When it comes to genre of entertainment and content generation, it’s hard to find one more bulletproof than sports. In a world where there are human and technological existential threats on almost everything, sports keeps chugging along, with ever climbing television ratings and media rights contracts.
While sports has had its fair share of crises through the years, the one thing that poses a true existential threat to every sport is massive gambling scandals, and with gambling legalized in a vast majority of states in our country, gambling as a leisure time activity (or, depending on how immmersed one is in gambling, a vice) has never been more rampant.
Every sport has had its “game fixing” incidents and scares through the decades, and sports as a whole still thrives today. However, one of the reasons sports thrives in the face of these scandals is the vigilance with which they’ve treated perpetrators. Suspensions and lifetime bans for violators have effectively kept most of society believing in the integrity of the outcomes of sporting events.
Thus, when a Lubbock County court, earlier this week, issued an injunction temporarily delaying an NCAA ban on Texas Tech quarterback Brendon Sorsby, who’d placed thousands of bets for over $90,000 on a variety of sporting events (and non-sporting events) over the last four seasons, it was viewed as a “bells tolling” moment for collegiate sports.
The NCAA issued the ban on Sorsby, who transferred to Texas Tech in December from Cincinnati for a $5 million NIL deal, in mid-May and denied Tech’s appeal last week. Sorsby’s legal team secured the injunction on Monday, and the college sports world reacted in astonishment that a player who gambled so rampantly, with 40 bets on his own team when he was at Indiana in 2022, would be allowed to play this season.
The NCAA is appealing the court’s ruling, but the wheels of appellate justice move so slowly that there’s a chance a ruling doesn’t come down until 2027 sometime, allowing Sorsby, a high level NFL prospect (more on that in a minute), to play this coming season.
Sorsby’s attorneys fought his case based on Sorsby’s gambling habits being “an addiction,” and thus, a mental health issue, and banning him would cause “irreparable injury” to the young man. Credit Sorsby’s attorneys for executing a winning strategy. Zero credit to the judge issuing the ruling for creating a precedent that is very dangerous for college football. The second sports become WWE, with the outcomes viewed as some form of manipulated or scripted, you lose America at large.
Beyond that, there are some interesting questions about Sorsby himself that have yet to be answered. Here are the things I’m most curious to learn about in the weeks to come:
- Does any of this affect Sorsby’s NIL deal?
Again, Sorsby is slated to earn $5 million in NIL deals to play for the Red Raiders. The NIL world is so loosely organized right now anyway, with no standard format for contracts or spending limits, that I have no idea if Sorsby’s deal (or deals, because there are probably multiple entities paying him) has any sort of “morals” clause. It’s college sports, so even saying the words “morals clause” makes me chuckle, but there may be some of Sorsby’s sponsors not too excited to pay the modern day Art Schlichter to speak for them.
2. How does Sorsby react to being the “villain”?
If Sorsby is able to play this season, then you needn’t look any further than Lubbock for your college football villain this coming season. Sorsby, whose debut is slated for September 18 against Houston, will get mercilessly booed in every opposing stadium. I think we are talking next level road game vitriol here. How does he react to that? This actually may, ironically, provide an opportunity for Sorsby to show NFL teams just how well he can react to adversity and hostile environments.
3. Do awards voters issue their own brand of justice on Sorsby?
If Sorsby plays at the level his talent dictates he can, and if Texas Tech is in the running for the College Football Playoff again, then Sorsby’s would likely have a profile fit for Heisman Trophy consideration, among other awards. I wonder, given that 98 percent of society thinks it’s insane that he gets to play this season, if voters for the Heisman and other accolades issue their own brand of justice by keeping him off their ballots. It would be far from the first time that writers, former players, and other media use their voting voice to try to dole out some form of satisfaction that the courts and other authorities could not.
4. How do NFL personnel people view Sorsby?
The only NFL person I’ve heard speak on Sorsby is Browns head coach Todd Monken. The Browns are a team with acute needs at quarterback, and Monken went out of his way to talk about the “slippery slope” that selecting Sorsby would entail at this time. To be clear, if Sorsby has an outstanding 2026, then there will be teams ready to take on the baggage that comes with him. Conversely, there will also be teams who have crossed him off their boards permanently, if for no other reason than fear of a relapse.
