Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby has filed an injunction against the NCAA, looking to be reinstated and eligible to play in the upcoming season after admitting to gambling on his own team when he was at Indiana University. Sorsby, who was the most coveted quarterback in the transfer portal this past offseason (he previously played at the University of Cincinnati), voluntarily checked himself into a residential treatment program for gambling addiction in April.
NCAA rules strictly prohibit betting on college and professional sports; those who wager on their own games risk a possible lifetime ban.
Sorsby placed thousands of bets with an online sportsbook when he was a freshman at Indiana in 2022. He played in just one game that year, redshirting the rest of the season (meaning he was a member of the team, but not on the active gameday roster so that he could retain that year of eligibility). Many of those bets – mostly between $5 and $50 – were on Indiana to win or his teammates to eclipse prop bet totals. Sorsby did not play in any of the games on which he bet.
Sorsby is adamant that he did not violate the integrity of the game with his bets.
“To be clear, I never placed any bets ‘against’ Indiana or against any players on the team,” Sorsby said in an affidavit that accompanied the filing. “I never used any non-public information that I knew about the team in deciding what bets to place. My bets were purely intended to make me feel more connected to the game and my teammates and to give me more of a reason to root for my teammates. Because the Indiana football team was not a very strong competitor in 2022, I lost most of the bets I placed.”
The Indiana football program has since made a gigantic turnaround, going undefeated and winning the national championship this past season.
Sorsby said that looking back, he realizes he had an addiction, as he was betting on “anything and everything,” including the MLB draft.
Sorsby claims that he offered to take a two-game suspension pending the completion of his “residential treatment” and work with the NCAA to educate others on the problem gambling.
“If I cannot practice with the team, it will be severely detrimental to my mental health and my development as an athlete,” Sorsby said in the affidavit. “Without access to coaching, teammates, and on-field repetitions, I cannot develop the chemistry and skills necessary to start at quarterback in the 2026 season — and each additional day away compounds that harm. These developmental opportunities cannot be replaced or replicated.”
