Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby is trying to do what no other college athlete has done: Force the NCAA to stand down on enforcing its sacrosanct policy that permanently bans athletes who have wagered on their own team.
“It would be unprecedented,” said Jodi Balsam, a former arbitrator of NCAA infractions cases who is director of the Sports Law Clinic at Brooklyn Law School. “They have never excused betting on one’s own sport or team and it routinely has been met with the harshest of penalties.”
Texas Tech said Monday it had declared Sorsby ineligible after it finalized an agreed-upon stipulation of facts between the school, the NCAA and Sorsby. A school is required to declare an athlete ineligible before it can initiate the reinstatement process.
On the same day, Sorsby filed a lawsuit in Lubbock County, Texas, alleging the NCAA was slow-walking his case and asking for an injunction allowing him to play for the Red Raiders this season after he was one of the biggest transfers of the offseason. Balsam said the claim of stalling is likely baseless since the NCAA had not received a reinstatement request as of Monday.
Sorsby has acknowledged wagering on sports, including on his own team his freshman season at Indiana in 2022. His school said he entered residential treatment for a gambling addiction three weeks ago.
History on NCAA’s side
Balsam said courts historically have sided with sports governing bodies when it comes to administering rules concerning gambling and integrity of the game.
“I see the NCAA fighting this one. I don’t see them settling,” she said. “I do believe this is within their core legal authority.”
Sorsby is the highest-profile college football player to face permanent suspension for gambling since Iowa State quarterback Hunter Dekkers three years ago. Dekkers was found to have wagered on a 2021 Cyclones game in which he didn’t play.
Iowa State filed two appeals with the NCAA to have Dekkers’ eligibility reinstated and was denied each time, a school spokesman said. Dekkers sat out 2023, played at a junior college in 2024 and signed with the New Orleans Saints as an undrafted free agent in 2025. He was released in January and is the starter for the Houston Gamblers of the UFL this spring.
Sorsby’s options
At stake for Sorsby is the multimillion-dollar deal he signed with Texas Tech for what was supposed to be his final season of college football. Sorsby alleges the NCAA abandoned “its obligations and duties to promote” his well-being and that the lawsuit was filed to expedite the reinstatement process.
Sorsby is seeking a hearing for a temporary injunction by June 15, one week before the deadline to file paperwork for the NFL’s supplemental draft.
Balsam served from 2019-24 on the NCAA’s since-dissolved Independent Resolution Panel, which adjudicated and administered penalties in select Division I infractions cases. She said the NCAA would create a “real slippery slope” if it didn’t make Sorsby permanently ineligible.
“To exonerate entirely somebody who has admitted violating this core policy is to open the floodgates for anybody who is ever engaged in gambling that violates the policy and tries to defend, justify or rationalize their behavior,” she said.
In the lawsuit, Sorsby acknowledged that in his first year at Indiana, he wagered between $5 and $50 on the Hoosiers football team to win and made prop bets on teammates to exceed statistical predictions. He said he did not bet on the one game in which he played.
Sorsby said he never bet on a game involving Cincinnati after he transferred there in 2024, but he continued to be out of control, even placing wagers on Turkish basketball and Romanian soccer games.
Sorsby contends there is hypocrisy in the NCAA’s harsh discipline for gambling violations at a time it has a partnership with Genius Sports, the exclusive distributor of official NCAA data feeds to authorized sportsbooks.
“Maybe that will invite some skepticism by courts,” Balsam said, “but ultimately … sports gambling bans have always been considered essential to the public trust in the game.”
Judge recuses himself
Balsam said there was “perhaps a little bit of forum shopping” with Sorsby’s lawsuit filed in Lubbock, home to Texas Tech, reflecting a trend of eligibility cases being heard in state courts.
The judge initially assigned to the case, Phillip Hays, grew up in Lubbock and earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Texas Tech. Hays recused himself with no explanation in a court filing Wednesday, Bloomberg reported, and the administrative judge who will pick Hays’ replacement has no ties to the school.
Balsam said it’s conceivable a judge would grant Sorsby a temporary injunction but only to make the NCAA set a clear timetable for processing Sorsby’s request so he isn’t in jeopardy of missing the supplemental draft.
“I’d be floored if a court said at the end of the day, after a hearing on the merits, that the NCAA could not enforce its gambling policy,” Balsam said.
Reporting by the Associated Press
