Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby was granted a preliminary injunction Monday that prevents the NCAA from permanently banning him for sports betting, clearing the way for the highly touted transfer to play this season.
Sorsby, ESPN's No. 1-ranked transfer this offseason, has acknowledged placing thousands of bets and wagering approximately $90,000 on college and professional sports over the past four years during his time at Indiana, Cincinnati and now Texas Tech, including wagers on his own Indiana team in 2022.
The NCAA deemed Sorsby permanently ineligible according to its rules prohibiting sports betting and denied Texas Tech's appeal for reinstatement. Now Sorsby's legal team has succeeded in securing an injunction in Lubbock County District Court that permits Sorsby to practice and play with the Red Raiders this season to prevent "irreparable injury" to Sorsby.
Sorsby will serve a two-game suspension as a condition of the injunction but has otherwise been cleared to play for the defending Big 12 champions as they try to get back to the College Football Playoff.
Here's what you need to know about Sorsby's injunction and what comes next for him, Texas Tech and the NCAA. -- Max Olson
Jump to:
What happens now?
Why are so many NCAA cases handled in courts?
Who was the judge?
What precedent does this set?
What does this mean for the NCAA?
Texas Tech outlook
CFP outlook
What happens now in the legal case?
The NCAA and its attorneys can appeal the judge's decision to the state appellate court in Texas. If it appeals, the NCAA would ask the appellate court to grant emergency relief to overturn the judge's injunction. The process can unfold quickly, which means it's possible the issue would be resolved before Texas Tech begins its season Sept. 5.
An NCAA spokesperson told ESPN the association had not yet decided on its legal strategy moving forward in the hours after Sorsby received his injunction. However, it would be shocking if the NCAA did not attempt to overturn the judge's ruling via interlocutory appeal. In a previous court filing in the case, the association's lawyers wrote that if Sorsby were allowed to play in 2026, it would "undermine the integrity of college athletics by rewarding conduct that is universally prohibited in American sports." -- Dan Murphy
Why are so many NCAA cases handled in courts now?
The majority of the NCAA's legal woes in the last several years have been focused on antitrust violations. Sorsby's case is different.
Lawsuits that have upended old standards for player eligibility, transfers and athlete pay have all found success by arguing that any NCAA rules that could potentially limit a player's earning potential are violating federal antitrust law, which prevents a group of competitors in the same industry from colluding to tamp down labor costs.
Sorsby's lawyers argued in this case that the NCAA was breaching its contractual promise to act in the best interest of its athletes' physical and mental health. They claim his ban from playing is an act of discrimination against Sorsby, who has been diagnosed with a mental health disorder as part of his treatment for gambling.
Professional sports leagues avoid both these problems with the same solution: a collective bargaining agreement. Those deals, negotiated between league ownership and a players' union, allow both sides to agree on legally defensible rules. Because college athletes are not employees, they do not have the legal standing to enter into a collective bargaining agreement. The NCAA remains strongly opposed to a CBA, but in recent months a growing number of college sports administrators have expressed interest in exploring the option.
In the absence of a collective bargaining agreement, NCAA leadership says it needs help from Congress to effectively enforce many of its rules. NCAA president Charlie Baker said in a statement Monday that Sorsby's case was a prime example for why federal lawmakers need to pass a new law for college sports. It's not clear how the most recent proposed legislation, which Baker cites in his statement, would have prevented the judge from granting Sorsby an injunction. -- Murphy
Who was the judge in this case?
The judge who oversaw the NCAA's latest unprecedented legal defeat is Ken Curry. He's a retired judge from Fort Worth who was assigned to the case after Lubbock County District Court judge Phillip Hayes, who holds two degrees from Texas Tech, formally recused himself last month.
Curry graduated from UT-Arlington and the University of Houston Law Center. The former Tarrant County District Court judge was elected to the bench in 1992 and retired in 2012 but has continued to serve as a visiting judge for Tarrant County since then.
Curry heard arguments from Jeffrey Kessler, Sorsby's lead attorney, and from the NCAA over the course of a two-hour hearing last Monday in Lubbock. One week later, he delivered a decision in favor of Sorsby, finding that Sorsby's attorneys demonstrated he will suffer "probable, imminent and irreparable injury" if he isn't allowed to play for the Red Raiders this season despite his admitted violations of NCAA rules.
Curry added several conditions to the injunction, including a two-game suspension for Sorsby and the requirement that he continue counseling and treatment for his diagnosed gambling and anxiety disorders. -- Olson
How has the NCAA handled gambling enforcement in the past? And what does this mean for it going forward?
Before Sorsby, there have been two high-profile cases of players found to have committed gambling violations while playing college football -- quarterback Hunter Dekkers and receiver Kayshon Boutte. Both pursued NFL careers.
Dekkers was poised to be the starting quarterback at Iowa State but was ruled ineligible ahead of the 2023 season after a sweeping investigation charged at least 35 athletes and team support staff with the Cyclones and the University of Iowa with betting violations.
Dekkers was accused of betting on at least one game involving the Cyclones, among other wagers that violated NCAA bylaws and resulted in a loss of eligibility. The bet was just $15 on Iowa State to beat Oklahoma State in a 2021 game in which he did not play, but it led, in part, to the end of his Division I career. He went on to play one season at Iowa Western Community College in 2024 before heading to the NFL, where he was signed by the New Orleans Saints as an undrafted free agent and spent last season on the practice squad.
