{"id":734,"date":"2026-06-19T14:38:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=734"},"modified":"2026-06-19T14:38:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:38:58","slug":"the-massive-implications-of-the-brendan-sorsby-ordeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=734","title":{"rendered":"The Massive Implications of the Brendan Sorsby Ordeal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In recent years, college sports have become an unregulated, high-stakes environment in which players are paid directly by schools and can transfer an unlimited number of times. But there are still some firm boundaries that nearly everyone agrees shouldn\u2019t be crossed: gambling, for example. If you\u2019re an athlete who gambles on your own team\u2019s games, you shouldn\u2019t be allowed to play. That\u2019s how it works in the pros, where athletes such as Pete Rose and Jontay Porter received lifetime bans for betting. (Rose was controversially reinstated after his death.)<\/p>\n

Read more Photos of the Week: Chair Hat, Shouting Choir, Demolition Derby<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what should\u2019ve happened to the quarterback Brendan Sorsby, whose conduct isn\u2019t debatable. During his single year playing for Indiana University, from 2022 to 2023, Sorsby made 2,900 bets\u201440 of which were on his own team, according to court documents. After transferring to the University of Cincinnati ahead of the 2024\u201325 season, he bet on Cincinnati men\u2019s basketball; upon ending up at Texas Tech University earlier this year, he placed wagers on professional golf, the NBA, and MLB. In total, Sorsby bet at least $90,000 over four years, and sometimes used betting accounts registered to friends or family.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Sorsby entered rehab for gambling addiction in April, regulators in multiple states opened investigations into his betting activity. Last month, the NCAA, the governing body for college sports in the United States, deemed that Sorsby was ineligible to play in the upcoming season. But last week, a Texas judge decided to wave away a pretty clear red flag. On June 8, Sorsby was granted a temporary injunction that would have allowed him to play this fall, potentially setting what would be a worrying precedent across college sports.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the NCAA and Texas Tech were spared significant embarrassment because Sorsby opted to apply for the NFL supplemental draft after meeting with school officials earlier this week. The supplemental draft is for players who typically have college eligibility or have faced disciplinary issues, and who become draft-eligible after the year\u2019s NFL draft has taken place. The NFL still has to approve Sorsby\u2019s application, but it\u2019s possible he could be in the pros before long.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Sorsby\u2019s ordeal served as another example of the NCAA\u2019s declining power. Sorsby\u2019s attorneys framed his gambling addiction as a mental-health issue; Judge Ken Curry, who granted the injunction, agreed, writing that Sorsby would \u201csuffer a probable, imminent, and irreparable injury\u201d if he were unable to play for Texas Tech. The ruling was a come-to-Jesus reckoning that the NCAA surely never anticipated, demonstrating just how much the organization\u2019s power is built on a house of cards. For most leagues, this would be an open-and-shut case; a ban from the sport would never be challenged. But the NCAA is in a different category. Other leagues have a collective-bargaining agreement in which rules and infractions are agreed upon in collaboration with the players. The NCAA doesn\u2019t have that, so any practices the organization sets can be challenged in court. In recent years, the courts have been ripping apart the NCAA rule book, prohibiting the organization from imposing limitations on transferring, and allowing players to return to college play after having gone pro.<\/p>\n

As long as the NCAA refuses to accept reality\u2014that its student athletes are something closer to employees than to amateurs\u2014the ecosystem it\u2019s supposed to protect will continue to be degraded. The organization\u2019s overall failure to construct a comprehensive, equitable system that treats the players as true partners subject to clear-cut rules has led to the current scenario, where if Sorsby had played, it would have leveled the entire sport\u2019s credibility.<\/p>\n

Read more The Thinkers Who Explain This Baffling Era<\/a><\/p>\n

Instead of dealing with the mess it created, the NCAA has chosen to beg Congress to help by passing the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act. If passed, the bill would give the NCAA a limited antitrust exemption, allowing the organization to unilaterally set its own rules. Whether the bill will pass is uncertain. Although some aspects of it would provide helpful systemic changes, such as creating more uniform policies related to discipline and eligibility, it would also wrench power away from the students and back toward the colleges.<\/p>\n

A big reason for the chaos is that colleges have repeatedly shown that they will do whatever it takes, whether moral or immoral, to win. Nobody was forcing Texas Tech to play Sorsby in the fall. If not for the enormous backlash\u2014which included a conference lawsuit and threats of a boycott by other schools\u2014the Red Raiders would have happily held their noses and competed for the national championship that eluded them last year. Adding a talent like Sorsby presumably would have gotten them closer to winning it all. (They were also paying him a reported $6 million.)<\/p>\n

But the lenient touch toward one of the game\u2019s worst violations reflects a problem that\u2019s only continuing to grow in the broader sports world. A recent survey revealed that one in three adults from the ages of 21 to 44 had wagered on sports before turning 21. Surely, Sorsby isn\u2019t the only player who will be tempted to cash in. The lure of gambling is everywhere now that almost every major sports league has financial relationships with betting companies.<\/p>\n

A crisis was averted, but the boundaries in college sports are still in danger of fading. The judicial system has shown the NCAA in recent years that without it having a real structure, maintaining any collective standard of conduct will be impossible<\/p>\n

Read more What a Juneteenth Boxing Match Revealed About America<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NCAA needs to figure out how to enforce its rules before something goes wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Massive Implications of the Brendan Sorsby Ordeal - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=734\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Massive Implications of the Brendan Sorsby Ordeal - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The NCAA needs to figure out how to enforce its rules before something goes wrong.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=734\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-19T14:38:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"The Massive Implications of the Brendan Sorsby Ordeal\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-19T14:38:58+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734\"},\"wordCount\":953,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/2b3030019cddba9faad196d588f56d86.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=734\",\"name\":\"The Massive Implications of the Brendan Sorsby Ordeal - 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