
It doesn't make as big of a deal as it
did even fifteen or twenty years ago, where you had
the designated hitter in only one league.

Speaker 4 (01:48:19):
Well, think about this, Charles thirty five forty years ago,
no one would have ever thought a million years the Astros,
whatever you play in the American League or the aster
will be playing teams outside of their league. So as
long as we grow up and understand these things that
things do change, I think we're going to be fine.
I think it's going to take a massive adjustment, especially
if you get rid of something called the American League
and something called the National League. But if it's good

(01:48:42):
baseball on your team wins, you don't care what division
they're playing in.

Speaker 11 (01:48:46):
And that's true.

Speaker 13 (01:48:47):
I mean I hated it when the Astros went to
the American League because I loved watching the rivalries with
the Braves and thee and the Dodgers, right.

Speaker 11 (01:48:55):
And you know, Sincinnatia Rids.

Speaker 13 (01:48:56):
But we survived and you know we kept going and
baseball lived on, and you'll live on after whatever they
do here.

Speaker 4 (01:49:04):
That's true. That's right. Thanks for the phone call. Appreciated, Charles.
You know what's funny, there are two things as the
sportscasters for as long as I have been that has
made me giggle a little bit. In nineteen ninety four,
when Major League Baseball had their strike and eventually cost
the season, I was a young sportscaster at the time,
but I would take a lot of phone calls that

(01:49:24):
were saying, I will never watch baseball again, I will
never ever ever watch you. You cost me a season.
I'm done with you. But you came back, you did,
and you came back bigger than ever. A lot of

(01:49:46):
that might have been because of Martin McGuire and Sammy
Soilsen their chase for home runs and later bury bonds.
But you came back. And then there was a huge
section of the population that when the Astro has left,
the go from the National League American League. I grew
up watching National League Baseball with my Astros. There's no way,

(01:50:08):
no hell, no chance I'm ever watching the Astros again.
And then all of a sudden, the Astros started getting
good again and going to the playoffs in twenty fifteen
and then win in the World Series in twenty seventeen.
We are a finicky bunch. We will never ever ever

(01:50:30):
do things again until something is really good and we
can't wait to miss out. There are people, I'll give
you a current reference. There are people that are losing
their damn mind over rack a Ral changing our logo.
I'm not a fan of it, but I do like
their eggs, and I do like their bacon. I let
their hash brown cast role in their pancakes. I'm still

(01:50:50):
gonna eat it. It's good food. Simon Apples, there are
bangers if you will. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes at
four third in the afternoon. Yeah, I'm eating that time.
Shut up. I don't like what they're doing, but I'm
still gonna go. Especially if those prices drop, You'll definitely
be wanting to go. Just throw that out there. Twelve

(01:51:12):
forty three on The Matt Thomas Show at raw seven
one three, two one two five seven. Honey, not only
do we have the esteemed UH traffic director for Southeast Texas,
Eddie Unya.

Speaker 1 (01:51:23):
Is with us.

Speaker 4 (01:51:23):
You came in early and seriously, what is up with that?
This is such a pleasant surprise guests coming in early
to the show. Well, if we got turns turning, Johnathan,
turn the microphone on, you're on, You're on right.

Speaker 17 (01:51:33):
If you're gonna do it, do it right. So I
just uh yeah, no traffic. I mean it's a Friday afternoon.
You would think it would be as bad. But lunchtime
getting through fifteen nine sixty nine, you the city decided
it wanted to do some road works, okay, said it
was interesting, So I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:51:48):
We we should reference that you lived in Aberquerque and
Baton Rouge. Uh not huge traffic. Metropolis is the last
two times.

Speaker 17 (01:51:56):
No, No, there you can actually average a lot, a
lot higher in your miles per hour than many places
you're because there you've got runways to go mass good.

Speaker 4 (01:52:05):
See. I haven't seen you in a long time. I
know you've been on vacation. That's about That's that's not
That's not true at all. I wish it was the case.
You out you're out there raising money all love the place.
I'm trying this.

Speaker 17 (01:52:15):
I took this summer to uh do everything I could
possibly do, to meet with as many people and Uh,
we still got a lot of work, but it's been
it's been a great response by the community, really great.

Speaker 4 (01:52:26):
And and he's with us for the next hour and change.
If you'd like to come in and say hello, seven
one three, two one two five seven on And look,
everybody knows this audience and I'm on a bashed university
Houston's I will I will over expose the program when
I can, but I do want to get some bigger
picture picture issues about the industry and stuff. But let's
just go to you first, and Uh, you've been on
the job. Just think a little bit over a year,

(01:52:47):
which is you got in what was the first thing
you did, was the right thing you had to do
right away? And take us to the last twelve months
without spending the entire hour talking about your last twelve months.

Speaker 17 (01:52:58):
Yeah, I think when I go out here, more than
anything else was understanding what was in place and knowing
that there was a huge change coming in our industry.
And so we had to look, take a step back,
look at my staff, understand who they were, what their
responsibilities were, but were we set up for where we
were going as an industry? That was more important than

(01:53:21):
to me. And then trying to get a bunch of
great wins. When I looked at our department, there were
a lot of things that were just going through the
motion and so everything and I know people talk about
all the time, but the merchandise, licensing, little things that
made a big difference for our fan base. It wasn't hard.
It was getting with the right people on campus making
things happen. So when I first got here, my initiative

(01:53:43):
was to get to know people, build trust, understand what
was in place, and that process of restructuring the department,
which is ongoing because it never changes, and establishing a
culture standing, setting a standard. It is something I started
then and we just honestly really emphasized that over the
last probably six months, more than anything else.

Speaker 4 (01:54:02):
As I told you when you first got the job,
I thought the biggest benefit you had you didn't to
worry about your head coaches, at least at the football
and men's basketball side. A lot of times Av's will
come in survey the territory. Now you had to make
some changes in other sports. But to have those two spots,
Willie's great reputation comes in, doesn't do it right away,
but turns everywhere He goes into winning programs. You got

(01:54:23):
Calvin Sampson sitting there playing for national championship, So that
had to be a huge weight off your shoulders. And
I'm to worry about man, I'm the new guy in
town and I got to figure out I gotta keep
my football on basketball coaches.

