FILE – Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby watches the second half of an NCAA college basketball game between Texas Tech and Cincinnati, Feb. 24, 2026, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP Photo/Justin Rex, file)
Justin Rex/AP Photo/Justin Rex
After a wild week in which the media made it the face of all that’s gone wrong in college athletics, rivals threatened boycotts, its own league sued and its head coach tried to excuse the mess by saying, well, “it isn’t murder,” Texas Tech did the right thing.
Brendan Sorsby won’t play for the Red Raiders after all.
On to the next nightmare.
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For now, anyway, this resolution was the only proper outcome of an episode that managed the impossible, galvanizing the nation’s haves and have-nots in a united front opposite a solitary school.
On one hand, Tech partisans could take solace that its football program has risen to such a level that the SEC and Big Ten apparently consider it a threat to be the next Indiana.
On the other, this was no way to get noticed.
Backed into a corner by mounting legal challenges on every front, Tech had no choice but to send Sorsby on his way to the NFL by way of this month’s supplemental draft. He’d made thousands of bets at Indiana, Cincinnati and even Tech. Some on his own team, a cardinal sin. No 35-day stay in addiction rehab could right such an old wrong no matter what a district court ruled last week.
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Sorsby faces further sanctions from the NFL if a team chooses to spend a 2027 pick to get him. Seems like the credibility risk would be no different there, starting the first time he misses a wide-open receiver in an end zone. But that’s Roger Goodell’s headache now.
Meanwhile, the reversal is the best possible outcome for Sorsby as well as his ex in Lubbock.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, this was exactly the outcome a few influential Red Raiders had hoped. Ever since the district court’s ruling last week against the NCAA made Sorsby eligible this fall, a few movers and shakers were “encouraging” the former Lake Dallas quarterback to move on, as one such mover/shaker told me.
Cody Campbell, who does most of the shaking at Tech these days, released a statement Monday acknowledging there was no way to resolve all the legal matters before next week’s supplemental draft deadline, thus forcing the issue. The Red Raiders didn’t send Sorsby away empty-handed. The chairman of Tech’s regents also noted the school wouldn’t seek return of the reported $5 million he’s owed.
Kinda makes walking away easier, doesn’t it?
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Seems to me it’d have been cleaner if Tech had simply declared Sorsby ineligible no matter what the judge ruled. Schools and athletic programs do it all the time. Best interests of the university. If Sorsby wanted to sue, let him. No court could make a head coach start a quarterback he doesn’t want. Tech would have retained its honor and avoided all the fuss.
Tech officials insisted they were only trying to do right by Sorsby in light of his treatment for a gambling addiction. Commendable, I suppose, though I’m not sure how many people actually believed it. We’re not predisposed to believe what anyone tells us anymore, especially if you stand to benefit from your position.
The thing is, there was no way the Red Raiders could win this one. Let’s say they’d stuck to their guns and fought it out in court and on the field. Let’s say Sorsby would have transformed their odds like Fernando Mendoza did last season for Indiana and won it all.
Do you really think Tech would be hailed as another made-for-prime-time underdog?
Every win with Sorsby at quarterback would come with a public relations beating. Think Miami and Oklahoma in the ’80s, only worse.
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The way it works for universities in their support for athletic programs is that the better they play, the higher enrollment rises. Fees go up, too. Revenues stream in.
But who wants to go to a school where everyone else hates you, and not because you win? How does that image square with the desires of potential sponsors and advertisers?
Not to mention what happens when the super conferences come, and they remember how you skirted the rules? The SEC and Big Ten talked about boycotting Tech as it was. I don’t think they’d feel any better about making you a member of the family.
Even if there’s a new billionaire dynamic within the Red Raiders — one that has made them relevant nationally while alienating college sports’ bluebloods, who like looking down their noses at the nouveau riche — the rank and file remain the same. They want to win, but not at any price.
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The Brendan Sorsby saga earned them a black eye in the last week, but in the end, they got it right. This won’t be forgotten, but neither will it be a constant reminder. On college football’s road to perdition, you keep your eye on the rearview mirror at your own peril.
Twitter/X: @KSherringtonDMN