As if college football needed more existential threats on its plate this summer, Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby was granted a preliminary injunction today by a Texas judge that prevents the NCAA from punishing him for violating its sports-gambling rules.

I cannot believe that I just typed those words, but I did. 

The same Brendan Sorsby who bet on his own college football team at least 40 times while underage and sent more than $65,000 to friends to make bets on his behalf during his college career will serve a mere two-game suspension proposed by his legal counsel.

Judge Ken Curry, a Houston law graduate, ruled that Sorsby’s attorneys successfully conveyed that Sorsby would suffer "probable, imminent and irreparable injury" if he weren’t allowed to play for the Red Raiders this year. 

The NCAA will appeal the ruling, but it is powerless to do anything else. And the odds of a final ruling on the appeal coming before the season seem long. 

Could NFL attorneys get involved? There is already speculation. The NFL absolutely has a vested interest in preventing the competitive integrity of its exquisitely marketed minor league from coming into question.

There are so many angles to this. It’s hard to know where to start. 

Let me first get this out of the way: This is an insane ruling that I 1,000% disagree with. 

I’m no lawyer, but I don’t agree that Sorsby would suffer imminent and irreparable injury if he didn’t play for Tech this year. He would have found a home in the NFL and been just fine.

You’re telling me an NFL team wouldn’t have taken a flyer on a QB who was projected to play his way into being a first-round pick next year? Give me a break. 

And I’m as sensitive as anybody toward mental health and addiction issues. I truly hope Sorsby is getting the help he needs to live a healthy, full life. 

But actions have consequences, even when there is reason to feel empathy and sympathy for the position someone finds themselves in. No matter how or why he did it, Sorsby crossed a hard line that exists for a very important reason.

Allowing that line to be crossed without appropriate consequences is quite literally an existential threat to competitive sports.

In other words, we have to have rules! I feel like Walter Sobchak today. 

This is the slipperiest of slippery slopes. If you open the door to immunity for players who bet on their own games, you risk college football becoming the WWE. 

I’ve talked extensively here about a Super League being an existential threat to college football because it brings the potential of dwindling TV ratings years down the line. You want to expedite plummeting TV ratings? Call the integrity of the game into question by refusing to punish players who bet on their own team. 

Ironically, this ruling is likely a boost for the Protect College Sports Act. Never has there been a more glaring example of why college sports need federal help. This ruling drives that point home like nothing else that has been presented by Senators Ted Cruz and Maria Cantwell so far. 

I’m optimistic that college football will eventually sort itself out in a somewhat orderly fashion. Today has the potential to be a landmark day on that journey. 

Everybody is paying attention to this. It’s front-page news on every sports news site you can think of. There’s a #BoycottTech hashtag going around on Twitter. 

If there’s one fan base in America prepared to be the villain, it’s Texas Tech. Red Raider fans are battle-ready, but I do want to emphasize the level of heat coming Tech’s way this fall.

Fair or not (mostly not), Texas Tech has become the face of the Wild West NIL and transfer portal era of college sports. The Red Raiders have ruffled plenty of feathers in football, softball, and men’s basketball. They’re an easy scapegoat for anybody who is disenchanted with how much college sports have changed in the last 5-10 years. 

Big 12 fans are already tired of losing to Tech in this new era. They’re sick of the attitude from Red Raider fans who are enjoying finally being on top. They’re also tired of losing players who transfer to Lubbock.

Throw the Sorsby ruling on top of that, which 99.9% of the college sports ecosystem hates and disagrees with, and this year’s Tech football team is going to get Hulk Hogan Bash at the Beach heel turn levels of heat all season. 

I’m not here to shame Texas Tech fans, either. Put yourself in their shoes. 

After a decade and a half of struggle post-Mike Leach, the Red Raiders are as nationally relevant as ever and poised for another breakthrough season. Sorsby is the key to reaching a ceiling that includes winning playoff games.

Even if your head knows this could have disastrous consequences for the sport down the line, it’s hard to keep your heart from celebrating what this means for your fall Saturdays. Especially when you’re constantly taking crap from across the college football world for simply playing by the rules, or lack thereof, that exist in this era. 

College football has always been about programs pushing the boundaries of what is allowed to the absolute limit. It’s just more out in the open now, and Tech is far from the only school taking advantage. 

You think Lane Kiffin would sit idly by if his quarterback were popped for gambling? He would have the governor of Louisiana involved within hours.

The unfortunate reality is that this situation is a perfect microcosm of everything we love and hate about college sports right now. Court rulings, over-the-top fans, ugly Twitter spats, gambling proliferation, the transfer portal, NIL, wildly talented quarterbacks and, of course, billable hours all have a seat at the table in this story.

I don’t know where it’s all going to end, but I know we’ll remember this day as a key turning point.

What You Need to Know

• Here is Texas Tech megabooster Cody Campbell’s statement on the Brendan Sorsby ruling. 

• Senator Ted Cruz isn’t backing down from the SEC and Big Ten’s main objection to the Protect College Sports Act, according to this clip from a recent interview.

• Here is a full breakdown of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey’s latest push to get what he wants out of the Protect College Sports Act. 

• K-State beat out Matt Campbell and Penn State for the top-ranked 2027 recruit in the state of Kansas. More analysis here on the 3MAW podcast. 

• The best video you’ll see this week once again comes from Morgantown, West Virginia. Congrats to the Mountaineers on making the College World Series!

• Want your Big 12 news and analysis in podcast form? Listen to Open For Business at the gym, in your car, or first thing in the morning on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.

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