Speaker 17 (01:54:34):
Yeah, they And I've said this before, those two coaches,
I had the privilege to sit down with them before
I was actually sitting in front of everybody else. They
were two that were part of the process at the
end there where I got to talk to them. I
knew many people who knew them, so I got to
understand a little bit more about both of them. I'm fortunate,
fortunate to have two coaches that have unbelievable experience, have

(01:54:56):
had success everywhere they've gone, are supportive of each other.

Speaker 4 (01:55:00):
You know this very very well.

Speaker 17 (01:55:02):
When you can be in an athletic department where those
two coaches don't communicate, they don't talk, and it becomes
a really tough time getting everybody else to buy in.
So when you see those two coaches and then we do.
We have a great group of coaches right now. We
have exceptional coaches that have a vision where we're trying
to go, but it starts. It starts with those two
on the top. And I've said this before what Willy

(01:55:23):
has done in his time here in establishing the culture,
the expectations going into Kansas State, going in beating I
mean beating Kansas State, going into TC. Excuse me, both
of those wins last year, even though it was only
four wins at the end of the year, those two
were program changers. And I truly believe it because it's
it helped establish what he's doing today, the recruiting and

(01:55:44):
everything else. And I'm fortunate, fortunate to have those two
guys working alongside me.

Speaker 4 (01:55:49):
And then the basketball squad says, we're gonna win the
entire region, We're gonna go to the national semi final,
We're going to play for a national championship. Obviously, the
end result was not what we wanted, but I mean,
what a what a fun, aggravating but still an amazing ride.
And the fact that and I look, I literally flew
into San Antornio the day of the game for the
game to see the city, the animal area, and you've

(01:56:11):
been to Santurnia plenty of times. I mean, you could
not walk two steps without seeing University Houston people that
that may have been the greatest group of people at
a neutral side event that I have ever seen. Universe
used an act.

Speaker 17 (01:56:23):
There are a lot of things fell into place when
we when we were moving through the process of the
n C doub a we want, we were trying to
focus on how do we maximize that exposure. We're fortunate
to get there if coach finds a way with the team,
and uh, you know, we found a way to get there,
and and in a hard environment going Inonnapolis, coming out
of that bracket was a very challenging task, and we

(01:56:46):
put our effort in, Okay, if we get to this point,
let's let's put all our eggs in every in this
basket to push it, push it hard. When fans were
driving through the city all the way from here to
San Antonio and seeing signs that said go koog's all
the way up to when you got when you arrived
in San Antonio that first couple of days, it was.
It was a good mixture of Auburn fans and Florida

(01:57:08):
fans and everything else in Duke. But what started and
kept going and kept going, kept going was our fans
kept coming intros and I it was so I remember
walking around. I was actually walking the day but the
day before the championship game, and I stopped at a
church and I just walked in because it was an
old church downtown and I decided had gone for a run,

(01:57:30):
walked in there, took take a look at somebody. Some
a Kook fan walks by and goes, are you going
to do your prayers for tomorrow's game? And I said,
if it helps, I will stop here here and do it.
But more than anything else, he was so excited to
see me and taking pictures. And I just realized it
was eight in the morning and here are Kook fans
just supporting each other.

Speaker 4 (01:57:47):
So great experience, and now we just got to keep
building off it. You always hear about how sports give
his publicity to a particular college, and everybody with those
economic firms say, hey, this is the money that indirectly
we got this out of that. Do you buy in
all those kind of things? And if you do, which
I'm gonna assume that you do, what did you get
out of that? When someone says that the University of

(01:58:08):
Houston received twelve million dollars worth of exposure because of this,
how do you not necessarily be I monetize it, but
how do you go okay now that we can put
this money in the areas or we can say, hey,
this experience has given us a chance to raise money
for our other schools, for our enrollment, for our academic
program athletic programs.

Speaker 17 (01:58:27):
So I can take it back all the way to
you remember this Boston College with the Flutie effect and
when that game, and even since then, you've seen Boise,
You've seen others that have had that success moment, either
be in football or basketball, and it's allowed the university
to grow, now athletics, the university as a whole. And

(01:58:50):
so when we started again embarked on the NCAA journey,
one of the things that I want to do is
work with our conference office, the Big twelve, work with
an independent company, work with campus to collect as much
data as we can to see if these numbers really drive.
And there's four numbers that I always tell everyone. There's
the viewership, and there's exposure. And if you start with

(01:59:12):
that viewership number, you think twenty one million people watched
our basketball game. That is the highest viewed basketball game,
not college pro and college last year, the third eighteen million.
Then you go to that next bracket where I tell
people all the time, okay, we had twenty eight million
engagements on our social media platforms just in athletics, in basketball.

(01:59:34):
Add another figure, the enrollment applications increase fourteen percent in
the last two weeks, and it's only continuing to get better.
Then I add the last one, which is most important,
six point one billion dollars worth of advertising value. And
that's where you're going with this, And you're like, well,
what does that mean in all, Well, that means if I,
with everything and all the exposure from media to print

(01:59:56):
to television, independent company who does this came back presented
those numbers. It wasn't me in the corner over there
saying okay, let me add these two things together. It
was giving us the data, us being able to put
it back out there. And so what that equates to
is it's not going to just help us today. There's
not somebody who's writing a six point one billion dollar
check said hey, thanks, congrats. But what it does is

(02:00:17):
it allows our partners, our donors, everyone understand that if
athletics is done properly, it could be a window to
the world, and we have produced a great opportunity with
our men's basketball time and time again that it's shown
it's presenting opportunities for this university, for our partners and
for the city. So this is not something that's going

(02:00:38):
to pay back just today. This is going to be residual.
It will continue to build and build and build. Enrollment
will get better, and people will say, well, you only
have you probably have a cap with enrollment. Well, you know,
what you're also doing is you're raising the quality of
the students that are interested. Because now it doesn't become
just a regional or city, it becomes a national international
and so everything we can do to lift this university

(02:00:59):
is part of the process, and I believe those exposures
give us a chance.

