IIRC, Lopez is now a writer for Texags.com so I'm pretty sure this is just freelance. Here's one of his first articles: http://www.texags.com/mwr/articles.asp?issue_id=825
You can tell from the tagline at the bottom: Award-winning Houston columnist John P. Lopez writes a blog and hosts a daily sports talk show on 790 AM in Houston. He can be reached at siwriters@simail.com. They don't usually put taglines on their own staff writers, because they're SI writers. Their background is implicit. Taglines like those are the standard for freelancers from another city to show who they are and why they're qualified to write the piece, so to speak.
I agree, the "monsters" are terrible. I've only tuned into them for small bursts during commercials on 610/1560, and every time I do, they are busy being awful. Rome, however, has grown on me. He does occasionally talk about worthless things for an hour (e.g., handshakes the other day), but sometimes it's amusing and his interviews are great.
Lopez is just plain dumb. Him and DeLuca are quite possibly the worst sports radio show in the history of Houston sports radio. They do not even talk sports half the time. It is constantly- check the website, check the blog, the poll question. The show just sucks. For example- on today's show- These idiots have been talking about this potential Amare trade for the past few days. Well they tease and tease this "late breaking info" on this trade. DeLuca states that this will make all Rocket fans mad. He is seriously sounding like he just found this out. His great late breaking info? The Suns and the Warriors are talking about trading Amare and that deal is close to happening. I mean for real? This was all over the draft, all over espn, all over the news. It is 1:03pm this afternoon, after these guys have been on the radio for over 4 hours and they finally get this information.
John Lopez is nothing more than a Houston sports hater, except for the Dynamo. I think he is a huge Spurs fan and Spurs-lover at heart and should have been ran out of Houston years ago. How can he always bash the Rockets, Astros, and Texans but shows such respect for the Spurs and Cowboys and still have a job in Houston sports media is a mystery to me. Him and Justice need to go!!!!
Ah HAAAAA!!!!! Apparently according to his latest, middle linebackers are going the way of the dodo bird & dinosaur............... http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/john_lopez/06/30/linebackers/index.html This kind of makes sense when you think of a guy like Seahawks MLB Aaron Curry drafted this year and is being asked to provide a pass rush(which he didn't do at Wake Forest) in addition to being a tackling machine all over the field. At least he gave props to DeMeco.
