When Brendan Sorsby won his eligibility back on Monday, 12 head coaches lost their cool. They issued statements saying the same thing: this ruling breaks a rule that’s stood for decades, which is that there’s no grace for gambling on your own team. That permanent ban just became negotiable, and coaches are asking: Do NCAA rules even matter anymore?

When The Athletic spoke with the head coaches from around college football regarding Brendan Sorsby’s ruling, no one wanted to believe it actually happened. 

“Unbelievable,” one Power 4 head coach said.

The frustration stems from a ruling handed down by a Lubbock County court on Monday morning. The court granted Brendan Sorsby an injunction that allows him to continue playing despite admitting to betting on college sports, including wagers involving Indiana while he was on the Hoosiers’ roster in 2022.

Per NCAA rules, betting on your own team is supposed to trigger a permanent loss of eligibility. Instead, the court upheld a two-game suspension that had been proposed by Brendan Sorsby’s legal team, led by attorney Jeffrey Kessler. The court’s decision to uphold a two-game suspension instead of a permanent loss made one of sports’ most universal rules negotiable. Another P4 coach’s language shows the boiling frustration. 

“That’s f—ing crazy! Beyond wild,” he said. “We have some serious problems that if they don’t get fixed, the entire thing is going to implode. Soon.”

The numbers only fueled the outrage. Brendan Sorsby admitted to placing more than 9,000 bets totaling at least $90,000 during his college career. Included among those wagers were at least 40 bets connected to Indiana, totaling roughly $850, during his freshman season.

Brendan Sorsby’s attorneys argued that the NCAA failed to consider his mental health in determining punishment. The court agreed. The NCAA, meanwhile, has already appealed the ruling. But for many coaches, the legal argument misses the point.

“What is the purpose of the NCAA?” one Group of 6 coach asked. “I don’t understand anything about their purpose anymore if a guy can do what he just did, blatantly break the rules, go gamble, and he can get a judge in a local area to sign off, and he can go play football?”

That question kept surfacing on Monday. One Power 4 coach pointed to the bigger issue.

“It speaks to the power of attorneys and politics and the lack of control the NCAA has over governance,” the coach said. “Betting on your own teams or sport has always been a death penalty. But now it’s overlooked?”

Another coach was even more direct, saying, “If gambling isn’t punishable, what is?”

“The hypocrisy is consistent throughout our profession right now,” one Big 12 head coach told ESPN. “Nobody cares about the betterment of the game and its future anymore. Everybody’s in survival mode on how they can win and survive right now.”

The case shows that college sports are operating without a clear referee. Coaches are wondering whether any enforcement actually remains intact because everything seems to be spiraling out of control. That’s why NCAA president Charlie Baker is implying that college sports need Congress’s intervention. 

Brendan Sorsby’s case shows why the NCAA needs Congress

Once the ruling became public, the NCAA wasted little time responding. In a statement Monday, the organization said it “strongly disagrees” with the ruling and warned of its “damaging, far-reaching and broadly destabilizing ramifications.” Charlie Baker used the decision to show why congressional intervention is necessary, despite pushback. 

“There is no better example of why targeted intervention from Congress is necessary,” he wrote on X. “When you have schools and deep-pocketed supporters willing to look the other way on the glaring integrity threat of betting on your own team, and judges whose rulings effectively strip away our ability to stop them, only Congress can equip the NCAA to apply this common sense rule to everyone fairly and consistently. The Protect College Sports Act would empower the NCAA to enforce rules, including the gambling restrictions – it’s needed now more than ever.”

Whether Congress acts remains uncertain. The SEC and Big Ten are still not on board with the proposal, fearing it could limit future conference expansion efforts. But cases like Brendan Sorsby’s show that it would need a bigger power to tame modern college sports.