Speaker 4 (02:01:03):
Ed in Unya is with us for un till two
o'clock this afternoon. If you want to come in and
say hello, you may do it two ways through my
Twitter account at sports MT or you can call us
at seven one three two one two five is seven ninety.
Eddie has been worked at some of the great institutions
in this country and give us a perspective on the
landscape of college athletics. And we'll do that and talk
some more you of h until two o'clock right here
on Sports Talk seven ninety. All right, our good friend

(02:01:29):
any Nyunya is vice president inter Collegiate Athletics with us
this hour on the radio program to talk all things
about college athletics. So I tease the audience, I said,
you know, I'm going to ask you to bring me
a dummies guide to NIL and paying athletes and what

(02:01:50):
you can do and when you can't say, and what
you can do and how you can leave them do
your collective. I don't know if there's a book like that,
but when there is one, can you send me a
copy because I'm confusing hell right now?

Speaker 17 (02:02:00):
Well, I think you're in the same basket as a
lot of people. And I feel bad because people ask
me about it and I don't have an answer because
my general response is is that if an athlete wants
to go somewhere, they'll figure out a way to get
it done, and that the schools will figure out a
way to find that money for the kid. So there's
real The cliff Notes version of it is nil's come

(02:02:24):
a long way, even in the last several years. If
you think of back when this first it happened. It
happened with at Obannon and he challenged Dancey doable a
and that opened up Pandora's box and last several years
we've lived in a world of nil. At that nil
world that we've lived in started well with a lot
of unknown. It went into a whole different era of

(02:02:46):
kind of more paying, got close to pay for play,
but it wasn't. There was still a lot of business
actions that were working. And then where we are today,
that opened up many lawsuits. Of course, throughout the last
several years in the house case, the subtle opened up
an opportunity called REUSS share, and this is where we
are today. Resh share is basically an opportunity for every

(02:03:07):
athletic department if they choose to revenue share up to
a certain percentage with your student athletes. That percentage, that
amount is roughly about twenty two percent of the Power
five or Power four now athletic department revenues. So it
equates to this year twenty point five million dollars that
we are allowed. That is our cap to revenue share

(02:03:29):
with our student athletes. You can spend all twenty point
five you can I can spend zero one. I can
spend zero. But as a Power four member that is
the ACC, the Big Twelve, the Big Ten, in the SEC,
those four conferences are mandatory. If you are a member
one of those that you are going to be revenue sharing. Again,

(02:03:50):
doesn't say how much, but I have to revenue share something.
We made a decision at the University of Houston to
be all in, just like everybody else in the Big
Twelve and basically everybody else in the Power for that's
going to give us a chance to compete. Now, that
was hard. We had to do some things within our budget.
We had to work with our campus, We had to
work with our board to make sure we were able
to do what we were trying to do. That revenue sharing,

(02:04:13):
how it's distributed to every one of our teams. It
depends on each institution, but across the board, there's a
pretty basic standard that football is your highest revenue sport, Basketball,
men's basketball, and so on and so on and so
on all the way down, and so those two are
going to always have the higher percentages. Some schools will
always do football at a much much higher revenue distribution

(02:04:37):
than what others do. For us, we want to invest
more in basketball still keeping football at a high, high
level at the same time being able to do something
for most sports. We've also added scholarships. That's part of
this process too, for with this has allowed us to
open up some scholarship limitations that were there in the previously.

(02:04:57):
So some sports have been able to add a scholarship,
others have been able to do revenue sure, So that's
the revenue component then old NL. The NAL that we
are today though, is true business purposes. You if you,
as a business owner wants to do an NIL deal
with a student athlete, we will give you that access
to those student athletes be able to go out and

(02:05:20):
they will if it's performed a commercial or do something
for it for that work purpose, as long as it's
within that market value that the clearinghouse, a clearing house, revenue,
you know, everything else, they have a chance to be
able to do it.

Speaker 4 (02:05:36):
So we're coming a long way.

Speaker 17 (02:05:38):
But the one thing that is evident, and I keep
saying this to everybody, we don't have all the answers,
and we won't have all the answers until this continues
to get closer and closer to a federal some federal
legislation that allows bigger guidance and direction than we've ever had.

Speaker 4 (02:05:54):
So the twenty point five million dollars that's per season
correct pre academic year, yep. And for the two years though,
it's going to go at four percent in the next
two years. And that's money that is at your disposal
that you will choose to spend on programs according to
what you as an athletic director and your department says yep.

Speaker 17 (02:06:12):
And I basically tell a coach, this is what your
your revenue distribution is. You can distribute it accordingly with
your team as necessary. I don't get into the minutia
of if he wants to give this quarterback or this
running back or this power forward to this point guard.

Speaker 4 (02:06:28):
For me, it's about this is what it is. This
is your cap. You can't go over it. And when
do you give the caps? Have you given your cats
to your coaches?

Speaker 13 (02:06:34):
Ye?

Speaker 8 (02:06:35):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (02:06:35):
So that began.

Speaker 17 (02:06:36):
So starting July first of this year, we were able
to start this process. So every program and in our
department that was going to be doing revenue sharing started
that process.

Speaker 4 (02:06:47):
What if one of your coaches and we'll throw your
your football in your basketball, let's say your women's basketball coach.
You got a brand new coach. Yes, sir, I've got
this top twenty five kid that wants to come, and
I can't get an il well because it's gonna be
harder for the non rep sports. But you have the
twenty point five that says, look, I need an extra
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Can Can they come

(02:07:07):
to you with that kind of stuff. They can come.
They're not gonna get it, but so you you feel
like you have to. You have to withstand a number
that cannot go over the top. You can't make.

