Future Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby shouts during the first half of the game between the Houston Cougars and the Texas Tech Red Raiders at United Supermarkets Arena on Jan. 24, 2026, in Lubbock, Texas. (John E. Moore III/Getty Images/TNS)
John E. Moore III/TNS
In the latest chapter of the Brendan Sorsby saga, his agent Ron Slavin joined 105.3 The Fan (KRLD-FM) and spoke at length about the scandal.
In the interview, he opened up on the decision to leave Texas Tech and enter the supplemental draft, defended Sorsby, cleared up questions surrounding Sorsby’s NIL and details on the controversy and explained the upcoming process for the supplemental draft.
Below are highlights of the interview, edited lightly for clarity.
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Why did you guys make the decision now to leave college for the NFL?
Ron Slavin: Just came down to too much pressure from everybody else on Tech, and Brendan still wanted to play at Tech. This wasn’t Brendan Sorsby not wanting to play college football. This was Brendan Sorsby just being advised by the school that, we had seven days left to file for the supplemental draft and didn’t know where this thing was going to go, so we won in court. We did our job on our side, but for whatever reason, the world melted down like college football was ruined forever.
Give some of your disagreements or your issues with the coverage and the way people reacted.
Slavin: So, I know you guys are all perfect and live by the Mother Teresa ways of the world, but how many 18-year-olds make really bad decisions? And there was never any integrity of the game violations there. Everybody loves to have an opinion, and I’m so tired of watching people get on TV and blab their mouth when they have no idea what they’re talking about. And unfortunately, it’s not just in Brendan’s situation, it’s in most situations, unless you’re Brendan or Brendan’s family or myself and my team, nobody really knows what happened, and the opinions out there were, you would have thought this kid committed major crimes and did horrible things, and the reality is, as an 18-year-old, he made some bad decisions from his dorm room when he wasn’t traveling with the team in Indiana, but besides that, there’s just so much more to the story that will come out later. Brendan wasn’t doing anything that was hurting the integrity of the game. He never bet on college football once he was on the active travel roster at Indiana, and then he never did it at Cincinnati, so this was something he did at 18 that was really dumb, but it also is something that now he’s paid the price at 22 years old.
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READ MORE: Texas Tech earned black eye with Brendan Sorsby dilemma. In the end, they got it right
Why are some of these details that you’re alluding to not already out?
Slavin: You have to be careful of some things, just because of all the people involved, and the people I feel worse for, besides Brendan, is Texas Tech, and I think where they messed up was they talked too much. Nobody knew any of this about Brendan. Nobody knew when he was in the portal, this was happening. I mean, Brendan probably should have gone in the draft in January if we would have known, but nobody knew. So the people at Tech have been great, very supportive. Joey McGuire, I think, is one of the best human beings on the planet. A lot of head coaches are transactional, he is not, and they didn’t do anything wrong here. If anybody should be questioned or be catching heat, it should be Cincinnati, because they knew for two years and never said anything and didn’t do anything about it. That’s the part of the story that gets lost, and again, it’s like this is a 22-year-old kid who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, he’s had two girlfriends his entire life, he’s at church every Sunday, he’s a great human being, and I guess his biggest fault might be he’s too giving. When I say that, he’s involved with some of his friends, and the predatory world of gambling, where you turn 18, deposit $5 you get a free $100, and every single show on TV, and every single radio show, everything is sponsored by a gambling site. So it’s a scary world we’re living in, and these kids have all been raised now with phones in their hands, so it’s real easy to get on an app and place a bet. So there’s so much more to it, and it’ll come out, but what we’re focused on now is the next three weeks where Brendan can get ready and work out for these teams and there’s not a lot of guys that are 6-3, 235 pounds, who run a 4.4, can throw it like Brett Favre walking around, so there’s going to be some high interest in Brendan when the supplemental draft happens.
Do you disagree with many people labeling gambling on your own sport as the No. 1 crime in sports?
Slavin: I don’t disagree with it, but the circumstances are a lot different. This isn’t a kid that’s playing in a game and betting against his team. This is a kid who was sitting in his dorm room, not traveling with the team, and bet on his team as a fan, as a guy that said it made him feel like he was part of the team.
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What is this process going to be like for convincing teams Brendan is the guy they want?
