{"id":331906,"date":"2026-06-11T09:02:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/331906\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T09:02:24","slug":"texas-tech-ad-defends-school-in-brendan-sorsby-saga-addresses-integrity-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/331906\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Tech AD defends school in Brendan Sorsby saga, addresses \u2018integrity\u2019 issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Athletic director Kirby Hocutt defended Texas Tech in the Brendan Sorsby case<\/a>, addressing \u201cintegrity issues\u201d others have cited.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve watched the reaction to Monday\u2019s court ruling with great respect for my colleagues across college athletics,\u201d Hocutt\u2019s statement started. \u201cMany of them are people I admire. But I also owe it to Texas Tech, and frankly to the truth, to offer a few facts that seem to be getting lost in the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Sorsby has his NCAA eligibility restored by the legal system<\/a> for the upcoming season. A temporary injunction issued Monday by a Texas district court prevents the NCAA from enforcing its ban of Sorsby. The transfer QB had been ruled ineligible for what will be his final college season after he acknowledged years of gambling that included at least 40 bets on his own team while a freshman at Indiana.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrendan Sorsby has not played a single down of football as a Red Raider,\u201d the AD continued. \u201cHe will miss the first two games of the 2026 season under the terms of the court\u2019s ruling. What happens after that will depend, in no small part, on how his recovery continues to progress. We\u2019re taking it one day at a time as he is. We\u2019ll evaluate his recovery, compliance and readiness as we go. We are watching closely. We are deeply committed to his progress and well-being, and we are not operating on blind faith.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are operating on a comprehensive clinical and compliance structure that we committed to before the court ruled in Brendan\u2019s lawsuit against the NCAA and that Brendan committed to as a condition of his return to our football program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since NCAA rules call for a permanent loss of eligibility for any player who wagered on his own team, the judge\u2019s decision sent shockwaves through college sports, including in Texas Tech\u2019s own league.<\/p>\n

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\u201cTexas Tech is not a party to Brendan\u2019s lawsuit,\u201d Hocutt continued. \u201cWe did not file it. We did not fund it. A 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. Our role has been to support his recovery, not to engineer his eligibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard the word \u201cintegrity\u201d used a great deal in the last 48 hours. As someone who has dedicated his career to college sports, I, too, believe integrity is central to our industry\u2019s success. I also think integrity applies on more than one front. The integrity of sport matters. So does the integrity of how we treat a 22-year-old who sought help, entered residential treatment, and is working every day toward recovery. Those two things don\u2019t have to be in conflict.”<\/p>\n

Read the original article on al.com<\/a>. Add al.com<\/a> as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Athletic director Kirby Hocutt defended Texas Tech in the Brendan Sorsby case, addressing \u201cintegrity issues\u201d others have cited.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[14694,31363,118680,8089,168,170,169,118681,117405,1769],"class_list":["post-331906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-brendan-sorsby","tag-college-athletics","tag-integrity-issues","tag-kirby-hocutt","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-ncaa-eligibility","tag-texas-district-court","tag-texas-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331906","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=331906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}