Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in Texas state court on Monday, seeking a temporary injunction that would grant him eligibility for the 2026 college football season. Sorsby is under investigation by the NCAA for gambling violations, including bets he placed on Indiana football while Sorsby was a member of the Hoosiers in 2022, which Sorsby details in an affidavit attached to the lawsuit. Sorsby says he needs clarity on his collegiate status so that he can apply for the NFL’s supplemental draft by late June if his NCAA career is done.
The lawsuit, filed in Lubbock County Court, where Texas Tech University is located, states that Sorsby is “currently ineligible to play for Texas Tech due to prior violations of the NCAA’s sports gambling rules.’
“Rather than support a student-athlete’s recovery from a gambling addiction … 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 lawsuit reads.
Sorsby is represented by prominent sports labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler and Lubbock lawyer Dustin Burrows. According to updated NCAA sports betting guidelines passed in 2023, players who bet on games involving their own team face permanent loss of eligibility.
In the affidavit, Sorsby admits to “placing small bets on the Indiana football team, typically in amounts between $5 and $50” in 2022 when he was a member of the Hoosiers. Sorsby was a true freshman at the time and competing on the scout team “with several quarterbacks ahead of me on the team’s depth chart and there was no reasonable chance that I would play,” according to the affidavit.
Sorsby said the bets were a way to “feel more connected to the team” and that he never used non-public information when deciding what bets to place.
“Because the Indiana football team was not a very strong competitor in 2022, I lost most of the bets I placed,” according to the affidavit.
He later appeared in one game as a true freshman, but the affidavit states that Sorsby “never placed any bets on any Indiana football game that I participated in or that I reasonably expected that I could have participated in.”
Sorsby, 23, announced on April 27 that he would be taking an “immediate indefinite leave of absence” from Texas Tech football to enter a residential treatment program for a gambling addiction. The lawsuit’s timing stands out because of the NCAA investigation timeline. Typically, with eligibility investigations, the school must first determine whether an athlete is ineligible, which the lawsuit claims Texas Tech did “promptly” after the NCAA opened its investigation in April. Once that decision has been made, the school can request reinstatement from the NCAA on behalf of the athlete as part of the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Reinstatement (SAR) process.
The fifth-year senior quarterback is circumventing that timeline in a sense, seeking a court-ordered injunction to have his eligibility reinstated due to concerns over how long it could take the NCAA to deliver that final reinstatement ruling and the timeline of the NFL’s supplemental draft. Sorsby is arguing that if he doesn’t have full clarity on his status for the 2026 season before the supplemental draft deadline and is then unable to play college football this fall, he would lose out on a season’s worth of earning potential at either the college or professional levels. He asks for a hearing no later than June 15, with June 22 the stated deadline to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft.
The lawsuit states that Texas Tech on April 27 notified the NCAA that Sorsby acknowledged his violations and requested to begin the reinstatement process, but that the NCAA has yet to state if it will process the request. Sorsby, per the suit, also offered to accept a two-game suspension and have his eligibility conditioned on completing his treatment program, among other conditions.
“The NCAA rejected his offer,” the lawsuit states.
The NCAA, in a statement, said it has not received a reinstatement request for this case.
“The NCAA generally doesn’t comment on pending reinstatement requests, but the Association’s sports betting rules are clear, as are the reinstatement conditions. 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.”
In a statement Monday evening, Texas Tech said it intends to quickly initiate the reinstatement process after “finalizing an agreed-upon stipulation of facts between Texas Tech University, the NCAA and Brendan Sorsby” and the school declaring Sorsby ineligible for competition.
Sorsby entered 2026 with one season of college eligibility remaining after two seasons each at Indiana and Cincinnati. He was considered one of the top quarterbacks in the transfer portal this winter and signed a one-year deal with the Red Raiders that was expected to pay him more than $4 million.
The Athletic reported last week that Sorsby and his legal team were preparing to request an expedited resolution to Sorsby’s NCAA eligibility status. In a high-profile case like this one, it’s likely the NCAA would prefer to speak with Sorsby before making a final decision, though it’s not required, and Sorsby’s stay in a residential treatment program has impacted the investigation.
Texas Tech is not part of Sorsby’s lawsuit against the NCAA. Tech is cooperating with the NCAA and its gambling investigation and is supporting Sorsby during the eligibility and reinstatement process, sources briefed on the school’s thinking told The Athletic. Sorsby is pursuing the lawsuit on his own.
Kessler, Sorsby’s lawyer, has decades of experience in sports law, having worked on cases that helped bring free agency to the NFL and the NBA. More recently, the 71-year-old was the co-lead plaintiff attorney in the landmark House v. NCAA settlement, which forever changed college athletics by permitting schools to pay athletes directly for their name, image and likeness.
There have been numerous legal challenges for eligibility by college athletes in recent years, including a recent successful one in state court by Ole Miss quarterback Trinidad Chambliss. But none involved the gambling implications Sorsby is facing.
In his affidavit, Sorsby admits that since 2022, he placed “thousands of bets on virtually anything,” including the Turkish basketball league and Romanian soccer matches. But he also claims that he did not place bets “for the purpose of making money,” never bet against Indiana in 2022, and since then, has not placed any additional bets on his own teams (Indiana or Cincinnati football) and never manipulated a game. The suit does note that Sorsby bet on Indiana and Cincinnati men’s basketball games while he attended those school.
Betting on other sports at one’s school could result in a lost season of eligibility. Betting on one’s own sport involving another school could cost a player 50 percent of one season of eligibility. Betting more than $800 on pro sports could cost a player at least 30 percent of a season, with lesser penalties for a lower dollar amount. Last October, all three NCAA divisions passed a rule change allowing players and staff to bet on pro sports, but the rule was rescinded a month later when more than two-thirds of Division I schools voted to rescind the change — including Texas Tech, according to sources briefed on the process.
If Sorsby ultimately applies for and is granted entry into the NFL’s supplemental draft, it would likely be held in July. A player has not been selected in the supplemental draft since 2019.
In addition to the NCAA investigation, Sorsby is under investigation by Ohio state gambling officials, the Ohio Casino Control Commission confirmed to The Athletic, and the Indiana Gaming Commission previously told The Athletic it was withholding responsive documents related to Sorsby because of a state law that shields the investigatory records of a law enforcement agency.
Sorsby is involved in a separate federal lawsuit filed against him by the University of Cincinnati in February in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Cincinnati is seeking a $1 million buyout in liquidated damages over Sorsby allegedly violating a multiseason revenue-sharing agreement with the university when he transferred to Tech. On April 27, the same day news broke of Sorsby’s gambling treatment and the NCAA’s investigation, the quarterback and his legal representation filed a motion to dismiss. A joint discovery plan is due in that case by May 28.
Sorsby’s eligibility status puts Texas Tech football in a difficult position for the upcoming season, on the heels of the program’s first-ever Big 12 championship and a spot in the College Football Playoff in 2025. Backup quarterback Will Hammond is recovering from a torn ACL suffered last October, and there was no spring transfer portal window this season.
Texas Tech kicks off the season on Sept. 5 vs. Abilene Christian, followed by a road trip to Oregon State (Sept. 12) and a Friday night Big 12 opener at home against Houston on Sept. 18.
This story will be updated.
