Lawyers for Brendan Sorsby filed an injunction to grant the would-be Texas Tech football team quarterback eligibility for the 2026 season.
The 514-page suit was filed in Lubbock County on Monday, May 18, in the 99th District Court and obtained by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The suit requests a hearing to “be held no later than June 15 so that the Court has the opportunity to render a decision on his request for a temporary injunction prior to Jun 22,” the deadline for Sorsby to declare for the NFL supplemental draft.
Sorsby’s legal team states in the suit that, “Mr. Sorsby is currently ineligible to play for Texas Tech due to prior violations of the NCAA’s sports gambling rules.” It states later that Tech ruled Sorsby ineligible shortly after learning of the NCAA’s inquiry to the gambling and “requested to move forward to begin the reinstatement process to regain Mr. Sorsby’s eligibility.”
At the time the suit was filed, there had been no public decision made about Sorsby’s eligibility for the 2026 season. However, Texas Tech Athletics released a statement later Monday, which reads, “After finalizing an agreed-upon stipulation of facts between Texas Tech University, the NCAA and Brendan Sorsby, the University has declared Sorsby ineligible for competition. Texas Tech intends to quickly initiate the reinstatement process.
“Texas Tech’s primary focus remains supporting Sorsby’s health and well-being.”
The bulk of the introduction focuses on Sorsby’s gambling addiction, for which he voluntarily began a 30-day inpatient treatment program on April 27.
“Mr. Sorsby went further still,” the filing says, “offering to accept a two-game suspension and to have his eligibility conditioned on completing his residential treatment, continuing treatment at Texas Tech, taking any gambling-education classes the NCAA determines are necessary, and working with the NCAA to educate other athletes and fans about the dangers of gambling.
“He also offered to consider any other conditions the NCAA deemed appropriate. The NCAA rejected his offer. Instead, the NCAA’s response to Mr. Sorsby and Texas Tech has been a breach of its contractual and other legal obligations.”
Sorsby’s legal team, according to the petition, consists of local attorneys Duston Burrows and Ted A. Liggett as well as Jeffrey L. Kessler, Eva W. Cole, Sofia Arguello, Adam I. Dale and Necha Vyas.
The suit calls attention to the diagnosed disorder of gambling addiction and alleges, “… the NCAA has weaponized his condition to shore up a facade of competitive integrity, while simultaneously profiting from the very gambling ecosystem it polices.”
Sorsby was a high-school athlete at Corinth Lake Dallas before spending the 2022 and 2023 seasons at Indiana and the 2024 and 2025 seasons at Cincinnati, throwing for 2,800 yards both seasons with a combined 45 touchdown passes. He transferred to Texas Tech in January and threw four touchdown passes in the Red Raiders’ spring game.
According to the suit, Sorsby began gambling as a high-school senior, making a short drive with friends to a casino near the Oklahoma border where he could gamble legally.
“What began as a seemingly harmless activity with friends quickly developed into an addiction,” the filing says.
It goes on to say Sorsby made small bets on his Indiana team or individual teammates during the 2022 season, stressing that he stopped doing so in October 2022 when he was promoted from scout-team quarterback with no chance of playing to backup quarterback. While a scout-team member, he didn’t travel with the team and was not privy to the gameplans for the week’s game.
The suit states that Sorsby never bet against his own team or players on his team, never shared insider information with anyone else, and did not manipulate games.
“The NCAA’s own robust, real-time integrity-monitoring systems confirm this: there is no evidence that they ever generated a single alert or otherwise gave the NCAA any reason to question Mr. Sorsby’s betting activity before April 2026,” the suit states.
Since the 2022 season, the filing says, Sorsby has never bet on any of his other teams, including Cincinnati, games that his teams participated in or players in those games.
“Mr. Sorsby, however, was addicted to sports gambling,” it says, “and he continued to place bets on other sports as his gambling escalated into a compulsion he could not control. He placed thousands of bets — often on events he did not even regularly follow, like games in the Turkish basketball league and Romanian soccer matches. None of his bets involved teams he played on or players he held any non-public information about.”
Sorbsy’s legal team asserts the NCAA has “contractual authority” to look at Sorsby’s eligibility case “which typically call for review within 48 hours.”
Tech was informed of the NCAA’s investigation into Sorsby’s gambling in mid-April, after which Sorsby did not deny the allegations though he “emphasized that he never bet on a game he played in and never took any action to influence the outcome of any game because of a bet. He recognized he had a gambling addiction.”
The suit alleges that the NCAA “demanded years of bank records, credit card statements, Venmo transactions, phone logs, text messages, and social media records and insisted on a live interview that would force Mr. Sorsby to interrupt residential treatment.”
Texas Tech, the suit claims, has also been harmed by the process after having recruited Sorsby to “be the centerpiece of its upcoming football season and fully supported his residential treatment.”
Timing is the key issue in the suit. The Red Raiders open the season Sept. 5. Sorsby also faces a June 22 deadline if he wants to apply for the NFL supplemental draft.
“As things stand, either way, Mr. Sorsby loses,” the suit says. “If he enters the Supplemental Draft prior to the NCAA determining his eligibility, he surrenders his senior season — even though his goal is to return as Texas Tech’s starting quarterback, an irreplaceable opportunity. If he waits, and the NCAA eventually denies reinstatement, he will have forfeited a year of high-level football at either the college or NFL level that no future judgment can restore.”
This story has been updated to reflect new information. Look for more coverage of lubbockonline.com.
Gabriel Monte of the Avalanche-Journal contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby files injunction vs NCAA in gambling probe
Reporting by Nathan Giese and Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