Slavin: Well, the great thing about him being from Dallas is it’s the easiest place to get to. We obviously have all the facilities that he needs to work out in and do all the things he needs to do, and then we put together a pro day and teams can come and meet with him here, and I’m still going to have the discussion, but I’ll probably have Dr. [Dan] Cooper do his physical, and then we can distribute the information to all 32 teams, but it’s a short window, but we’ll make it happen, just because it’s really easy to make things efficient in Dallas.
Are you hearing from a lot of teams right now? If so, what are they asking about the controversy?
Slavin: 22, between general managers and college scouting directors, reached out yesterday and had four more already this morning, and I know Joey’s getting a ton of phone calls at Tech, like I said, there aren’t a lot of guys walking around 6-3, 235 [pounds] who can move like him and throw it like him. The questions are just, what really happened here? Because I will give the NFL credit there, the media can give people an opinion, but it isn’t the tell-all, so they’re gonna do their due diligence. They all have companies that work for them that can find out everything they need to find out anyway. The reality is, most of the questions are what does he weigh in? What would he run? It’s more football related than the character stuff, just because, again, they’re gonna do their digging on that side of it.
Before this decision to leave school, what price did Sorsby pay?
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Slavin: Well, he’ll have over a million dollars in attorney fees. His Adidas deal was taken away, some other deals were taken away, and then he’s not going to be able to play his last year at Texas Tech. The funny thing is, I guess this isn’t funny, it’s sad now, but on New Year’s Eve, we got a phone call from a general manager that said “You’re really not going to come out,” because this was a team that loved Brendan and wanted to take him, and Brendan’s whole thing was, “I want to play another year of college football, I want to go back to Texas, and I want to have an opportunity to win a national championship and win Heisman Trophy.” So that’s four months ago, and now here we are, and he’s in supplemental, so that’s what he’s lost, and you know he’s lost that. And then the financial, if he would have gone out, and I think Texas Tech’s roster is an SEC-built roster, James Blanchard and Joey McGuire have done a great job of building it, and everyone says, “Oh, they bought a roster,” you still have to evaluate the talent and bring in the right guys. So they have this super talented roster, and then they add Brendan to it, and opportunity to win a national championship, and all the things that come with that, or an opportunity to win the Heisman Trophy, and all the things that come with that, and then if he would have done that, he’s a top five pick, and that’s $50-60 million. So I mean, this is a substantial loss for the kid. I feel terrible for him, and like I said, he’s a great human being. There’s not a bad bone in his body. He’s a little naive to some things, but other than that, like this guy is not a criminal, all these people talk about him like he did some horrible things. There’s some horrible people in the NFL. There’s some horrible players on the field today that would not be accepted in most societies, but because they’re good at football, they play. This is that’s not Brendan Sorsby.
How concerned were you guys about legal rulings wiping out the season if they changed, leading to him not being able to play?
Slavin: When we made the decision to hire Jeffrey Kessler, he’s the Harlem Globetrotters. He doesn’t lose. The NCAA, unfortunately, is the Washington Generals, so that’s kind of how we stood on it, and we didn’t lose, that’s the thing. This was Texas Tech didn’t want to go through the process and jeopardize a situation where the Big 12 makes up rules as they go and says he can’t play in the Big 12 Championship game, or the CFP comes out and says he can’t play in the CFP. Then he played a season for nothing, and with the seven days before the supplemental draft, Tech thought it was in Brendan’s best interest to move forward with that. The other thing is you have a roster of 90 kids, so those 90 kids, they’re affected too, so that was where Brendan was like, “I don’t want to screw these guys over either. Get through the season, we go 12-0, and then they pull the rug out from us.”
There was a report he was able to keep a portion of the NIL money. Is that true? How did that work?
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Slavin: No. So the money that he’s already made, he got to keep, but there’s a good portion that he still would have made from July to January. So I mean, the kid’s lost millions and millions of dollars there. It’s a pretty sad situation for a bunch of $3 bets. That’s the other thing. At Indiana he didn’t have NIL. He was a he was a kid who was a late bloomer. He’s 5-3 as a sophomore in high school. I mean, it’s a crazy triangle, but the way he ended up at Indiana was Josh Hoover decommits from Indiana and ends up at TCU, while Quinn Ewers is visiting TCU, so when Quinn ends up committing to Texas, it’s a triangle of three guys that I ended up representing, and Brendan was the lone survivor that ended up at Indiana, and he didn’t feel part of the team when he was there early on, just because he got there late, and he was fifth- or sixth-string quarterback, and like I said, these 18-year-old kids turn 18 and deposit $5 get $100 free, and it turns into a problem.