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Brendan Sorsby placed at least 40 bets involving Indiana football as a quarterback for the Hoosiers, used sportsbook accounts registered to a family member and friends to wager approximately $90,000 over four years, and continued to gamble after transferring from Cincinnati to Texas Tech in December, according to court documents filed Friday.
The documents, filed by Sorsby’s legal team in district court in Lubbock, Texas, reveal new details about how the quarterback transferred large sums of money to friends to fund his betting.
Sorsby has been diagnosed with a gambling and anxiety disorder and recently completed a 35-day stint in an Arizona gambling rehabilitation center, according to his attorneys. He is asking for a temporary injunction against the NCAA to maintain his college eligibility. A hearing is scheduled Monday in Lubbock.
“It became a habit for me to bet,” Sorsby wrote in a statement to the NCAA. “My betting became a compulsion which made it virtually impossible to resist the constant notifications I received from betting apps. I lost complete control of my addiction. I now realize the apps controlled me and I did not control them.”
ESPN reported Tuesday that the NCAA has denied Sorsby’s request to be reinstated. Texas Tech appealed the decision Friday.
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Sorsby’s attorneys are asking the NCAA to treat his gambling addiction like any other mental health condition and mitigate his penalty for making the bets. He currently is facing permanent ineligibility. Sorsby agreed to continue receiving treatment and monitoring after returning to Texas Tech; complete gambling education classes; and work in conjunction with the NCAA to educate other student-athletes about the dangers of gambling.
“Brendan asks only for the NCAA to abide by its commitment to evaluate his reinstatement appeal based on his actual conduct and the mental health condition that spurred it,” Sorsby attorney Scott Tompsett wrote in a letter to the NCAA. “The online gambling market has evolved at breakneck speed over the last several years. The NCAA at times has struggled to keep pace with developments and chart a course of action that promotes student-athlete welfare, while at the same time monetizing the gambling industry for its own benefit.”
The documents included a four-page stipulated facts, which Sorsby and Texas Tech submitted to the NCAA and wasn’t contested by the governing body’s enforcement staff. It stated that during his college career at Indiana (2022-23) and Cincinnati (2024-25), Sorsby used accounts registered in his name, a family member’s name and friends’ names to place at least $90,000 in impermissible wagers via Hard Rock Bet, FanDuel, Underdog and PrizePicks accounts.
Sorsby transferred at least $60,000 to two friends to cover bets made on his behalf, per the documents.
While Sorsby was enrolled at Indiana from June 2022 to December 2023, he acknowledged making at least 2,900 bets that totaled more than $30,000.
Between Sept. 2, 2022 and Oct. 22, 2022, Sorsby made at least 40 wagers on Indiana football and/or individual members of the team. According to the documents, the bets ranged from $1 to $114 and totaled at least $850.
Sorsby redshirted during the 2022 team and was a scout team quarterback. He didn’t compete in games during the period in which he made bets on the Hoosiers. The wagers stopped two weeks before he made his debut against Penn State on Nov. 5, 2022.
In a May 16 statement to NCAA reinstatement staff, Sorsby wrote that the “bets made me feel like I was supporting the team when I was not playing in games, much like fans betting on their hometown teams to win. It was a way to make me feel more connected to my team when I wasn’t playing. I always bet on Indiana to succeed.”
The stipulated facts concluded that “Sorsby never bet on the Indiana team and/or individual members of the team in a game in which he participated. He did not engage in any activity designed to influence the outcome or integrity of an intercollegiate contest or in an effort to affect win-loss margins (‘point shaving’).”
Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby’s attorneys are asking the NCAA to treat his gambling addiction like any other mental health condition and mitigate his penalty for making bets of more than $90,000 during his four seasons at Indiana and Cincinnati. Ron Jenkins/Getty Images for ONIT
“Once I became part of the active roster with an opportunity to play, I immediately stopped betting on Indiana,” Sorsby wrote in his statement. “However, my gambling on other sports did not stop; it escalated and became compulsive. What started small when I was in high school turned into a daily habit of betting on all kinds of sports, including some sports that I didn’t follow and had no interest in like tennis and Romanian soccer. Gambling became an addiction.”
Sorsby said he was unaware of an October 2022 bet on the under for Indiana’s quarterback passing yards, nor a September 2023 bet on the under for the first half of a Hoosiers football game.
Sorsby appeared in 10 games and made seven starts at Indiana in 2023.
“Sorsby became aware of the bets only after the betting data was made available to his attorneys,” the stipulated facts said.
In Tompsett’s letter, he indicated that student-athlete reinstatement staff “noted the significant integrity concerns associated with [Sorsby] wagering on his own football team” when denying Sorsby’s request.
“The NCAA must decide Brendan’s reinstatement case based on the facts of his actions, not on concerns about actions that he did not commit,” Tompsett wrote. “The punishment must fit the violation actually committed, not hypotheticals.”
During his two seasons at Cincinnati, Sorsby provided more than $60,000 to a FanDuel account registered to his brother-in-law that was accessed by Sorsby and a friend, according to the stipulated facts. Sorsby placed at least 165 impermissible bets on college and pro sports, but none related to Cincinnati’s football team.
Sorsby also continued gambling after enrolling at Texas Tech, according to the stipulated facts, by using accounts belonging to two of his friends. He sent $5,000 to the friends, who then placed bets on his behalf on the PGA Tour, NBA and MLB. Sorsby, who did not recall the number of bets made for him, did not wager on Texas Tech sports.
“I want to be clear that I never bet to make money,” Sorsby wrote. “Given the money I had and earned from NIL, the total amount of money I made from 2022 to 2025 was not a big deal to me. I never kept track of my betting over time, but I’m pretty sure I lost more than I won.”
Tompsett urged NCAA staff to treat Sorsby’s addiction like any other, including marijuana use. In 2022, the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects recommended that a student-athlete who tested positive three times for cannabis use no longer be withheld from competition, as long as he or she was in compliance with an institutional education and management plan.
Tompsett added that Sorsby is “progressing well and is at low risk for recidivism” and that “denying Brendan eligibility to play football in a structured environment is very likely to threaten his progress and recovery.”
Sorsby’s June 1 court date looms large over both college football and the NFL. A decision there might provide a harbinger for what he decides to do for the 2026 season. According to his prior court filing, the deadline to declare for the supplemental draft is June 22.
Sorsby entered 2026 as one of the most highly paid and buzzy players in the sport, as he transferred from Cincinnati to Texas Tech and was expected to be one of the sport’s highest-paid players at more than $5 million. Sorsby was ESPN’s No. 1 player in the NCAA transfer portal rankings.
Sorsby is considered a strong NFL prospect, and his inclusion in the supplemental draft would make him the most anticipated supplemental draft prospect in more than a decade, at least since Josh Gordon entered in 2012. No player has been drafted in the supplemental draft since 2019. Gordon was the last player to go as high as the second round, where he was picked back in 2012.
ESPN’s Pete Thamel contributed to this report.