Speaker 17 (02:07:17):
Adjustments on the This is this is every institution. So
what I've done with every program, as I've said, this
is what you're getting. Understand, if you spend it all,
then I don't have any more to give you. Because
we're gonna maximize our revenue distribution. We're gonna do everything
we possibly begins, and I'm gonna try to split it out. Now,
if I save twenty thousand dollars at the end of

(02:07:39):
the day and say, okay, I'm gonna hold twenty over
here just in case somebody needs a little sprinkling, we
can do that. But because this is all still very
new to us. We don't know what that's gonna mean,
how it's gonna look. We also are using some of
that money because part of this house settlement, two point
five million dollars of your twenty point five has to

(02:08:00):
go to scholarships. So when I say that any new
scholarships that I open up, you have to utilize up
to two and a half million dollars. So in in essence,
I have eighteen million dollars that I can that we
can share within our department, and so our coaches within
that distribution.

Speaker 4 (02:08:18):
This is what they know.

Speaker 17 (02:08:18):
And so the likelihood of them coming at the last
minute saying, hey, I need one hundred thousand more, well,
they already knew where we were when we started this,
and come next next July first, there'll be a whole
other process. And so this is they are in a
very challenging position because it's not just that they're coaching
their team, they're managing their rosters. They're doing everything they've

(02:08:41):
been doing for years. The saturary cap too, it's a
salary cap. It's everything. And then they're saying, okay, this
young man or young woman they're gonna be leaving at
this point Okay, at that point, do the contract?

Speaker 4 (02:08:52):
How much have they have? We paid them? How much?

Speaker 17 (02:08:54):
So there's a lot of nuances that everybody's going through,
and they have to have great coaches around them. Every
one of our coaches is assigning somebody that's helping them
within their own staff. In our department, we have people
that are helping them in all these different aspects. But
you know, and I use men's basketball because they've the
success they've had, the if you look back at the

(02:09:16):
success they had, there's many reasons. But one thing that
I keep referring to, and I keep telling everybody the
consistency of his staff, the continuity of who he has
and what they do, and everyone knows their role and
they all do it a great job with It allows
coach to maximize how he communicates, who's responsible for what.
Ultimately he's his hands on everything, but he also has

(02:09:37):
trust within Kellen and others to be able to maximize
and do things that they can do well.

Speaker 4 (02:09:41):
And these kids are getting these dollars on a yearly basis.
Can their number fluctuate? Yeah? Oh yeah, everybody's done.

Speaker 17 (02:09:47):
Okay, So these are all negotiated with their their representatives
or their agents. Some coaches decide, you know what I'm
gonna do, use a round about number thousand dollars for
every kid.

Speaker 4 (02:09:56):
Well, that's great.

Speaker 17 (02:09:57):
Some people will say, Matt, you're wor you're worth ten thousand, Eddie,
you're only worth a thousand. Great's that's a decision that
was worked and when I come in, and that's what
I decide with my representation and coach. If I say, Okay,
this is good, I'm gonna sign it, they sign a contract.
Everybody's on a contractuse there one year deals, so they
are all one year deals essentially. So that's the reason why, frankly,
we're seeing so many general managers now in college football,

(02:10:19):
absolutely beacause I mean, I love Willy, but I don't
want Willy Bounds into books.

Speaker 4 (02:10:24):
I want Willy drawing up plays and gerb recruiting kids
to come to school.

Speaker 17 (02:10:27):
You need, you need others that have more of I
don't want to say expertise, I mean that's the easiest
way to say it, but that have an understanding of
what managing this. And that's why I spent this summer
time with a lot of the professional organizations here in
town and others outside of the city. Asking questions, trying
to understand ressher and how all that works. And I

(02:10:49):
mean I sat down with Patrick Fotida for a little
while because many times, but one of the times was
to understand some of the dynamics and the nuances that
they deal with with the rockets. This is this isn't
another since what they do and so, and they do
a great job of it. They maximize their their the
contracts that they have in place, they're maximizing and getting

(02:11:09):
the most out of kids.

Speaker 4 (02:11:11):
Well, if you talk to him next time, tell him
his radio broadcaster could use a little bit more money
in his next contract. So I know, if you're gonna
see Patrick or not, if you could drop that in,
I will. I will try to do what I can
on the nil, which is completely separate. There's a clearinghouse,
yes sir, that we'll say we don't think you can
pay a golfer seventy five thousand dollars when there's really

(02:11:31):
no marketability towards that golfer unless the program is very
popular and this person doesn't have an Instagram follow of
a two hundred and fifty thousand. The clearinghouse tells, you know,
but if I want that kid bad enough. Should we
be concerned that there's gonna be the backroom deals, there's
gonna be the handshake deals, there's gonna be the well
this kid wants to come here, even though the clearinghouse

(02:11:52):
said no, we'll.

Speaker 17 (02:11:53):
Take care of that person. Well, again, the clearinghouse is
saying no to that deal. The first thing they do
is you're you're gonna if let's just use an example,
Coke col is a great partner of ours to throw
a plug in for them there, sure, and so they
if they if they come to you, Matt, say hey, Matt,
we want to sponsor any one of your players. Okay, well,

(02:12:14):
I have to get this young man or young woman.
Coke col is willing to put five thousand dollars. Let's
just say into an nil deal. The nil deal will
be written up. You'll put in there, or they'll put
in there what they expect from it that's submitted to
the to the clearhouse. Clear house will basically say, okay,
is it a true market purpose, business purpose?

Speaker 4 (02:12:35):
Is it in the range of compensation? Now, this is
where you're where you were going with this.

Speaker 17 (02:12:38):
Yes, we have a bigger range of compensation, probably because
of the city size here in the demographics and everything else.
We should help you, it should help us, and that's
what we're looking to partner more with some bigger partners
here in the city, not just the small and the mediums,
but everyone. At the same time, there's other schools that
it can help as well. When you have brands like

(02:12:59):
other schools that other institutions or other conferences that have
a lot more tradition or their fan bases are more robust,
they might have a a same claim.

Speaker 4 (02:13:09):
They could say we have a stronger fan base like
Alabama has the entire state is compared to your competing
with all these Texas schools, and.

