Sports

Brendan Sorsby's Eligibility Injuction Sets a Problematic Precedent

By Doug Farrar Athlon Sports

Jeffery Kessler has done it again.

The man who has become the NCAA's worst nightmare over the last number of years primarily due to his victory in House v. NCAA - the case that opened a million cans of worms regarding college athletes' rights to derive income from their own efforts - gained another big win on Monday for a newer client.

That client is Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who had been ruled ineligible from NCAA participation after it was discovered that he had bet more than $90,000 on professional and college sports over a four-year period. This included 40 bets on Indiana football in 2022, when Sorsby was a freshman quarterback with the Hoosiers.

But on Monday, in the district court of Lubbock County, Texas - where Texas A&M's agricultural, research, and extension divisions reside - Judge Ken Curry granted Sorsby the temporary injunction that would allow Sorsby to play in the 2026 season minus a two-game suspension at the beginning of the season.

"It is a just result," Kessler said on Monday. "Brendan gets to devote himself to his team, and the education of athletes on the dangers of gambling addiction. He will continue his treatment, miss two games, and there is no injury to the competitive integrity of the NCAA. It is what we proposed, and what the NCAA should have accepted, had it been true to its promises to prioritize the welfare of athletes."

The NCAA, of course, saw things differently.

"The NCAA strongly disagrees with the court's ruling in this case and is deeply concerned about the damaging, far-reaching and broadly destabilizing ramifications of this outcome - which undermines and corrupts the integrity of sports," the organization said in a statement. "The NCAA is committed to supporting student-athlete mental health but must continue to aggressively defend against actions that defraud college athletics and threaten competitive integrity, such as betting on one's own sport."

And of course, the NCAA is using this as the force multiplier in its ongoing hope that Congressional oversight will stamp out every current problem. Good luck with that, but NCAA President Charlie Baker has already gone all-in on the eminently predictable.

Given all the ways in which the NCAA has fumbled its own fortunes over the years, one would expect that it would take quite the case for most everybody to be on that organization's side to any overwhelming degree, and initial reaction to the injunction shows just such a commonality of opinion.

In his ruling, Curry wrote that Sorsby "has demonstrated that he will suffer a probable, imminent, and irreparable injury if this Court does not issue this temporary injunction, because he will be unable to participate as a member of Texas Tech University's football team."

Curry cited Texas Tech's "elite coaching, training resources, camaraderie, and regimen that only being a member of a Division I college football team can provide," as well as Sorsby's ability to "build the skills necessary to maximize his own success during the college football season, as well as that of Texas Tech's football team and each of its players."

Curry concluded that the "balance of equities is in [Sorsby's] favor because of the hardship he would face in the absence of a temporary injunction."

Curry ordered that Sorsby participate in one-on-one counseling with a clinical provider focused on gambling disorders, peer support via Gamblers Anonymous or an equivalent mutual aid, and treatment for Adjustment Disorder with Anxiety. A confidential report detailing Sorsby's participation in these will be sent confidentially via Sorsby's counsel to the NCAA's counsel on a monthly basis.

The danger here is that the temporary injunction outlines what is defined as hardship in some extremely loose ways. Curry wrote that the NCAA could file for emergency relief from the injunction if Sorsby doesn't adhere to the steps to which he's agreed, but the time it could take to determine that may well render any 2026 in-season consequence beyond the two-game suspension moot.

Let's take this a step further. If Sorsby does complete the 2026 season without incident, and then enters the 2027 NFL Draft, and he is taken rounds below where he should be based on talent alone, will his lawyers sue the NFL because there is now irreparable harm to his professional future? Would he have sued under antitrust grounds if he were deemed permanently ineligible at the college level, and the NFL then refused to open its supplemental draft to him?

A farcical construct to a point, but here's where the concept of "abuse of discretion" has been used to overturn an injunction in the Seventh District Court of Appeals at Amarillo, as SB Nation's Mark Schofield (Mark is also a lawyer) points out. The NCAA could (and probably should) test Curry's possible abuse of discretion in such a court. Problem is, the standard for overruling a trial court's decision is rather stringent. Per F.A. Richard & Assoc. v. Millard, 856 S.W.3d 419 (1993), the standards of review in the state of Texas are such that a trial court's decision abuses its power if the decision is seen upon appeal as "arbitrary, unreasonable, and without reference to [any] guiding [rules and] principles."

In that regard, Curry made a definitive decision with all sorts of ambiguity regarding the rules and principles. Which means that the NCAA would likely need to find precedent indicating that Curry's ruling is so beyond the pale that an appellate court has no choice but to overrule.

As Sportico's Michael McCann writes, Sorsby has sued the NCAA for breach of contract and breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing, and he has taken issue with the NCAA's steps to audit his gambling activity. Allegedly, the prying eyes into his bank accounts, credit card statements, Venmo transactions, phone logs, texts and social media posts, and argued a live interview would have "interrupted his residential treatment."

McCann also reminds us that the Supreme Court's ruling in Murphy vs. NCAA (2018) makes it unconstitutional for Congress, through the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, to compel states to deny sports betting when there was no accompanying federal standard.

Sports betting is now legal in 39 states, along with Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Per a recent NCAA study, 67% of college students living on campus had engaged in sports betting, 41% had bet on their school's teams, and 35% had used a student bookmaker.

Beyond Sorsby's football future, there is now a precedent for athletes who bet on their own sports, and their own teams, no matter the sport or team, to potentially gain injunctive relief. How that can be seen as the correct use and rule of law is quite bewildering on its face, but that's where things stand at this point in time.

Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This story was originally published June 8, 2026 at 11:59 AM.

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