Breaking down the Texas Tech/Brendan Sorsby saga and what it means for the Big 12

The past week has been filled with more drama than is ever necessary for the college football offseason.

Monday's news from a Lubbock, Texas judge that Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby would be eligible to play in 2026 rocked the college football landscape. Within 24 hours, athletics directors for both Georgia and Nebraska announced that they would refrain from scheduling Texas Tech in any sport as a result.

Privately, several athletics directors within the Big 12 shared the sentiment, with Kansas State's Gene Taylor - an Arizona State graduate, by the way - fielding an expletive-laden response to the ruling.

So what exactly is going on? And what will happen next? Here's all you need to know heading into the weekend.

The background

Brendan Sorsby was one of the top quarterbacks on the transfer market this offseason after two seasons starting for Cincinnati. The Texas native opted to move close to home, picking the Red Raiders after getting an NIL contract reportedly worth $5 million.

In late April, news broke that Sorsby had checked into rehab for sports gambling addiction. Later reports brought to light that Sorsby had placed over $90,000 in bets on his own team - both at Indiana and later at Cincinnati - over four years.

Sorsby has denied point shaving or any other form of market manipulation, and has argued that he placed these bets due to a serious mental health crisis. Regardless of the reasoning, gambling is strictly prohibited by the NCAA.

In late May, the NCAA denied Sorsby's request to be allowed to play in 2026, his final year of eligibility. That led to Sorsby filing an injunction against the NCAA, which was granted this past Monday - June 8 - in controversial fashion.

A day later, the NCAA formally appealed the decision to the Court of Appeals for the 7th District of Texas. Notably, though, all four judges on that Court of Appeals are Texas Tech graduates.

Big 12 mulls taking action

Just a few weeks prior, at the Big 12's spring business meetings, Taylor had spoken publicly about his consideration towards boycotting Texas Tech if Sorsby ended up playing this season. Of course, Kansas State is not scheduled to play Texas Tech in football in 2026, but Taylor's remarks were still surprising.

Then, Georgia and Nebraska moved quickly to do just that, though their conference affiliations - the SEC and Big Ten, respectively - make that easier to commit to with haste.

Internally, multiple Big 12 athletics directors were at least considering the same move, if not outright lobbying their university presidents to agree to it. However, as of now, no Big 12 school has officially announced such plans.

However, on Tuesday the 9th, Commissioner Brett Yormark met with the conference's athletics directors to discuss the matter. Per Brandon Marcello, every athletics director agreed that Sorsby should not play football in 2026 - except for Texas Tech.

From that meeting came the recurring rumor that the Big 12 was considering levying sanctions against Texas Tech. And that actually has legal merit, according to the conference's bylaws.

Scott Schneider, who runs a Texas-based employment law firm and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Texas' law school, laid out the case on Twitter:

As Schneider points out, the Big 12's bylaws empower the conference to sanction its members in two particular cases: conduct materially adverse to the best interests of the conference, and failure to comply with NCAA rules.

It can easily be argued that allowing a player who has engaged in sports gambling to play constitutes conduct detrimental to the league, and it's an objective fact that playing said player would constitute failure to comply with NCAA rules.

In short, the Big 12 is well within its rights to sanction Texas Tech. However, it may not happen over concerns of precedent. Not only would it have long-lasting ramifications for the relationships within the conference, but it would potentially jeopardize the entire hierarchy of college sports if a conference steps in to govern where the NCAA previously failed.

However, that precedent may outweigh the precedent set by letting a player bet on his own teams and face zero consequences.

Politicians squabble over bylaws

The discourse transcended college football and became political on Thursday when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton - who recently became the Republican nominee to represent Texas in the US Senate - sent a letter to the Big 12 in support of Texas Tech.

Paxton informed the Big 12 that any invocation of their own bylaws to sanction Texas Tech "would be unlawful," effectively arguing that doing so in defiance of the initial ruling from Monday would constitute violations of federal and state antitrust laws.

Texas Tech had already made it known that they planned to take legal action in response to any sanctions from the Big 12, and Paxton's letter was not a case of his office representing the state school but rather making it known that the state was siding with Texas Tech.

While some online have suggested that Paxton is required to do this in his role as attorney general, it's simply not true. The attorney general has autonomy in these cases and is not at the behest of Texas Tech or anyone else.

Even if he were required to do so, there's another Big 12 member that's a Texas state school (Houston) that may very well support said sanctions. In other words, if Paxton were required to represent the interests of all the Texas state schools, he'd have to include Houston in addition to Texas Tech.

Others also pointed out the ties between Paxton and Cody Campbell, the Red Raiders mega-donor who more or less controls the football program's NIL department. Campbell has made multiple significant donations to Paxton's political campaigns over the years, including his current Senate run, leading some to question the ethics of Paxton's decision to side with the Red Raiders.

