Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who has sought treatment for a gambling addiction, filed for an injunction against the NCAA on Monday, seeking his college eligibility for the 2026 college football season.
The filing, made in district court in Lubbock County, Texas, cites the NCAA's "deeply hypocritical" position on gambling and a "wholesale abandonment of its obligations and duties to promote the well-being" of Sorsby.
The NCAA prohibits student-athletes from betting on any NCAA-sanctioned sport, professional or collegiate. Penalties can include permanent ineligibility, especially in cases in which athletes wagered on their own team or manipulated their performance.
Sorsby, who has prominent attorneys Jeffrey Kessler and Scott Tompsett as part of his legal team, is "currently ineligible to play for Texas Tech due to prior violations of the NCAA's sports gambling rules" and says he will be "irreparably harmed" if the injunction isn't granted.
The NCAA issued a statement Monday saying it had not received a reinstatement request for this case.
"The Association's sports betting rules are clear, as are the reinstatement conditions," the NCAA statement said. "When it comes to betting on one's own team, these rules must be enforced in every case for the simple reason that the integrity of the game is at risk. Every sports league has these protections in place, and the NCAA will continue to apply them equally because every student-athlete competing deserves to know they're playing a fair game."
Texas Tech issued a statement later Monday declaring Sorsby "ineligible for competition" after finalizing "an agreed-upon stipulation of facts" between the university, the NCAA and Sorsby. The university also said it intends to "quickly initiate the reinstatement process" while the "primary focus remains supporting Sorsby's health and well-being."
The filing by Sorsby's legal team says the quarterback suffers from a "clinically diagnosed" gambling disorder, which is "a mental health condition."
"The NCAA has weaponized his condition to shore up a facade of competitive integrity, while simultaneously profiting from the very gambling ecosystem it polices," the filing states.
Among the claims for declaratory relief in the suit is a request under the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code for the NCAA to be "precluded from enforcing its gambling bylaws against Mr. Sorsby to deny or withhold his reinstatement." It requests that he be eligible to "participate fully" for Texas Tech in 2026, including in games. It requests that any NCAA action to the contrary be deemed "void and unenforceable."
"The relief is narrow: one student-athlete and one senior season," the filing says. "The NCAA will suffer no cognizable harm from letting Mr. Sorsby play football while this case proceeds. But if this Court does not act, no future judgment can give Mr. Sorsby what the NCAA will have taken from him."
Sorsby has been in an inpatient residential treatment facility since late April, after he revealed that he placed thousands of bets on sports.
"If I cannot practice with the team, it will be severely detrimental to my mental health and my development as an athlete," Sorsby said in an included affidavit. "Without access to coaching, teammates, and on-field repetitions, I cannot develop the chemistry and skills necessary to start at quarterback in the 2026 season -- and each additional day away compounds that harm. These developmental opportunities cannot be replaced or replicated."
The filing claims Sorsby offered to accept a two-game suspension based on "completing his residential treatment" for his gambling condition. He also offered to work with the NCAA to educate others on the dangers of gambling. The filing claims the NCAA, in rejecting the offer, disregarded its own policies by not coming to a decision in a timely manner.
"Throughout the process, the NCAA has arbitrarily stalled at every turn, despite the fact that it knows that the clock is ticking for Mr. Sorsby," the filing reads, mentioning the NCAA's requests for a live interview and the necessity to see Sorsby's records. Sorsby's legal team deems this unnecessary because he has admitted wrongdoing and there's no evidence that he bet against his own team or shared insider information.
In the included affidavit, Sorsby requested a hearing for June 15 so the court can make a ruling before the June 22 deadline for the NFL's supplemental draft.
"Instead of exercising compassion, the NCAA has responded with silence, repeated information demands, and delay," the filing states. "The NCAA's response reflects a self-protective bureaucracy that has abandoned its professed commitment to student-athlete well-being and that ignores the contractual and legal obligations it owes to student-athletes."
The bets Sorsby placed included small wagers on Indiana football -- between $5 and $50, the filing says -- "to win or for teammates to exceed expectations," although he didn't play in any of those games for the Hoosiers. The filing claims he stopped betting in 2022 when he became the Hoosiers' backup quarterback.
The NCAA punishment for the scope of Sorsby's gambling, per the organization's rulebook, would be much steeper than two games.
Sorsby's filing asserts that he "took accountability" for breaking NCAA rules violations and that the violations "undisputedly did not raise any integrity issues" because they did not threaten or influence the outcome of games.
The filing includes Sorsby's betting on events he didn't follow such as the Turkish basketball league and Romanian soccer matches.
"To be clear, I never placed any bets 'against' Indiana or against any players on the team," Sorsby said in the included affidavit. "I never used any non-public information that I knew about the team in deciding what bets to place. My bets were purely intended to make me feel more connected to the game and my teammates and to give me more of a reason to root for my teammates. Because the Indiana football team was not a very strong competitor in 2022, I lost most of the bets I placed.
"... In retrospect, by the end of my freshman year at Indiana, I was truly addicted to gambling. I began placing hundreds of bets on anything and everything, including non-major doubles tennis tournaments and the Major League Baseball draft."
Sorsby's representatives had a call with the NCAA last Friday and were informed the organization is requesting that "precise amounts that were bet and how much money was won or lost on certain bets" be included in the stipulated facts of his request for reinstatement.
The NCAA has taken no public action on Sorsby, saying in April only that it takes "sports betting very seriously" and is committed to the "integrity of competition."
The suit also claims that Texas Tech is harmed, as "without a ruling on his reinstatement, the program cannot plan, prepare, or build around its starting quarterback."
Sorsby looms as one of the highest-profile players in college football this season. The No. 1 player in ESPN's transfer portal rankings, Sorsby moved from Cincinnati to Texas Tech and projects to be one of the highest-paid players in the sport at more than $5 million for next season.
He also is considered amid the higher end of an unusually deep quarterback crop for the 2027 NFL draft. The filing says timing is critical for Sorsby, as he is "required" to enter the supplemental draft by June 22 and faces an "impossible choice."
If he does enter the NFL supplemental draft, he'll be the most intriguing prospect to do so since 2012, when Josh Gordon was picked by the Cleveland Browns in the second round. There hasn't been a player taken in the supplemental draft since 2019.
"The NCAA has manufactured an impossible bind: it delays its reinstatement decision while the NFL deadline closes in, forcing Mr. Sorsby to choose between surrendering college eligibility he wants to retain, while risking the loss of a full year of competitive football entirely," the filing states. "This is not equity. Mr. Sorsby has diligently pursued every alternative avenue for relief, but he is not obligated to continue doing so in light of the irreparable harm he now faces."
