A brawl could soon explode across college football with no real winner. Both sides spent this week unbuttoning their shirt cuffs and rolling their sleeves back twice, removing any jewelry and flexing their neck muscles.
The NCAA, and all of college football, is furious over a Texas court’s injunction that restored eligibility to Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who has openly admitted to gambling on his own team to win football games. The Texas attorney general, meanwhile, is proactively lobbing warnings toward the Big 12 in case the conference has any lingering thoughts of punishing the university for playing its star quarterback.
As lawyers for both sides bicker and strut, the more valuable lesson in all of this has been trampled under litigation and bureaucratic threats.
Sorsby’s injunction may at least temporarily allow him to return to college football, but it doesn’t address the root of his problem: online betting and a growing gambling addiction in young men today that is creating a public health crisis across the United States.
Since the Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports gambling in 2018, at least 38 states now permit some form of it, allowing Americans to place bets totaling more than $150 billion annually. We have seen gambling corrupt sports throughout history but more specifically in recent years, from the scandals involving Cleveland Guardians pitchers allegedly throwing rigged pitches to NBA players allegedly accepting bribes in gambling plots. Rarely, though, have we seen an athlete come forward and admit his own addiction to all of it.
Sorsby, 22, admitted to betting nearly $90,000 on college and pro sports, including at least 40 bets placed on Indiana while he was a quarterback for the Hoosiers. The admission is jarring, but perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising.
A Harris Poll survey earlier this year indicated nearly two-thirds of adults reported participating in at least one form of gambling prior to turning 21, the legal betting age in the United States. The forms of gambling ranged from scratching off lottery tickets to playing fantasy sports for cash. Nearly eight out of 10 Americans believe gambling addiction is as serious or more serious than alcohol and drug addiction.
Recent research shows teens and college-aged adults are more impulsive and at higher risk for developing gambling disorders. Around 6 percent of college students have a serious gambling problem that can result in psychological difficulties, poor grades and heavy debt.
Noted financial adviser Dave Ramsey called online sports gambling “the fastest growing addiction that is destroying young men in their 20s.” Various studies and surveys every year point to a rise in both revenue for the gambling companies and poor mental health for their customers, many of whom are young men in their early 20s living in poorer areas who don’t have much disposable income to spare.
There are full-blown addicts such as Sorsby, but there’s an equally dangerous sect below that can be just as destructive. The World Health Organization classifies it as “hazardous gambling.” They may not meet the criteria for an addiction diagnosis, but they suffer many of the same consequences, such as anxiety and depression, lower credit scores, higher bankruptcy rates, debt consolidation loans and delinquencies in recurring payments such as auto loans and credit cards.
Gambling addiction has a higher suicide rate than any other known addictive disorder — 80 percent of people struggling with gambling consider suicide and 20 percent attempt to take their own life, according to the Ohio Casino Control Commission.
Sorsby is the latest name attached to a problem with no easy detection and no simple solution. Generations of teens and adults are addicted to their cell phones for the constant dopamine spikes. Combine that with the adrenaline rush of easy access to gambling on cell phones, and it’s a triple word score of dopamine and danger.
This isn’t meant to position Sorsby as some powerless victim. He should be held accountable for his decisions, and one district court judge in Texas has prevented that from happening, at least for now.
A locker room can be a healing sanctuary for players struggling with hurts, habits and hangups, and perhaps it could be for Sorsby, too. Addiction treatments demand structure and accountability over isolation. There is an argument to be made that the best place for Sorsby personally is in a locker room, for the accountability his teammates and coaches provide. In his petition to the court, Sorsby said he would work in conjunction with the NCAA to educate other athletes on the dangers of gambling.
His legal team, led by prominent sports labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler, argued the NCAA is punishing Sorsby for a legitimate mental health condition after he was diagnosed with a gambling and anxiety disorder. Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt insisted in a lengthy statement that the university can offer support for Sorsby with clinical care, device monitoring, financial oversight and outpatient therapy regardless of whether he ever plays a snap for the Red Raiders. Hocutt argued that pulling him out of a structured environment and away from his support system does not protect him.
That very well may be true, but Texas Tech can offer all of that without allowing him on the field.
It’s easy to see why NCAA officials would be outraged by the ruling and the dangerous message one court has sent to the other 170,000 Division I athletes across the country. We’ve long suspected the NCAA had all of its teeth pulled in this new world of name, image and likeness deals. This ruling by one judge in Texas all but assures it.
So Sorsby now gets to prepare for another college football season, while the NCAA, Big 12 and Texas Tech continue to feud over his eligibility and NFL teams temporarily delay the uncomfortable conversations over whether they can trust this quarterback to lead their franchise. All while another young adult clicks another online ad and places another $20 parlay bet.
Sorsby might be the first college athlete to admit this type of gambling addiction. He won’t be the last. You can bet on it.
