{"id":298741,"date":"2026-05-18T21:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T21:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/298741\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T21:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T21:56:11","slug":"texas-tech-qb-brendan-sorsby-files-lawsuit-vs-ncaa-in-attempt-to-play-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/298741\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby files lawsuit vs. NCAA in attempt to play in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby<\/a> filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Monday as he seeks to play college football in 2026, according to Yahoo Sports\u2019 Ross Dellenger.<\/p>\n

The former Cincinnati QB has been seeking treatment for a gambling addiction.<\/a> Per NCAA rules, Sorsby could be banned from the upcoming season \u2014 his final year of eligibility \u2014 for betting on sports. Sorsby placed a bet on Indiana when he was a redshirt freshman for the Hoosiers in 2022. According to the NCAA rulebook, an athlete can lose eligibility permanently when placing a bet on his or her own team.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Sorsby\u2019s suit admits that he is \u201ccurrently ineligible\u201d to play for Texas Tech because he violated the NCAA\u2019s gambling rules. Sorsby has made thousands of small-dollar bets in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Sorsby is currently ineligible to play for Texas Tech due to prior violations of the NCAA\u2019s sports gambling rules,\u201d the suit states<\/a>. \u201cRather than support a student-athlete\u2019s recovery from a gambling addiction \u2014 a clinically diagnosed disorder recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders \u2014 the NCAA has weaponized his condition to shore up a facade of competitive integrity, while simultaneously profiting from the very gambling ecosystem it polices. When Mr. Sorsby took accountability for his NCAA gambling rules violations (which undisputedly did not raise any integrity issues, i.e., his bets did not threaten the fairness, honesty and\/or transparency of athletic competitions, or otherwise influence the outcome or athlete performance in those competitions) entered residential treatment, and offered to accept reasonable discipline (but not a full loss of eligibility for the upcoming season at Texas Tech) the NCAA responded not with the compassion its constitution demands, but with stonewalling, pretextual information demands, delay, and silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Athletes are prohibited from betting on professional sports as well, provided those sports are also sanctioned by the NCAA. The NCAA moved to allow athletes to bet on pro sports late in 2025, but schools pushed back on the idea and overturned the initiative to keep the pro betting ban in place.<\/p>\n

One of Sorsby\u2019s attorneys is renowned sports litigator Jeffrey Kessler. He recently earned Michael Jordan\u2019s 23XI Racing a settlement in its antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR and has previously represented plaintiffs against the NCAA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NCAA\u2019s position is also deeply hypocritical,\u201d the lawsuit says. \u201cWhile it imposes harsh gambling restrictions on student-athletes in the name of \u2018integrity,\u2019 the NCAA has partnered with Genius Sports to distribute real-time data feeds to sports books, publicly touted gambling as a \u201cmajor opportunity\u201d and provided over an ecosystem in which $3.3 billion was wagered on its basketball tournaments in 2026 alone. Having chosen to profit from gambling, the NCAA cannot credibly use that same ecosystem as a pretext to deny \u2014 or indefinite delay \u2014 fair, prompt, and student-athlete-centered reinstatement decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an affidavit attached to the lawsuit,<\/a> Sorsby detailed how and why he placed bets while he was at Indiana, saying that he rationalized them to himself by saying he wanted to feel connected to the team while he was redshirting.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring this time, I began placing small bets on the Indiana football team, typically in amounts between $5 and $50,\u201d Sorsby wrote in his affidavit, filed Monday. \u201cAll of these bets were in support of Indiana. In other words, I placed bets on Indiana to win a game or score more than a certain number of points or for the quarterback to throw for more than a certain number of touchdowns or yards.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NCAA said in a statement Monday afternoon that Sorsby had not formally applied for reinstatement through official NCAA processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NCAA has not received a reinstatement request for this case,\u201d a statement said. \u201cThe NCAA generally doesn\u2019t comment on pending reinstatement requests, but the Association\u2019s sports betting rules are clear, as are the reinstatement conditions. When it comes to betting on one\u2019s own team, these rules must be enforced in every case for the simple reason that the integrity of the game is at risk. Every sports league has these protections in place and the NCAA will continue to apply them equally because every student-athlete competing deserves to know they\u2019re playing a fair game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours after the NCAA\u2019s statement, Texas Tech said that it had agreed upon a statement of facts with the NCAA and had declared Sorsby ineligible ahead of an upcoming reinstatement process.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Sorsby\u2019s transfer to Texas Tech was one of the most significant of the offseason. The Red Raiders moved to add the experienced quarterback after losing to Oregon in the College Football Playoff. Tech used the transfer portal well in 2025 as it won the Big 12 for the first time and adding Sorsby \u2014 on an NIL deal reportedly worth north of $4 million \u2014 is the team\u2019s latest effort to compete for a national title.<\/p>\n

Last season\u2019s starter, Behren Morton<\/a>, is out of eligibility. Will Hammond has been set to be Sorsby\u2019s backup, but he\u2019s recovering from a torn ACL suffered a season ago while he started in place of an injured Morton.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The school announced in late April that Sorsby would be seeking gambling addiction treatment and head coach Joey Mcguire said the team supported Sorsby\u2019s decision to get professional help.<\/p>\n

If he\u2019s banned by the NCAA, Sorsby would not be the first power conference quarterback who lost his eligibility for sports betting. Former Iowa State quarterback Hunter Dekkers<\/a> was ruled ineligible by the NCAA ahead of the 2023 season after he was found to have placed bets on Iowa State as a backup on the team.<\/p>\n

After transferring from Indiana, Sorsby was a two-year starter at Cincinnati and threw 45 TDs to just 12 interceptions across the 2024 and 2025 seasons. He also rushed for 18 TDs over those 24 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on Monday as he seeks to play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7092,14694,100017,108647,1771,5390,27,29,28,1769],"class_list":["post-298741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-behren-morton","tag-brendan-sorsby","tag-gambling-addiction","tag-hunter-dekkers","tag-ncaa","tag-sports-betting","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}