Slap on the wrist
The college sports world was shocked this week when a judge granted Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby a temporary injunction, allowing him to play in the upcoming football season despite being declared ineligible for betting on college football games.
Not only did he bet on games, he bet on 40 Indiana University games when he was a member of that team in 2022. He did not play in any of those games, nor was there any real chance that he would. In all, the NCAA found that he wagered over $90,000 on college and pro sports over the course of about four years, even after he transferred from Cincinnati to Texas Tech – he was the most coveted QB in the transfer portal – this past offseason.
In April, not long after Texas Tech was notified by the NCAA of his gambling history, Sorsby began a 35-day inpatient treatment program, where he was diagnosed with gambling addiction and anxiety.
Sorsby and his legal team argued that he should not be punished for his gambling disorder and that banning him from college sports would do irreparable damage to his mental well-being and his future. He does still have the option to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft, but must decide by June 22.
The one punishment imposed on Sorsby is a two-game suspension, which he will serve during two non-conference games.
Nobody is happy
While there are certainly worse things an athlete can do, betting on one’s own team is arguably the worst in terms of sports-related sins and is explicitly against the NCAA’s rules, punishable by a lifetime ban.
In a statement, the NCAA said, “The NCAA strongly disagrees with the court’s ruling in Sorsby’s case and is deeply concerned about the damaging, far-reaching and broadly destabilizing ramifications of this outcome — which undermines and corrupts the integrity of sports.”
By and large, officials from other schools are upset with the ruling. One Big 12 (Texas Tech’s conference) coach told ESPN, “If this is the precedent, then I owe it to my players to bring in people from Las Vegas to teach us how to gamble. Then collectively, we need to decide which games we will play hard in [to cover the spread] and which ones we won’t. I’m supposed to do what’s best for my players, and in that case they would be able to make a lot of money betting on our games. That’s the precedent for me.”
Big 12 athletic directors held a conference call on Tuesday to vent about the legal outcome and agreed that Sorsby should not be eligible to play. According to ESPN, words used were “disgusted,” “disheartened” and “sad.”
Further meetings and discussions are planned; athletic directors seem to want the conference to rule Sorsby ineligible.
Outside of the Big 12, other conferences and schools are having discussions about Texas Tech. According to ESPN College Football Senior Writer Pete Thamel, the University of Georgia AD has instructed the school’s teams not to schedule Texas Tech as an opponent. Same at Nebraska. The Big Ten as a whole will soon talk about the possibility of a league-wide shunning of Texas Tech.
Image credit: Kwan Wallace via Flickr
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