Speaker 17 (02:13:15):
They have had success in a certain sport and they
show it in this And so that's the dynamics that
we don't know yet how it's gonna come to life.
I do believe this first part is going to be
a little bit rocky and bumpy with with everybody. As
we go through it, they're gonna come back and say
it doesn't meet the range conversation, can you please redo
this or it's not accepted. So we have a chance

(02:13:36):
once we get it back the first time, we can
redo it at some more some more things that the
student athlete has to do resubmit it, and if they
see it then and say, okay, this now makes sense.
You're doing a lot more work that money equates to that.
You're good. If they reject it at that point, then
it's done. So you got you have an opportunity to
address it and modify it before it's officially Nolan Wood and.

Speaker 4 (02:13:58):
As a clearinghouse process works pretty well.

Speaker 2 (02:13:59):
So far.

Speaker 17 (02:14:00):
You've had about I want to say, about four thousand
present deals that they've cleared. They've probably not cleared about
one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty that I've
heard roughly, and there's some that are still in the middle,
going back and forth.

Speaker 4 (02:14:17):
So now you're not concerned about somebody being mad about
the amount of money you're giving to a kid on
this and this nil and worrying about back back backroom deals. No,
I'm worried about it. I think everybody's worried about it.
There is there's gonna be penalties.

Speaker 17 (02:14:31):
Now, there's gonna be penalties with all this, and the
cs the College Sports Commission's going to have that's going
to be their task to make sure that everybody plays
within the rules. And it stays within the guardrails. Our
coaches are worried. But I will say this now too.
At the same time as I'm worried and everything else,
I can't sit here, you know, complaining or just frustrated,

(02:14:53):
because we have to move forward, we have to evolve.
And coach said this the other night, Coach Sampson said this,
and I thought it was great. You know, he said,
you're not gonna steal my joy. And I think that
resonates so much in what we do. We'd love what
we do, and our kids love what they do. In
our player and our coaches and everybody else, and so
we're gonna have to find a way to do this,
but do it right, all right.

Speaker 4 (02:15:12):
More with Eddie Munya is coming up here on Sports
Talk seventy. If there's something that you think I should
ask the athletic director at our beloved institution, you may
do so at sports empty on at Twitter and seven
one three two one two five seven Nuntie one seventeen
here on seven ninety Sports Talk seven ninety. We are
very happy to have Eddie Unyiez with US Vice President
incalleege Athletics with us on the show Football Operations center

(02:15:34):
opens up. There's been some soft opening you and a
few things here and there, but today as the meeting,
it's an opportunity. I would assume that most of us
will not be able to get in there unless you
you know, you want to see no somebody, unless you
know somebody, and I know a few people. But that's
neither here nor there.

Speaker 8 (02:15:51):
You have to have it.

Speaker 4 (02:15:52):
I mean, there's there's no way fans or butts. I mean,
this is fifteen years ago. It was about facilities and
still is. But now it's obviously the nil and all
that kind of stuff has moved along. But to have
a palace like that, and the videos in the social
media department, it's done a fantastic job of kind of
get love it's inside of it. I mean, from your perspective,
are you blown away by this thing? They it's first

(02:16:13):
of all, it's not necessarily evil.

Speaker 17 (02:16:15):
They as much as we we understand the sometimes when
you look and say, well, is it worth it? Absolutely
hundred percent because where you see where we were and
where we are today.

Speaker 4 (02:16:28):
It's not in day. They've been in the same facilities
for a long long time. I mean, and I can
go back six coaches ago, probably exactly, and so our
weight room and they've done a great job. They are
shared by every sport except men's basketball and women's basketball.
Because they had their when they built the Guy by Lewis,
they were able to add a weight from there. But

(02:16:48):
when you think about the ability to do everything in
one location, the everything from the locker room, the training room, recovery, nutrition, academics, everything,
one stop shops. It makes everything more efficient, more effective.
And our coaches are are in heaven right now. And

(02:17:08):
so if you compare it apples apples with every other school.
I think we're better than most and probably will compete
with all. So I will tell you that, and that
is privately held companies coming in helping out the cause.
I mean, I don't think you're in your budget. You had,
you had maybe sums foundation for it, But it feels
like to me and any look, you've never shared your

(02:17:29):
daytime or with me or what you're doing on a
day to day basis. But the year plus I've known you,
it feels like you have had to just be a
really good salesman, which part of being an AD is
all about. But you have really and I think that
Renew probably wanted you and tell me one same thing.
We need to get some cash influx into this program.
And I think you've done a very good job of that.
And so is that ever going to not be a
part of your job? No, no, no, Look, that's we

(02:17:50):
all knew this even twenty years ago. It was part
of the job.

Speaker 17 (02:17:53):
Maybe some did it better than others and they were
able to put more back into their programs. We wouldn't
be where we are today with the without the Memorial
Hermans and our donors and some of these others that
have really stepped up immensely to help us get to
where we are today. This summer, I've said this so
many I mean my month of June and my month
of July. I had I had forty one events in

(02:18:14):
the month of June, forty two events in the month July.
I wasn't trying to have a certain number, but somebody
asked me this, and I went back and I started
counting them up. That's breakfast, lunch is, dinners, events, functions,
And I look back and many of these are with
Fortune five hundred companies, Fortune two hundred, five hundred thousand.
I am trying to get in front of everybody, so

(02:18:35):
I can show them that we are the university for
Houston and that means we're having we're hoping to elevate
everything around us and so trying to show them the
impact that they can be, how we can partner with
each other help their companies. But this isn't just about
a flex this is about the university. I mean center point.
Many of these companies have you know, hundreds and hundreds

(02:18:58):
of employees are UH grads. So we want to continue
that pipeline. Let's partner it up, Let's do more. And
so the more we can do that, we're going to
set a record this year with fundraising outside of a
without a capital project. It's going to show everybody that
there isn't an intent that people want to see college
athletics moving, and especially Houston Cougar athletics.

Speaker 4 (02:19:21):
Is it a hard sell for you to walk into
a group, a business, a company that doesn't have any
Cougar ties?

