On Thursday, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton sent a letter to Big 12 leadership to inform the league that it could face significant legal and financial consequences for punishing Texas Tech and its quarterback Brendan Sorsby.
Now, Paxton’s counterpart to the north is taking an opposing stance.
Oklahoma attorney general Gentner Drummond sent his own letter to Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark and board of directors chairman Douglas Girod on Friday, recommending the conference take action against Texas Tech for its handling of Sorsby’s sports gambling controversy.
“(Texas Tech) has shirked responsibility by running with a bogus claim to a friendly court,” Drummond wrote. “Its leadership has prioritized winning over sport, over honor, and over integrity. If Texas Tech will not do the right thing, the Big 12 should. Texas Tech should be sanctioned.”
Sorsby, who transferred to Texas Tech from Cincinnati in January, was previously ruled permanently ineligible by the NCAA following investigations of his gambling activity, which included him betting on Indiana football games while a member of the Hoosiers’ program in 2022.
However, retired Texas judge Ken Curry granted the senior quarterback a preliminary injunction earlier this week, rendering Sorsby eligible to play in 2026.
In Paxton’s letter, he claimed the Big 12 would be held liable for “Texas Tech’s lost football revenues, damages to its alumni contributions and damages to its recruitment, plus attorneys’ fees,” according to ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, with the total cost being “substantially more than $200 million.”
But Drummond disputed Paxton’s claims, saying that if Texas Tech attempts to cite antitrust laws in defending itself against conference discipline, “(Texas Tech) will fail.”
“The idea that the Big 12 may not sanction the actions of one of its members under an agreed-upon preexisting contract is facially absurd,” Drummond wrote. “By adopting and enforcing its bylaws, the Big 12 Conference is simply ‘upholding integrity and fair play among (its) membership.’”
Drummond requested that the Big 12 utilize league Bylaw 3.6 — which grants the Big 12 authority to discipline a member institution “engaged in any action or a course of conduct materially adverse to the best interests of the Conference taken as a whole” — to punish Texas Tech, which leaders from the Big 12 met on Thursday to discuss.
“(Texas Tech’s) actions in obtaining eligibility for Brendan Sorsby — an athlete the NCAA declared permanently ineligible for extensive wagering on college sports, including games involving his own team — have constituted a shameful chapter in the story of college football,” Dummond wrote. “Texas Tech has acted in a manner adverse to the Big 12 and the integrity of college football as a whole.”
Texas Tech has continued to voice its support for Sorsby, most recently in a 21-minute video posted to social media Thursday evening that been viewed nearly 4 million times.
