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<\/p>\nHOUSTON \u2014 Sports leadership at Texas Tech on Wednesday defended their plans to play quarterback Brendan Sorsby next season while he treats his gambling addiction, insisting they are not trying to \u201cengineer his eligibility\u201d through the courts and dismissing widespread criticism t hat includes the president of the NCAA.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Houston Touchdown Club, coach Joey McGuire acknowledged the \u201crage\u201d surrounding the situation, with athletic directors across college football saying that the NCAA ban on players who gamble should remain sacrosanct and a court order won this week by Sorsby crossed a line that should never be crossed.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some reason, as a society, we\u2019ve been OK with other things that happen and allowing players to play, and this has been the one thing that has united people, that they were against,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cIt\u2019s crazy because it\u2019s not murder, it\u2019s not beating somebody — so there\u2019s a lot of things that we\u2019re working through. None of this is OK.\u201d<\/p>\n
Athletic director Kirby Hocutt also released a statement to \u201coffer a few facts that seem to be getting lost in the noise” and noting the school is not part of Sorsby’s lawsuit against the NCAA.<\/p>\n
\u201cA young man in treatment for a clinically diagnosed addiction exercised his legal right to seek a remedy in court and a judge agreed with him,\u201d Hocutt said. \u201cOur role has been to support his recover, not to engineer his eligibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under the court order, Sorsby will be suspened for the first two games of the season. The NCAA plans to appeal the ruling, with President Charlie Baker telling reporters in Las Vegas that the case illustrated \u201ca new low\u201d in college sports.<\/p>\n
McGuire likened Sorsby recovering from his addiction to fellow Texas Tech quarterback Will Hammond\u2019s recovery from knee surgery.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Texas Tech football coach Joey McGuire, center, poses for photographs after speaking during The Houston Touchdown Club luncheon, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, in Houston. Credit: AP\/David J. Phillip<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s recovering,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cI\u2019ve sat down with this young man multiple times and the things that he is going through and what he\u2019s been through, it\u2019s serious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I have a number of people in my family that were addicted to different stuff and so I\u2019ve seen what addiction does to people,” he said. “And so, us even saying to the point before we get to the legal part, that he could be ready in Week 3 against Houston is still a stretch because guess what, he\u2019s still recovering.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGuire added that Sorsby was \u201cback in the building\u201d after spending some time away from the facilities while he was dealing with his issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 Sports leadership at Texas Tech on Wednesday defended their plans to play quarterback Brendan Sorsby next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[298,261,27,29,28,991],"class_list":["post-331041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-college","tag-college-football","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-wires-bot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331041","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=331041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}