Just a few months ago, Brendan Sorsby looked like the final piece of Texas Tech’s championship puzzle, the QB1 they didn’t have in the playoff loss to Oregon last season. The Cincinnati transfer came with a huge price tag, but just as the new team was beginning to take shape in the spring, the Red Raiders suffered a massive setback.

The NCAA ruled Sorsby ineligible after uncovering his long history of sports betting. According to the governing body, he placed roughly 2,900 bets totaling more than $90,000 over several years. As Texas Tech navigated through it, head coach Joey McGuire approached it with empathy for his QB.

“The thing that I told the team whenever I spoke to the team was I said, ‘Brendan was going into a rehab center; you have a brother that’s going through a lot of stuff right now,'” Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire told Josh Pate when asked about how it was going through the Sorsby situation. “It is real, and where we’re at right now. We are going to have his back.

“And he’s about not to have his phone, so you need to reach out to him now and tell him that you’re thinking about him and caring about him, and we’ll get to the other side, whatever it looks like.”

In public statements and court filings, the quarterback admitted that gambling had become an addiction. He entered a residential treatment program and later completed a 35-day rehabilitation stay while seeking help for gambling addiction and anxiety-related issues.

Texas Tech supported that decision from the beginning, even as the NCAA investigation continued. The University’s president, Lawrence Schovanec, also released a statement questioning the NCAA’s decision to bar him from playing football.

“The NCAA issued an initial ruling that Brendan is permanently ineligible to compete. Texas Tech will be appealing that decision,” the statement read. “We believe that, given the facts and the context of Brendan’s case, the NCAA’s ruling should be reversed or modified.

“The NCAA’s stated mission includes ‘fostering [student-athletes’] lifelong well-being’, and they have claimed their goal is to promote a “culture of care” for student athletes’ mental health.”

For now, Brendan Sorsby is pursuing a court case to obtain an injunction against the NCAA’s decision. The QB had his first hearing on Monday, where the judge postponed the decision, even as Sorsby’s attorney requested a verdict before June 15. That date has become important for the QB since the NFL’s supplemental draft registration deadline is June 22. That is Sorsby’s last-ditch attempt to save his football career.

Brendan Sorsby’s attorney sends a public appeal for the QB

Sorsby’s main defense in his lawsuit is that his mental well-being will be affected if he is denied an opportunity to play college football. The 22-year-old’s attorney argues that the QB had no intention to corrupt the integrity of the sport and never bet on games while he was expected to play in a game at Indiana. The NCAA, however, has taken a strict stance since Sorsby bet on Hoosier games while he was a member of Indiana’s team. Still, the attorney has appealed for a different lens to view Sorsby’s situation.

“This case, I think, has been badly misunderstood by a lot of people,” Sorsby’s attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, said. “It’s very important, and everyone understands that it is undisputed that he never did any betting to compromise the integrity of his team. The bets he made on his team were when he was not participating in that team, and he never bet again to do that.

“The NCAA said in its policies that it would consider supporting the athletes, but instead, they want to punish them. That’s wrong. We think it’s illegal, and we hope the court will agree.”

It remains unclear whether we will ever see Sorsby take the field in Texas Tech colors. The program’s public support for the QB is even more admirable, considering that he joined them just a few months back. As far as his NFL future is concerned, the doubts linger. Cleveland head coach Todd Monken has already ruled his team out of contention for the QB through the supplemental draft. Other teams might take a similar approach.