Speaker 7 (02:19:26):
No?

Speaker 17 (02:19:27):
No, I mean we've we've got probably three partnerships right
now that we have gone in the last we probably
a month or so that have no UH ties. And
it's purposeful. Why Because I want to show them that
this is beyond the Hey, you want to be a
Florida graduate. You want to be a Kentucky graduate. You
want to be a Texas graduate. Wonderful here you've got

(02:19:49):
A and M and all those other ones. Great, But
if your home base is here, for your instances, for
your your company, you probably have a good number of
employees that are UH grads, or if you're trying to
bring people to work here, you want to have a
great community that they could sell them. And if our university,
what our present chancellor has done, what she has done

(02:20:09):
to elevate this camp, this university to the rankings that
it has, it should we should be. They want to
be a part of it. They need to be a
part of this. And so me going in there and
trying to sell them and showing them what we can do,
how we can do things. Where we are today and
where we're going. The vision of our department is we're
not here just to be where we are today. We're
here to be you know, we're going to continue to grow,
We're going to make this place great. And so we

(02:20:31):
haven't had any challenges at all.

Speaker 4 (02:20:33):
I have sat many a time with my Cougar brethren,
especially in my age group, and you tell me if
this is a fair unfair conversation point. When I was
going to University of Houston in the nineteen nineties, we
were dormant in football and basketball for the large part.
I mean dormant, I mean Hall finds Robertson not winning games,
empty buildings. That was a generation of University Houston graduates

(02:20:55):
that didn't go to athletic events, that did graduate, that
made lots of money, that were maybe generational guys, but
because they were not in tune with the athletics of
the late nineteen nineties, it's hard for them to get
into twenty twenty five to come say, oh, I remember
back when when I was going to the games and
I wanted to make sure that I promised myself I
was going to donate. Do you run to that sort
of issue because there was such a large dormant period

(02:21:17):
in the athletic program that that young group never gravitated
towards university use and athletics, and thus doesn't have the
emotional attachment that other kids that watched Penn State, Michigan, Alabama, LSU,
USC UCLA have that sustained success run no matter what
decade it was.

Speaker 17 (02:21:34):
Yeah, yes we have, we have come across individuals that
have that feeling, that that understanding.

Speaker 4 (02:21:42):
That's no different.

Speaker 17 (02:21:43):
Honestly, even when I worked at LSU, you have people
that you come across that didn't have a connection officially
to athletics. They went to school there, and even with
the history they had there, you often scratch your head
and say, do you understand why? And so for us
here that period of time where maybe there was some
people that weren't as in tuned or connected to athletics,

(02:22:07):
that's okay. We are here to bring you back to
enjoy and be and enjoy what we have been able
to build. Our earthletic departments had success in every sport
they have had, an airsport me and heck we we've
got one of the most championships in golf men's golf,
and people often forget those kind of things, and so
we just want anyone who has had an opportunity to

(02:22:30):
come through the University of Houston make sure that they
understand that they can show their their affection, their their
their joy, their passion for for the Cougs by just
coming and enjoying a game. And that's and so we've
got it. We're doing more to try and improve the
fan x atmosphere. We want them to come and enjoy it.
I say it, I say it often. It's not just

(02:22:51):
about the money that you can give, but coming out
and supporting the Kougs whenever you can at all events,
because that that's going to make an impact more in
our student athletes and how they play and how they
perform than anything else.

Speaker 4 (02:23:04):
Marian in Union has coming up in a couple of minutes.
We're going to talk about our relationship with the school
and the Big Twelve Conference. If he has a thought
or two about the SEC going the nine conference games,
the landscape of the college football playoff, will discuss that
coming back. Our time is one thirty two seven one three, two,
two five seven nine. If you've got a question for Eddie,
We've got some people coming in on Twitter. I want
to ask a couple of things. We'll get that in
as well. One thirty six A couple more segments here

(02:23:30):
with Eddie Unia as vice president Intercalage Athletics at the
University of Houston, with us here on Sports Talk seven
Ounty cougar Is are going to take on SFA next Thursday,
seven o'clock a lone star Sampede. Uh how much have
you gotten involved in football scheduling? I'm just curious, actually
quite a bit. I've been.

Speaker 8 (02:23:51):
Well.

Speaker 4 (02:23:51):
We The good part is.

Speaker 17 (02:23:54):
There are just one or two pieces that we had
to add over for the next several years, so we
don't really have an opening until twenty So right now
I'm working on twenty thirty, twenty thirty one, twenty thirty two.
So when you think about scheduling, I'm that far ahead
right now because of some of the things that already
in place and so and some things that we already added.
So but yeah, we're looking at power four programs in

(02:24:16):
the ACC, the Big ten, the SEC that we can
look at partnering, I mean too next I think next
year maybe we got LSU at Energy.

Speaker 4 (02:24:23):
Right, how do you feel about those the Energy folks writing?
You check them out. It's nice checks. But there's also
a part that says, you know, like when Texas came
to play just a couple of years ago, there was
no way, no how that game was gonna play anywhere.
But the TDS you stay, right, how do you balance
the you really offered me this to put the game there?

Speaker 17 (02:24:41):
Okay, maybe talk Yeah, So it's it's harder to get
some of those premiere games on your campuses, and the
money that the television plus the those Bowl groups are pushing,
really make it intriguing that you have to consider it.
We underst s whiles you wanted to play this game,

(02:25:02):
they wanted. They have a strong fan base in this community.
I work with eighty percent of them here.

Speaker 4 (02:25:09):
And I get I was here. I came through here
quite a bit when I was there. Yea.

Speaker 17 (02:25:14):
But for us, if we're gonna, if we're gonna play
that game, I mean, the reality is else you wasn't
coming to TDCU Stadium. So to have this and be
able to make hopefully more that's what that's what's anticipated
from that game than what it would be for a
home game, then that it makes sense. And we're just
driving down the street to do this in in Vegas

(02:25:35):
or Atlanta or one of these other you know, major cities.
There are all possibilities, but it has to offset all
costs and actually make you more money than you would make.

