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Texas Tech Red Raiders quarterback Brendan Sorsby still faces an uphill battle in his legal fight with the NCAA.
ESPN college football insider Pete Thamel reported Tuesday that the NCAA has denied Sorsby’s request for reinstatement for eligibility for the 2026 season. (He was banned after it was found he gambled on sports.) This comes after he completed a 35-day rehab program for his gambling addiction at Algamus in Goodyear, Arizona.
Sorsby is set to return to Lubbock County soon before his injunction hearing against the NCAA on June 1. Could he win that case?
What are Brendan Sorsby’s chances of winning his court case?
The NCAA has lost other eligibility cases. In February, a court ruling granted Ole Miss Rebels QB Trinidad Chambliss a temporary injunction against the NCAA, allowing him to play a sixth season of college football. The Mississippi Supreme Court denied the NCAA’s appeal in March.
Chambliss’ case, though, didn’t concern gambling, which threatens the integrity of the sport if an athlete is found guilty of doing so.
“It would be unprecedented,” Jodi Balsam, a former NCAA arbitrator and director of sports at Brooklyn Law School, told Eric Olson of the Associated Press for a story published May 20. “They have never excused one betting on one’s own sport or team and it has routinely been met with the harshest of penalties.”
Former Iowa State Cyclones QB Hunter Dekkers was found gambling on a game in which he didn’t play in 2021. Iowa State filed two appeals with the NCAA seeking reinstatement of eligibility, and the governing body denied both. He never played at the Division I level again.
Sorsby admitted in his lawsuit that during his freshman season with the Indiana Hoosiers in 2022, he wagered $5 to $50 on games and placed prop bets on his teammates. He says he never bet on a game he played in at Indiana or for the Cincinnati Bearcats from 2024-25. The QB, however, kept gambling on sports, including the school’s basketball team.
Sorsby’s legal team argues the NCAA’s punishment is hypocritical, considering it profits from sports gambling. True, but that may not be enough to persuade a courtroom to rule in favor of the QB.
“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.”
Making an exception for Sorsby could erode that public trust. Balsam noted that if he’s exonerated, it may “open the floodgates for anybody who is ever engaged in gambling that violates the policy and tries to defend, justify or rationalize their behavior.”
If Sorsby loses the case, his next best option would be to declare for the NFL Supplemental Draft before June 22 and hope a team is willing to overlook his gambling violations. If he wins, expect the NCAA to keep fighting. It wants him to lose eligibility to avoid a shift in precedent — one that potentially opens Pandora’s box.
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