On Friday, Paxton's Oklahoma counterpart chimed in.

Gentner Drummond is the current Oklahoma Attorney General and current candidate for governor. Whereas Paxton won his primary just two weeks ago, Drummond's primary is coming up on June 16th. Despite that, Drummond issued a letter on Friday firmly rebuking Paxton's stance and encouraging the Big 12 to sanction Texas Tech.

Drummond described Paxton's warnings as "meritless" and "facially absurd" and referred to two different US Supreme Court decisions that ruled conference discipline of a member to not violate antitrust laws.

Drummond - who, like Paxton, belongs to the Republican Party - goes on to predict that any such legal challenges would fall flat because of this precedent. He also called the saga "a shameful chapter in the story of college football" and suggested that Texas Tech has not only acted adversely for the Big 12, but to the detriment of the integrity of the sport.

At the time of writing this, no other attorneys general have chimed in on the matter. But the squabbling between two states' top legal officers highlighted just how much this ordeal is becoming larger than just the Big 12.

Congressional legislation adds nuance

In addition to bankrolling Red Raider football, Cody Campbell has also appointed himself as the savior of college sports. He literally created a 501(c)4 named Savings College Sports that advocated for implementing rules to reign in the exact kind of limitless spending that Campbell funneled into his alma mater over the past few years.

Now, there is actual Congressional legislation in the works. The Protect College Sports Act was introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and has been cobbled together with input from Campbell and several other members of the presidential Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.

The bill was first introduced in the Senate on May 29, and it would need to be passed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives before the president can sign it into law. Typically, that's a process that takes several months, but Cruz believes it can be done before the football season begins.

Now, the timeline of the bill will become even more significant.

In a late Friday memo from the NCAA to all Division I conference commmissioners, it was declared that the current language of the Protect College Sports Act would prevent future situations like Sorsby and, if the bill becomes law before any final resolution on Sorsby, it would even override the ruling that just granted Sorsby his eligibility.

In other words, if the federal government can do something they rarely do - get something done in a timely fashion - then Sorsby would not be eligible to play this season. That would happen with or without sanctions from the Big 12, too.

The timing of this memo adds myriad layers of nuance to the Sorsby saga. Campbell's close involvement on this bill has been an ongoing topic of discussion for nearly two years now, but he's also been a vocal supporter of Sorsby all week long. Campbell is also believed to be the main benefactor behind Sorsby's initial $5 million deal to come to Lubbock.

Is it possible that Campbell pushed for the Sorsby injunction specifically to create a national boogeyman around which to rally support for his bill? That kind of 5D chess from the college football kingmaker may require a tin foil hat to fully buy into, but it's a theory that has already taken off online.

Or, perhaps, there will now be efforts to slow-play the Protect College Sports Act and prevent it from becoming law until after Sorsby has managed to play the full season for the Red Raiders. If things work out the way Texas Tech hopes, that would mean tying up the legislation until mid-January. That's a long time, but Congress has taken longer on more urgent matters before.

Regardless of the motivations for Campbell, this latest development threatens to throw a massive wrench into the entire process, and makes an already complex situation even more convoluted.

What's next

Two days after Yormark met with Big 12 athletics directors, he held a meeting with the university presidents. During that meeting, Paxton issued his warning to Yormark. Late at the end of the day, Yormark issued a statement to the public.

The most noteworthy part of the statement was Yormark describing the presidents' sentiments as matching the sentiments of the athletics directors - all but Texas Tech believing Sorsby should not play this year - and adding that "all options remain on the table."

That last part feels pertinent, given that the statement began with acknowledgement of Paxton's threats. If it's true that 15 of the 16 conference members believe Sorsby should not play, and if there's unanimity from the presidents on down, then it would stand to reason that the Big 12 is moving towards formal sanctions against Texas Tech.

Yormark also noted that the conference will have a full board meeting on Monday, June 15, at which time it's expected that some sort of decision will be made.

That leaves Monday as the next inflection point in this saga. If sanctions do not happen, expect at least some Big 12 schools to announce they'll be joining Georgia and Nebraska's boycott. That's where things could get really interesting, especially if a school like Arizona State - currently set to play in Lubbock in October - were to do so.

However, if sanctions are handed down, expect a swift legal response from Texas Tech and the Attorney General's office. That may very well be done in an effort, among other things, to drag out the Sorsby decision as long as possible while waiting on the Protect College Sports Act to pass. Assuming, of course, that the legislation is not also bogged down by similar dilatory efforts to preserve Sorsby's eligibility.

In short, this thing is far from over, but Monday will help determine where we go from here.