Speaker 4 (02:25:43):
And part of that though, if you if the Kickoff
Classic wanted you to play a game against I don't know,
Auburn in Week one and start the college football season,
that'd be hard to turn down. But just to take
a Rando game, it's gotta be special anyway. Big twelve
Brent Armak has been around a couple of years now.
He is always he's spinning the wheel. Unconventional would be

(02:26:04):
the term I maybe would use for him. Always think
about things. Some things I go, man, that makes a
lot of sense. Some things I don't give me. A
couple of things that he's you and I've talked to him,
talked about.

Speaker 2 (02:26:14):
It, said, oh that makes it.

Speaker 4 (02:26:15):
That makes some sense, And I'd like to kick the
tires on that.

Speaker 17 (02:26:19):
No, I'm I'm probably the one that's scratching my head
a lot of the times, because you know, as a purist,
you kind of look at things. You're like, Okay, well
why why you start questioning until you start realizing, okay,
there's a I see the way he views it. Yeah,
and he goes in I mean, that's the one thing
that you gotta love. He's not doing anything half assed.
He's gonna go in there, he's gonna work to figure

(02:26:40):
out how we can do something that's going to generate
more revenue for this conference and more exposure and you know,
even the basketball court. Many people first when they saw
our our our tournament court, our conference tournament court for
men's about women's basketball, and in all the big twelves
all over it. Everybody thought it was crazy, but everybody
was talking about it, and and it was on everything
on every social media, and it generated exactly what he

(02:27:03):
was looking for, people talking about our tournament outside of
just basketball. It's not just basketball, it's everything surrounds it.
So I've been very impressed with the way he he
he approaches opportunities and and sees him in differently than
many others. It's helped us in this league continue to
make strides where probably others have not. I mean the

(02:27:24):
PayPal deal that we did that's going to bring us
each institution, you know, seven figures. It's it was something
at the time was hard for everybody to wrap their
arms around. But this is this is something that that
makes sense, and so we're fortunate to have someone that
thinks the way he does.

Speaker 4 (02:27:42):
Do you think he wants to expand I think he
doesn't want to stay.

Speaker 17 (02:27:49):
Flat? Yeah, he did, and I agree with that. The
last thing we can do is just keep going through
the motions. We're never going to succeed if we just
keep going through the motions and so continuing to always
look to see what's best for the conference, how we
can continue to grow. I mean, people heard about the
Memphis the all. I'll throw that out there. I mean
it was it was intriguing, but there was still a
lot of questions and actually probably more questions than answers.

(02:28:13):
And so for us to be able to as a
league to go down a path with an institution or
something like that, it has to make sense, and it
has and it's not just about that one institution, It's
about the next one or the next one of the
next one.

Speaker 4 (02:28:25):
Yeah, am I supposed to as a college football fan,
and especially someone that likes to take small digs at
what the big ten sec think they run the world?
Am I supposed to appreciate a sixteen team playoff ultimately?

Speaker 7 (02:28:37):
Or what?

Speaker 4 (02:28:37):
Am I supposed to? How I'm supposed to feel right now?
I don't know.

Speaker 17 (02:28:41):
Tomorrow it might change again, somebody else will throw another
another plan out there, that big time.

Speaker 4 (02:28:45):
One with twenty four to twenty eight. I was just
shaking my head on that one. That was crazy.

Speaker 17 (02:28:49):
It's they all have again their positives and negatives. I mean,
you're gonna think about it Uh, you have to start
thinking to do that. Many games, we're how do you
balance the bull the other bulls that that are in there.
How do you balance conference championships? How do you balance
every league? The Group of six everything else? So there's

(02:29:10):
a lot of nuances. And look, the SEC and the
Big ten have done their part and they're they're they're
pushing a certain way, but we were all in this together.
So it has to be all of us coming to
to the to the finish line with something that we
all can support. And that's that's why right now, I
think there's a lot of back and forth. I brought
up football scheduling. Do you like the current rotation for

(02:29:31):
conference opponents? Do you like the way that goes? Or
do you want to see I'll play the politically correct answer.
I'm still I'm still appreciating and I've only been in
the league for a year, so for me understand the rotation,
understanding how things I've got questions, of course, both good
and bad on the on the football side and the
basketball side. I mean, I think there's things that that

(02:29:54):
could be done a little bit differently, but that's part
of me just over analyzing certain aspect. So of it
as a new person, fresh set of eyes looking at things.

Speaker 4 (02:30:02):
Yeah, but it's good. It's fine. What has been your
biggest adjustment? You were a senior associate at LSU, you
had your own ship, your shop at New Mexico and
now the University of Houston. Can you describe in subtleties
beyond the leadership responsibilities, the changes from working at a
mid major to now working at a P four school.

Speaker 17 (02:30:22):
So having had the ability to work as in a
Power five back in the days when you've thought about Vanderbilt,
to understanding an SEC job with way less resources like Vanderbilt,
going to LSU a lot more resources and seeing it
grow over the fourteen years that I was there to

(02:30:42):
being one of the top tier institutions financially competitively. Leaving
there and going to New Mexico, that was a great
learning opportunity for me.

Speaker 4 (02:30:52):
I got there and.

Speaker 17 (02:30:55):
Because of my time at Vanderbilt allowed me to understand
the differences and the finances and everything else. But it
was it's allowed me as a leader to be able
to come in here and see things differently and know
that I've been at the Power four Power five, I
understand what we're striving for but we don't have the resources.

Speaker 4 (02:31:14):
So I can build it. We can grow this.

Speaker 17 (02:31:17):
So every every everything that I've been a part of
has been a growing, growing experience. And I also reflect
that you have to take some risks, and I've been
able to take some risks that have been strategic and
have helped us succeed.

