Finally! No More Rules.

The courts give up on college sports

I like where this is going, with a Texas district court ruling that you cannot prevent a college athlete from playing his sport simply because the young man has a gambling addiction, including betting on his own sport, including betting on his own team within said sport.

We’re getting somewhere here. We are edging toward a full repeal of all rules and regulations, which I think most of us — but especially the gamblers and boosters — can agree will really open the field to a wide variety of athletes who’ve previously been denied access.

Athletes such as, oh, I don’t know … criminals.

Fraudsters.

Performance-enhancing drug users.

(PED dealers!)

Vegetarians.

Left-handed persons.

Redheads. (Possibly.)

I could go on. Instead, I will tell you the true story of the bettor/quarterback who just got reinstated to Texas Tech University out there in Lubbock, right off of I-27, with a judge agreeing that denying this gambling-jonesed youngster the chance at playing college football for money would cause him irreparable injury, “him” meaning the QB, not the judge, although I suppose no one really knows with any great certainty.

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Technically, what happened Monday in West Texas was that this judge, fella named Curry, granted a temporary injunction allowing Brendan Sorsby to play ball. Sorsby, age 22, is on his third school, having stopped at Indiana and Cincinnati prior to transferring to T-Tech.

Along the way in his zig-zagging college career, Sorsby unfortunately turned out to be a degenerate gambler, which the QB either realized or copped to after being confronted by the NCAA’s investigative findings in April. (The NCAA was tipped off by law enforcement.) The QB admitted to having a gambling addiction, and went to an in-patient rehab center. Sorsby was deemed ineligible to play, under the association’s long-established gambling rules.

This all seems rather clear cut, as allowing players to participate with teams they’re betting on strikes one as a somewhat flawed approach to college sports. Sorsby told authorities that among the roughly 9,000 sports bets he’s placed over the last few years (about $90,000 worth), some 40 of them were wagers on Indiana football games in 2022, when he was a freshman and took a redshirt. He also bet on Indiana and Cincinnati men’s basketball games when he was enrolled at each school, and said he continued gambling when he got to Texas Tech.

The NCAA’s penalty for betting on your own team is permanent ineligibility, period, full stop, same as every other sports league on Earth. Until recently, most of us would have been forgiven for assuming that such a rule was solid policy.

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Sorsby’s lawyers had other ideas. His legal team, led by veteran sports attorney Jeffrey Kessler, argued in court that, for starters, Sorsby never bet on an Indiana game in which he played, and never manipulated a game he participated in. This was offered on a take-my-word-for-it basis.

Kessler also emphasized that the QB had been clinically diagnosed with a gambling and anxiety disorder, describing Sorsby’s rampant betting as a mental health issue that the NCAA should be obliged to treat, not punish. Thus, the lawyer claimed, the NCAA was actually ignoring its own rules by not considering Sorsby's well-being when it ruled him ineligible.

Incredibly, Judge Curry, first name Ken, bought this talking-out-the-hind-parts argument hook, line and sinker — and no, he’s not a Texas Tech junkie. Before his current gig, Ken Curry had his career as a judge in Tarrant County, over by Fort Worth. He has no known connection to Tech. In fact, as a retired district judge, he was only given the case because the Lubbock judge to whom it was originally assigned had recused himself.

No, Ken Curry is not a booster. He’s just the guy who randomly ruled Monday that the NCAA cannot keep known gambling addicts out of the sports upon which they acknowledge they’ve bet.

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It’s not clear where this will all go. The NCAA announced it would appeal, of course, since losing this case in total will effectively end the era of college sports being assumed as an on-the-level enterprise.

Curry’s ruling didn’t offer much in the way of explanation or justification. He simply declared that Sorsby’s attorneys had demonstrated “probable, imminent and irreparable injury” will occur if Sorsby is unable to play for the Red Raiders in 2026. (Sorsby’s NIL deal with Tech is estimated at $5 million.) The ruling says the NCAA can’t prohibit Sorsby from practicing or playing this fall.

Sorsby will still miss Texas Tech’s first two games, which was a penalty that had been proposed by his attorneys and agreed to by the school. But the NCAA’s appeal on the larger issue, even if it’s handled on an expedited basis, will likely not be heard in time to matter — Sorsby will have played the rest of the season and exhausted his college eligibility long before any final ruling comes down, legal experts predict.

The NCAA was aghast, saying Curry’s ruling “undermines and corrupts the integrity of sports.” Opposing coaches and universities didn’t seem to know what to say, although they babbled quite a bit anyway.

My favorite reaction came from an unidentified Big 12 coach, who spoke with ESPN’s Dan Wetzel.

“If this is the precedent, then I owe it to my players to bring in people from Las Vegas to teach us how to gamble,” the coach said. “Then, collectively, we need to decide which games we will play hard in [to cover the spread] and which ones we won’t. I’m supposed to do what’s best for my players, and in that case they would be able to make a lot of money betting on our games. That’s the precedent for me.”

Snarky? Sure. Is he wrong? I cannot prove that under the law.