Brendan Sorsby ruling: College sports' brass enraged by Texas judge's decision — 'It's f***** bulls***'

At a recent Big 12 administrative meeting, a fascinating discussion emerged.

>If a local Texas judge granted quarterback Brendan Sorsby’s injunction to play this season despite wagering on his own team, the league’s other member schools wondered something aloud: Should we play the Red Raiders?

>“We’ve had some serious conversation about it,” Kansas State athletic director Gene Taylor told Yahoo Sports. “There is still a lot to be discussed. We aren’t scheduled to play them this year, but it’s something we have to look at from a college football perspective. This is greater than the Big 12.”

>On Monday, a Lubbock judge did, indeed, grant Sorsby his injunction against the NCAA, making him eligible to play this season — a stunning decision that many across the college sports landscape are referring to as another seminal moment in a turbulent time in an industry upturned by legal decisions.

>Judge Ken Curry’s ruling not only prevents the NCAA from enforcing its anti-gambling policy against Sorsby, but the judge himself delivered a two-game suspension for the quarterback as a condition of the injunction. Suspensions are normally handed down by the NCAA, conferences and/or schools.

>Sorsby has acknowledged in court documents that he placed dozens of bets on his own team while playing football at Indiana, as well as thousands more on professional sports. He violated a longstanding NCAA policy of which the listed consequence is a permanent ban — and he also broke multiple state wagering laws.

>“It’s f***** bulls***,” Taylor told Yahoo Sports on Monday. “I know the kid has a problem. Well, get well and focus on your problem. It is absolutely devastating for him to be able to play when every other sport, no matter the level, deems an athlete ineligible or they are punished severely for betting on your own team.”

>Even outside of the Big 12, high-level college administrators say they are left aghast by a decision that many describe as “disastrous” and “jarring” and, as the NCAA statement said, “corrupts the integrity of sports.”

>“I think there needs to be serious conversations about not playing Texas Tech in any sports,” Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks, a member of the NCAA Football Oversight Committee, told Yahoo Sports. “This is not about Texas Tech. It’s about protecting our own locker room. We cannot in good conscience put our student-athletes on a field where the competitive integrity of the contest is compromised and overridden by the courts. If a state court wants to dictate eligibility rules, they can play themselves.

>“All FBS schools should only take the field against programs operating under a uniform, trustworthy standard of fairness. We’ve officially reached the point of no return.”

Brendan Sorsby was granted an injunction to play for Texas Tech this season on Monday. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images for ONIT)Ron JenkinsOne Big 12 athletic director, who requested anonymity, called it the “lowest point in my time in college sports” and said Texas Tech “should be ashamed of itself.”

>Even notable attorneys who usually fight against NCAA rules were floored by the ruling. “At first, I thought it was a joke,” said Tom Mars, an attorney who’s won several cases against the association.

>The Sorsby decision shouldn’t be viewed as a standalone issue.

>It is but the latest piece of the scattered puzzle of NCAA policy under attack from its own member schools and their players — many of whom are filing legal challenges to local, friendly courts to reach favorable rulings. These court decisions have chipped away at the foundation on which the NCAA sits — a decades-long framework regulating athlete compensation, movement, eligibility and other areas.

>In some of the latest cases, a Mississippi judge in February deemed Trinidad Chambliss eligible for a sixth year, and an Alabama court granted Crimson Tide basketball player Charles Bediako a restraining order to play five games before another ruling deemed him ineligible.

>“You have the Mississippi deal. And today. There are others,” said former Clemson, Miami and Georgia Tech athletic director Dan Radakovich. “You can’t have localized decisions move past NCAA rules.”

>The Sorsby decision, while opening the door for more such injunctions, is now the latest event to lead administrators to call for congressional intervention.

>“If there's one thing that could unify a divided Congress to pass a law that gives the NCAA more authority to govern itself, it might be a court prohibiting the NCAA from banning athletes who bet on their own games,” Tulane sports law professor Gabe Feldman posted on Monday.

>“The ruling speaks to the challenges we have in enforcing sensible rules,” said Jon Steinbrecher, the commissioner of the MAC and vice-chair of the NCAA Division I Cabinet. “We need help from the federal government that gives us some protection to enforce our rules.”

>Big West commissioner Dan Butterly, also on the Division I Cabinet, referred to the ruling as “devastating” for both the integrity of American sports and the NCAA.

>“From what I understand this individual bet on his own games, not unlike Pete Rose, but Pete got a lifetime ban,” Butterly said. “In this case, a Texas judge ruled a Texas Tech athlete gets to play.”

>The decision comes at a pivotal time on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers announced last month bipartisan legislation in the U.S. Senate that stands to reform the industry and grant the NCAA a narrow antitrust protection to enforce its rules. However, college sports’ two biggest stakeholders, the SEC and Big Ten, oppose the legislation for a variety of reasons — perhaps chief among them that the bill targets the two leagues by preventing their future expansion and opening a path to pool rights, which both are adamantly against.

>In fact, Big Ten and SEC presidents have been invited to a video call with the senators who introduced the bill, Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell, scheduled for Tuesday. It is unclear if school executives will choose to participate without their conference commissioners, who were intentionally not invited to the calls.

>Monday’s decision drew the interest of sitting lawmakers like Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Penn.), who posted on social media that the ruling is "outrageous” and “threatens the integrity of all sports.”

>“It’s now, more than ever, abundantly clear Congress needs to act to give NCAA and universities the ability to govern themselves,” he said.

>Others see Monday’s decision as paving a path to the long-discussed breakaway - for leagues to create and enforce their own rules outside of the NCAA umbrella.

>“I have not personally advocated for conference self governance, but today’s decision makes it obvious that it is a necessary path forward,” Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen, a longtime NCAA governance committee member, said. “We can not align with institutions who advocate or support player participation in this circumstance.”

>

>At the center of the Sorsby conversation is a notable figure in the college sports space: Texas Tech billionaire booster and board chair Cody Campbell, who released a statement on Monday calling the Sorsby situation “unfortunate” and the “outcome of a broken system.” Campbell, a close ally to President Donald Trump, has been involved in the development of congressional legislation related to college sports reform.

>“I’m doing everything I can to fix [the system], but until there is a permanent solution, Texas Tech and its student-athletes have to do the best they can to navigate and compete amid the chaos that exists in the reality of the world we live in,” Campbell said.

>But some see Campbell as a partial figure in this situation, having publicly acknowledged his contributions in funding a portion of Texas Tech’s sports rosters. Sorsby is believed to have signed a one-year contract with Tech paying him at least $5 million.

>In a statement released Monday, NCAA president Charlie Baker used the ruling to encourage Congress to act and targeted “deep-pocketed supporters” at schools that are “willing to look the other way on the glaring integrity threat of betting on your own team.” Only Congress, Baker wrote, can equip the NCAA to apply “common sense rule to everyone fairly and consistently.”