Boutte was arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in January 2024, on charges of underage betting while at LSU. The arrest came roughly eight months after he had been drafted by the New England Patriots, and the charges were ultimately dropped.
According to police, Boutte placed more than 8,900 wagers from April 2022 through May 2023, including in the weeks after he was drafted. He bet on at least 17 college football games, including at least six involving LSU, during that span, according to a Baton Rouge prosecutor who handled the case.
The NFL did not discipline Boutte.
Outside of football, the NCAA has ruled players implicated in game-fixing schemes in basketball permanently ineligible.
The NCAA now faces an uncertain future in enforcing its gambling rules and might even have to contend with its past rulings. After Monday's ruling on Sorsby, Baker called for the federal government to step in and pass legislation to "empower the NCAA to enforce rules including the gambling restrictions -- it's needed more than ever." -- David Purdum
What does this say about the state of NCAA?
In a statement released after the Sorsby ruling, Baker said, "When you have schools and deep-pocketed supporters willing to look the other way on the glaring integrity threat of betting on your own team -- and judges whose rulings effectively strip away our ability to stop them -- only Congress can equip the NCAA to apply this common sense rule to everyone fairly and consistently."
This feels like optimism, where any development reaffirms the need for the thing you're always pushing for. But the ruling definitely reinforces the fact that no one respects any NCAA ruling at this point and everyone thinks they can get what they want through the courts. They aren't always proved right; the NCAA has found success in some (but definitely not all) recent length-of-eligibility cases. But athletes and lawyers are continually willing to test every boundary, and they're proving pretty capable of finding sympathetic judges to agree with them.
Baker is technically correct. Legislation like the Protect College Sports Act will create stronger boundaries in a number of areas -- and a collective bargaining agreement would create even more (though those are usually done with entities called "employees"). The NCAA's decades-long intransigence toward anything resembling progress for athletes might be what led legislators and lawsuits to get so involved in the first place, but we're here now, and legislation or a CBA might be the only way to get even a little bit of toothpaste back in the tube.
Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell, an increasingly influential figure in the push for legislative change and a vocal member of the President's Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, kind of gave the game away with his own statement Monday: "This unfortunate situation is the outcome of a broken system," he said. "I'm doing everything I can to fix it, but until there is a permanent solution, Texas Tech and its student athletes have to do the best they can to navigate and compete amid the chaos that exists in the reality of the world we live in." He hated for this to happen, you see, but gosh, it would be unfair if Tech had to stop winning while we wait for someone else to make changes. -- Bill Connelly
Outlook for Texas Tech in 2026
Texas Tech has national championship ambitions for 2026 after earning its first College Football Playoff bid following the 2025 regular season. The Red Raiders viewed Sorsby as a must-get and the missing piece they needed for a deep playoff run following their 23-0 loss to Oregon in their CFP debut in January.
Texas Tech has invested a lot of money and a lot of hope in its QB1, and it has supported him during his battle for reinstatement since school officials learned of his gambling history in April. Now that a district judge has granted Sorsby a second chance, where does his new team go from here?
Texas Tech remains the no-doubt front-runner in the Big 12 with Sorsby on the field, and it should put together one of the highest-scoring offenses in college football yet again after finishing No. 3 in scoring offense a year ago. Texas Tech has talented playmakers led by J'Koby Williams, Cameron Dickey, Coy Eakin, Terrance Carter Jr. and Micah Hudson in addition to an offensive line that returns three starters.
The Red Raiders' defense reloaded with highly regarded pass rushers in the portal and returns a bunch of starters of All-Big 12 caliber, including A.J. Holmes Jr., Brice Pollock, Ben Roberts and John Curry. This roster was arguably too loaded to fail with or without Sorsby -- and now it seems the team is getting him back.
One element that must be acknowledged: If Sorsby is ultimately cleared to play this season and sits out only two games, the unpopularity and outrage among college football stakeholders will inevitably be extreme. The controversial cases of Alabama's Charles Bediako and Baylor's James Nnaji in men's basketball this past season were nothing compared with this ordeal. It's going to be fascinating to watch how Texas Tech and Sorsby approach -- or embrace -- being viewed as one of the villains of the sport this fall. -- Olson
How does this change the CFP race?
With Sorsby eventually returning to the lineup, Texas Tech is still the team to beat in the Big 12, but it was always going to be an intriguing race that could earn the Big 12 multiple CFP bids. With Sorsby sitting out the first two games against nonconference opponents Abilene Christian and Oregon State, the Red Raiders could potentially start Tulsa transfer Kirk Francis in Week 1 and backup Will Hammond in Week 2.
Coach Joey McGuire told ESPN last month that Hammond, who tore his ACL last October, should be cleared for all football-related activities Aug. 21 and could be game-ready as soon as the Week 2 trip to Oregon State. On paper, Texas Tech should be 2-0 heading into its Big 12 home opener against Houston on Sept. 18. The early schedule sets up well for the transition, as Texas Tech opens its season with three in-state opponents in the first four games. There's a decent chance Texas Tech could be undefeated heading to Cincinnati on Oct. 24, where the Red Raiders will face Sorsby's old team.
The College Football Playoff selection committee does consider the absence of key players during its deliberations, but it would likely be a moot point in this situation because nobody -- including Texas Tech -- has seen Sorsby play a game with the Red Raiders yet, as he transferred from Cincinnati this past offseason.
BYU and Arizona will both push the Red Raiders for the Big 12 title. BYU doesn't face Texas Tech during the regular season this year, but Arizona travels to Texas Tech on Halloween. -- Heather Dinich