Texas Tech ‘should be ashamed of itself’ for seeking Brendan Sorsby’s injunction

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The Texas Tech Red Raiders agreed to the rules until they were inconvenient.

Protecting an investment reported at nearly $6 million and trying to preserve its College Football Playoff hopes in 2026, the school backed a lawsuit against the NCAA that will allow scandal-plagued quarterback Brendan Sorsby to play this season even though he was ruled ineligible for wagering on college sports.

On Monday, Sorsby won that lawsuit when a retired Tarrant County judge ruled in favor of the quarterback by issuing a preliminary injunction against the NCAA to allow the Indiana and Cincinnati transfer to play this season after serving a two-game suspension recommended by his attorneys.

Keeping Sorbsy from playing this season would cause “probable, imminent and irreparable injury” to Sorsby, judge Ken Curry ruled.

“There is no injury to the competitive integrity of the NCAA. It is what we proposed and what the NCAA should have accepted had it been true to its promises to prioritize the welfare of athletes,” Sorsby’s attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, told ESPN.

Sorsby was ruled ineligible after placing about $90,000 worth of bets over four years, including betting on the Indiana team he played for in 2022.

“The NCAA strongly disagrees with the court’s ruling in Sorsby’s case and is deeply concerned about the damaging, far-reaching and broadly destabilizing ramifications of this outcome — which undermines and corrupts the integrity of sports. The NCAA is committed to supporting student-athlete mental health but must continue to aggressively defend against actions that defraud college athletics and threaten competitive integrity, such as betting on one’s own sport,” the NCAA said in a statement.

Texas Tech mega booster Cody Campbell blamed the system in his own self-serving assessment.

“This unfortunate situation is the outcome of a broken system,” Campbell said. “I’m doing everything I can to fix it, 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.”

Monday’s ruling will continue college football down the path towards the inevitable and necessary destruction of the current system, but Tech circumventing the rules currently put in place is purely for its own short-term gains.

In the cutthroat, big-business world of college football, no one is asking for altruism here, but Tech pushing for the reinstatement of Sorsby’s eligibility ignores the NCAA rules that the Red Raiders had agreed to abide by in a growing trend around the sport that has sparked public frustration from Longhorns athletics director Chris Del Conte and head football coach Steve Sarkisian.

“We all, as institutions, signed up to be part of the NCAA, and then we pass the rules that are put in place,” Sarkisian noted on Always College Football last week. “These are all the things that we sign up for, but we all right now are operating in a way to say, yeah, that’s that rule, but I’m just going to go do it anyway. And if somebody doesn’t like it, I’m just going to challenge whoever tries to say I broke the rule, and I’m going to challenge it in a variety of ways — I’m going to appeal, if I lose the appeal, I’m going to go find a judge, I’m going to get an injunction.

“There’s all these things that are happening like that. ‘I’m just going to go break the rule, and if I don’t like the consequences, I’m going to go challenge it, and sooner or later the NCAA is going to quit fighting.‘ We can’t keep operating like that. That’s not a healthy way to live.”

It’s not a healthy way to live, and the decision immediately sparked backlash against the Red Raiders.

Georgia athletics director Josh Brooks told Yahoo Sports that schools should consider not playing Texas Tech to protect the integrity of their own locker rooms and avoid putting their athletes on a field for contests comprised by the courts.

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

Kansas State athletics director Gene Taylor, who had previously discussed the possibility of Big 12 schools not playing Tech this year, was even more irate about the injunction.

“It’s f****** bulls***,” Taylor told Yahoo Sports. “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 their team.”

Another Big 12 athletics director who asked for anonymity put it simply — Texas Tech “should be ashamed of itself.”

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