Texas Tech's Brendan Sorsby files injunction, seeks eligibility
Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who has sought treatment for a gambling addiction, filed for an injunction against the NCAA on Monday, seeking his college eligibility for the 2026 college football season.
The filing, made in district court in Lubbock County, Texas, cites the NCAA's "deeply hypocritical" position on gambling and a "wholesale abandonment of its obligations and duties to promote the well-being" of Sorsby.
The NCAA prohibits student-athletes from betting on any NCAA-sanctioned sport, professional or collegiate. Penalties can include permanent ineligibility, especially in cases in which athletes wagered on their own team or manipulated their performance.
Sorsby, who has prominent attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Scott Tompsett as part of his legal team, is "currently ineligible to play for Texas Tech due to prior violations of the NCAA's sports gambling rules" and says he will be "irreparably harmed" if the injunction isn't granted.
The NCAA has yet to make any public decisions on Sorsby's status, but it did issue a statement Monday saying that it had not received a reinstatement request for this case.
"The Association's sports betting rules are clear, as are the reinstatement conditions," the NCAA statement said. "When it comes to betting on one's 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're playing a fair game."
The filing by Sorsby's legal team says the quarterback suffers from a "clinically diagnosed" gambling disorder, which is "a mental health condition."
"The NCAA has weaponized his condition to shore up a facade of competitive integrity, while simultaneously profiting from the very gambling ecosystem it polices," the filing states.
Among the claims for declaratory relief in the suit is a request under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code for the NCAA to be "precluded from enforcing its gambling bylaws against Mr. Sorsby to deny or withhold his reinstatement." It requests that he be eligible to "participate fully" for Texas Tech in 2026, including in games. It requests that any NCAA action to the contrary be deemed "void and unenforceable."
"The relief is narrow: one student-athlete and one senior season," the filing says. "The NCAA will suffer no cognizable harm from letting Mr. Sorsby play football while this case proceeds. But if this Court does not act, no future judgment can give Mr. Sorsby what the NCAA will have taken from him."
Sorsby has been in an inpatient residential treatment facility since late April, after he revealed that he placed thousands of bets on sports.
"If I cannot practice with the team, it will be severely detrimental to my mental health and my development as an athlete," Sorsby said in an included affidavit. "Without access to coaching, teammates, and on-field repetitions, I cannot develop the chemistry and skills necessary to start at quarterback in the 2026 season -- and each additional day away compounds that harm. These developmental opportunities cannot be replaced or replicated."
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The bets Sorsby placed included small wagers on Indiana football -- between $5 and $50, the filing says -- "to win or for teammates to exceed expectations," although he didn't play in any of those games for the Hoosiers. The filing claims he stopped betting in 2022 when he became the Hoosiers' backup quarterback.
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Just sayin': Apparently he does/did have a serious addiction to gambling; however, he did bet on Indiana football games when he was on the team.
