Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby throws a pass during the second half of an NCAA college football game against Iowa State, Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Charlie Neibergall/AP
Brendan Sorsby, who reportedly has placed more than 10,000 sports bets over the course of his peripatetic career, will quarterback Texas Tech this fall after all, meaning the rate of college sports’ road to perdition just picked up speed.
Pete Rose would be rolling over in his grave if he hadn’t been cremated.
The greatest hitter ever waited 36 years to be reinstated to the game he loved after investigations proved he’d bet on baseball, and even then only after he’d been dead seven months.
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Sorsby spent 35 days in an Arizona facility after a diagnosis of a gambling and anxiety disorder, and he’s good to go.
A Lubbock Country district judge ruled Monday on behalf of the plaintiff, who argued that Sorsby would suffer a “probable, imminent and irreparable injury” if not granted a temporary injunction against the NCAA for banning him from competition.
The injury, your honor, is to college sports, though, granted, it’s hard to tell these days, what will all the black eyes already.
By the way, a note about the judge: Ken Curry, a UT-Arlington and University of Houston grad, retired from Tarrant County district court in 2012 and was assigned to the case after the original jurist, a Texas Tech alum, recused himself.
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Better get to know your judges if you want to get anywhere in college athletics anymore. On any given day, another blockbuster splashes. You thought it was bad when players were allowed to come and go and make millions in the process. Their coaches have done the same for decades. Greed poisoned college athletics from the top down. Administrators sold out for coast-to-coast conference realignments that only widened the chasm between the haves and have-nots. The push, push, push for money led them to load up on football and basketball, threatening the future of the Olympic sports, soon to be known as “club sports.” Or so Nick Saban testified last week.
Every week, it seems, there’s another sign of the apocalypse. Now Tech finds itself at the top of the pile.
The Red Raiders have been a convenient target for critics ever since Cody Campbell inserted himself and his billions into the mix. Among other social media sins, he’s brawled with the Big 12 commissioner and offered to settle a silly dispute with Texas in his backyard, conduct unbecoming for the chairman of Tech’s board. Yet he’s also the force behind a push in the U.S. Senate to save college sports, including a measure that would pool media revenues, a no-no with the SEC and Big Ten but a boon for everyone else.
Because of Campbell’s heavy-handed style and Tech’s fast rise, the school is ripe for charges of buying its way into the upper class, even if access has always been about money. The Red Raiders aren’t the Beverly Hillbillies, but you’d never know it by the reaction from their new neighbors.
If you were still wondering, Tech doesn’t care what you think. Kirby Hocutt, the Red Raiders’ athletic director, released a statement Monday in which he reiterated that they didn’t believe Sorsby’s case merited a permanent ban. He also assured us that they’d do everything possible to keep their $5 million quarterback on the straight and narrow.
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Here’s the problem with that plan: Even if you can justify a second chance for a quarterback who’s made thousands of bets, many on his own team, how do you get past the threat to the credibility of the game? College basketball took a huge hit when federal prosecutors recently revealed a point-shaving conspiracy involving 39 players from 17 NCAA D1 teams. The world is underwater in conspiracy theories as it is. You can’t have the customers thinking this stuff might be rigged the first time Sorsby misses a wide-open receiver in the end zone.
No one’s uncovered any evidence that Sorsby ever played against the best interests of his team, but his proclivities have made him susceptible to the worst elements. It’s not just a question of whether he relapses, either.
What if he goes where he hasn’t before?
The NCAA can’t afford to take the risk, which is why it released a statement after the ruling in Sorsby’s favor, saying it “undermines and corrupts the integrity of sports.” At the same time, the organization vowed it would continue to “defend any actions that defraud college athletics.”
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Toothless for years, the NCAA doesn’t scare anyone, much less a school with pockets as deep as Tech’s. This isn’t the ’80s, when an investigator lurked around every SWC corner, threatening to pull the rug out from under your program. These days all the perpetrators have to do is sue, or threaten to do so, and they can pretty much do whatever they want.
The Red Raiders wanted their $5 million quarterback, and they got him. The moral of all this, you might be tempted to say, is that all bets are off, certainly in Tech’s case. But, looking back, I think it’s that Pete Rose needed a better lawyer.