Speaker 4 (02:31:31):
All right, final something. We got a lot of random
questions that are coming in through my account, so we'll
get a few of those in before wrap things up.
Final some with Anie Union as vice president, Interclage Athletics
with us here automat Thomas Show with Ross with the
word right now for the shell Federal credit. Brian mctagger
at MLB dot com, Proud of University uston grind like myself,
wants to know about the future of the baseball stadium.
Any ideas on that we're going to implode it next week? No, oh,

(02:31:54):
there you go. That's what we don't need. We don't
need the cougar message going crazy.

Speaker 17 (02:31:58):
No, no, Look, there's a several things that we can
do there that we need to improve more than first. First,
the priority out there will be making sure the playability
stuff for the student athletes or where they need to
be so the turf's going to be one of the
things in the future. Lighting, the video board needs to
be improved. But also the stands we've got, we've got

(02:32:18):
to continue to creep in there somehow some way to
keep modernizing the whole stadium.

Speaker 4 (02:32:24):
So we've got ideas.

Speaker 17 (02:32:27):
All those wonderful ideas come with this quite great little
thing that has a dollar side associated with it.

Speaker 4 (02:32:34):
So ask any about the progress of the merchandising and
what's next in that area. If I have seen anything
from you on social media, is I got it right now?
I got to get the cougar gear out. That's good.

Speaker 8 (02:32:44):
I like it.

Speaker 4 (02:32:45):
Yeah, I'm doing it right now.

Speaker 17 (02:32:46):
I this is one of those areas that I think
I've bought because I took it upon myself in the
beginning to push hard with merchandise and work with the
university to get it where it was. And now we're
starting to see these great successes, all these wonderful companies
that have decided they wanted to partner up with us,
and we've grown it. It will be an all time
high in licensing and merchandising over some figures. And again

(02:33:12):
it's not just that we're making money. It's we're opening
up our brand exposure everywhere we go. I actually walked
into a store the other day and it didn't have
had other universities, and I actually stopped and said, can
I speak to your manager?

Speaker 4 (02:33:26):
And I started asking about you know you were or no.
He had no clue.

Speaker 17 (02:33:29):
Okay, And but the funny part is I said, can
we get you somebody in contact with you HS? And
he said, yeah, absolutely love to He just I didn't know.
I said this to a group that I spoke to
a week ago. I walked through when I first took
this job. I walked I remember coming here for the
interview in the day and a couple of days after
for the press conference, and I walked Hobby Airport and

(02:33:52):
h and not one item you could find anywhere that
was UH cougar stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:33:57):
Well you change it because I'm flying all the time
and I see U H stuff all the time. Point
and an emphasis is really pushing people to push more merchandise.
So we're doing a lot of great things. Got great partners. Yeah,
I know.

Speaker 17 (02:34:07):
My social media, I think most of the most of
the the comments at times are where can I get X,
Y and Z. When it comes to merchandising and everything else.
And we've got a local group that's uh that's done
a great job with with the merchandise and they love
going back and forth because and so anybody that's willing
to do something and get licensed properly, and let's go,

(02:34:27):
let's make it happen.

Speaker 4 (02:34:28):
All right, I just added you as a follower, eighty
eight hundred followers. You gotta get more. We gonna get
your power for school.

Speaker 17 (02:34:33):
Come on, now, I do have a lot of people,
but the reality is I probably need to spend more
time on it too, And I choose.

Speaker 4 (02:34:39):
That's interesting quick thought. I mean you would kind of
briefly gloss of us any thought about general managers for
your particular sports to manage the ANIL stuff.

Speaker 17 (02:34:48):
Yeah, at this time, I will work with our coaches.
If and when the time becomes that we want to
broach that subject further, we will. But at the same
time that means we have to create positions, and at
this point we're not trying to create positions, We're trying
to maximize who we have. The coaches have trust within
those within their staff to make it to get what

(02:35:09):
they're choosing to get to. So I'm good with it
any rough problems with the NCAA trying to convince that
you guys not the host at South Regional at Tota
Center next year. No, but I hadn't been the chair
on the men's basketball oversite for two years. I took
it upon myself to push in the right ways and
question why the women's basketball can can host and their

(02:35:29):
teams can play in their own tournaments. Every sport in
the NC DOUBLEA the institution that hosts can play in
their own tournament. Why men's basketball has to be different.
You can do it in football the CFP now, so
you there's no reason, rhyme or reason that we shouldn't
be able to host and compete in that regional. But

(02:35:51):
if they told us, they said they're going to look
into in the future. For me, I want the ability
for coach Sampson and our student athletes to compete here
in our city.

Speaker 4 (02:36:00):
And if it means not hosting, so be it. Rice.

Speaker 17 (02:36:03):
We had a great conversation with they're eighty and I
have known each other for years. They were they were
extremely willing and ready to help out, and so we're
going to support them. However, we can't does that financially
hurt a lot, a little bit, not at all. Yeah,
there's an on arium that comes with it. It's it's
roughly about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and it's
it's a it's great. It helps you pay for some
of the work that you're putting into it as well.

(02:36:25):
So it's it's frustrating that we have to give that up,
but at the end of the day, more importantan anything else,
has given our kids the experience to be able to
play at home than our coaches.

Speaker 4 (02:36:33):
I appreciate him by very much. It was a great conversation.
I'm fully up to speed now on NIL on the portal.
We didn't even talk about the portal. That's for another time.
Oh look it at the books that we're in. The
uage gear.

Speaker 2 (02:36:43):
I can't.

Speaker 4 (02:36:44):
I saw him walk in Coop grad. Good job, you're
such a pozy here and you're supposed to be the UH.
I get it, king would I mean, can we get
a hat or something? Well, well, I should have brought it.
We need some fresher gear, but that's another issue for
the other time. University of Houston against s F A S.
Please this Thursday, seven o'clock. UH tickets at Uhcougars dot

(02:37:06):
com or seven to one three gokue money of tickets.
Please come out. We look forward to seeing you, and
not just this one, but all of them, every single
one of them. It'll be a long time, all right.
Up next Wexler, our fellow u H Brethren, along with
Adam Klan, the A Team is up next. Talk to
y'all tomorrow for Astros on seven ninety