Texas Tech’s athletic director has issued a statement that seems to be an attempt to distance the university from a judge’s controversial decision allowing Red Raiders quarterback Brendan Sorsby to play in 2026 despite his ban by the NCAA for wagering on college sports.
In a statement posted to social media on Wednesday, Kirby Hocutt makes it clear that the university is offering its full support to Sorsby during his recovery from gambling addiction. Hocutt also wants it to be known, however, that “Texas Tech is not a party to Brendan’s lawsuit.”
“We did not file it. We did not fund it,” Hocutt wrote. “A young man in treatment for a clinically diagnosed addiction exercised his legal right to seek a remedy in court, and a judge agreed with him. Our role has been to support his recovery, not to engineer his eligibilty.”
Sorsby spent two years at Indiana and two at Cincinnati before transferring to Texas Tech this offseason for a reported multimillion-dollar deal. Court records show he has admitted to betting on Hoosiers football games he was not participating in while a freshman backup quarterback in 2022.
According to NCAA guidelines, student-athletes who bet on their own games or on other sports at their school could “potentially face permanent loss of collegiate eligibility.”
Texas Tech, which plays in the Big 12 Conference, was informed of an NCAA investigation into Sorsby’s gambling activity in March, according to court records, and the school later declared him ineligible according to the association’s bylaws. The NCAA has since denied two petitions from Texas Tech to have Sorsby’s eligibility reinstated.
In a lawsuit filed last month in Lubbock County District Court, Sorsby’s attorneys requested that he be declared eligible for team activities because the NCAA “failed to comply with its contractual commitments” to the fifth-year senior as a student-athlete and therefore “is precluded from enforcing its gambling bylaws against Mr. Sorsby to deny or withhold his reinstatement.”
On Monday, Judge Ken Curry granted a temporary injunction allowing Sorsby to participate in his final year of eligibility — with certain conditions, which include sitting out the first two games of the season — while the matter plays out in court. The final hearing has been scheduled to begin Feb. 8, after the end of the college football season.
Curry stated in the ruling that Sorsby would “suffer a probable, imminent and irreparable injury” if he missed out this season on the “elite coaching, training resources, camaraderie, and regimen that only being a member of a Division I college football team can provide.”
Hocutt said in a statement Monday: “As we have said before, we do not believe that the circumstances of Brendan’s case warranted permanent ineligibility.”
Many people around college football disagree. The athletic departments at Nebraska (Big Ten Conference) and Georgia (Southeastern Conference) instructed their teams to avoid scheduling games against Texas Tech.
The Big 12 “had a thoughtful and productive conversation with our athletic directors [Tuesday] as we continue to work through the broader implications of this situation,” commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel is reporting that Big Ten officials are expected to discuss a ban on playing Texas Tech in any sport.
Hocutt’s most recent statement addresses such responses to the controversy.
“To my colleagues: I understand the frustration,” Hocutt wrote. “This situation is hard, it is new, and there is no perfect answer. The system we’re operating within is binary, but the situation is not. We are open to ongoing conversations about how to best handle these issues as an industry going forward.
“We will continue to be transparent in our decision-making. Most importantly, we will keep doing what we have always done, put our students first.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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