Brendan Sorsby Gambling Scandal Rocks the Big 12; Tech's Season Turned Upside Down

Brendan Sorsby is entering treatment for a gambling addiction while the NCAA investigates thousands of online bets, including reported bets on Indiana while he was on the Hoosiers roster. That raises major eligibility questions and could end his Texas Tech career before it ever really begins.

In this video, I break down what we know about the Sorsby gambling investigation, why the Hunter Dekkers precedent matters, what Texas Tech may do next at quarterback with Will Hammond and Kirk Francis, and how this changes the Big 12 race. Texas Tech entered the season as one of the league’s clear favorites, but without Sorsby, the door may be wide open for BYU, Houston, Arizona, TCU, Oklahoma State and the rest of the Big 12.

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Transcript

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A total Big 12 bombshell today. The Brendan Soresby era at Texas Tech might be over before it even started. Soresby is checking into a treatment program for a gambling addiction. The NCAA is investigating thousands of bets that he made online. Is there any chance that Soresby will play at Texas Tech? What does Tech do next at QB if he doesn't? And what does this mean for the Big 12 race? I'll answer all those questions here in this video. Welcome into the Open for Business Big 12 podcast. I'm your host, John Kurtz. This is a pretty big story. All right. Texas Tech, whether you like them or not, they are right now the highest profile brand and team in the Big 12. Recently, we just found out they have the second best odds of anybody in the country to make the college football playoff next to Notre Dame. And the story this year on Texas Tech was that you anticipated the offense would be better. Well, the defense might take a step back just because it lost so much talent to the NFL draft. We just saw that happen, right? Remember the game against Oregon and the college football playoff. Tech's defense was awesome, but the offense had absolutely nothing. And that really started at quarterback, where Barron Morton, frankly, was just not good enough. 18 of 32, 137 yards, no touchdowns, two picks. That was my fear all year with Texas Tech. It was unfortunately realized at the biggest moment in the biggest stage. Texas Tech's defense is probably not going to be as good as it was last year. They can bring in a ton of talent and did through the portal, but that was a special, special unit. The whole idea this year was the offense would have to be better to carry it. And it looked like it was going to be, especially when you brought in the number one quarterback, according to most, or some, at least Brendan Soresby. Can certainly have a Soresby v. Levitt debate. But they brought arguably the best player in the entire portal in to play quarterback to fix this problem. Paid him$5 million to do so. But now it looks like that plan is going to be out the window. All right. Here is what is being reported about Soresby, the details on his gambling. So ESPN and Pete Thamel said his decision to enter treatment comes after it was discovered. He made thousands of online bets. This is not a point-shaving thing or like uh trying to affect the outcome of games. It's nothing like that. Uh law enforcement is not involved as such, but this is an NCAA issue. Think much more along the lines of Hunter Decker's a couple years ago at Iowa State. More on that in just a moment. Uh, it is about a steady flurry of small bets, according to Thamel. And there's no timetable on a return to Texas Tech for Soresby himself. It's being treated as a mental health matter, which that obviously is totally separate from him being declared eligible by the NCAA, but you you guys get the idea. Here's the kicker, though. When we're talking about his eligibility, there are different rules like harsher punishment for stuff over$800. We know it's thousands, right? So it's going to be beyond that. But one of the big deals is are you just betting on other sports or are you betting on games that you played in? And here is a key report from Pete Nakos of on three. Brendan Soresby placed bets on Indiana well on the Hoosiers roster in 2022. Sorsby did not appear in any game he bet on that season. But that's not good. When you're talking about the eligibility, that's not good. It's a precedent that the NCAA does not want set here. Anybody betting on games that they are actually playing in or that their team is a part of, right? You cannot have anyone questioning the validity of the outcome of games. That's why they're so harsh about this. And if we're talking about what this means, you go look at what happened to Hunter Deckers at Iowa State a couple of years ago. He made one$15 bet on his own team that he was on the roster of at Iowa State. Didn't play in the game, and yet the NCAA ruled him permanently ineligible. So if we're going by the precedent of what happened a couple of years ago with Deckers at Iowa State, permanently ineligible would be the most likely outcome here for Soresby. In fact, it's pointed out in one of these articles, this was ruled on that Hunter Decker situation, was ruled on much harsher than athletes who gambled way more money, but it was not on their sport or a game that they played in. So that does not look good for Soresby actually being eligible. So what does that mean for tech at quarterback, right? Please subscribe to the channel, by the way, pushing toward 35k subs. Many of you watch, but don't subscribe. It helps if you do subscribe. What does that mean for Texas Tech? There is at least good news on the Will Hammond front. It would appear. Okay. Texas Tech backup quarterback Will Hammond, you remember him from last year. He lit up Utah and then struggled later in the year. He was a guy that I thought was ready to be the future, looked like a total stud in that Utah game, tore them apart, but just didn't have it. When he played the rest of the year, he wound up tearing his ACL. Texas Tech backup quarterback Will Hammond has returned to throwing in the last 10 days. Pete Nakos reports there's optimism that he should be healthy by week one against Abilene Christian. The initial expectation was he wouldn't be ready until week three against Houston. And there was a lot of thought that he may just redshirt this year because they had Brendan Soresby playing in front of him. And then a Tulsa transfer and Kirk Francis behind him to play the backup quarterback position this year. But that plan now may change. I mean, we'll see how fast they can actually get Will Hammond ready. If not, Kirk Francis, he does have over 3,000 career passing yards during his career in Tulsa. That's over three years combined. So it's not a total dud of an option, right? I mean, Texas Tech is not completely devoid here. They also have a freshman that played some last year that would be in the mix. But it's definitely not Brendan Soresby, right? I mean, you're taking a step down there. Although, again, to contradict myself a bit here, like Will Hammond at one point in time, I thought looked outstanding. Like he's he can definitely move, he's mobile if the ACL is intact, if his injury is okay. And he was making some really tight window throws against a really good Utah defense in Salt Lake City last year. Now, if you are a Texas Tech fan, I guess the other silver lining I would provide to you here is we just talked about Hunter Deckers and what happened there. That was Iowa State coming off of a four-win season, then the gambling scandal, losing its quarterback, losing Deckers. It felt like everything was really falling downhill for Iowa State. All they did was, oh, I don't know, find Rocco Becht, and Rocco Becht wound up taking that program to an 11-win season, the best in school history, and a uh Big 12 championship game. So maybe that's what happens here with Will Hammond. Like you certainly can't count Texas Tech out. They're gonna have plenty of other talent on the roster. But if you are talking about the Big 12 race, which is the other ultimate question here, what does this do to the Big 12 race, which looked like it was gonna be Texas Tech and everybody else? Well, now it's wide open, my friends. First of all, both of the two top teams in the Big 12, I think, perception-wise, and likely by the polls that we would see, BYU and Texas Tech have now suffered major personnel issues that are not injury related to their offense, right? Because you have the Parker Kingston situation at BYU as well. Now you have this with Texas Tech and Brendan Soresby. So if you're Houston, if you're Arizona, if you're TCU, I just mentioned BYU. If you're BYU, you feel a lot better about your chances now. Things feel like they've opened up. Three of those teams, Houston, Arizona, TCU, they're traveling to Lubbock. So yeah, it's not going to be easy either way to play in Lubbock, but now maybe you feel like you have more of a shot there. I mean, Houston in particular, I think is going to be really good this year. They get tech pretty early in the season. It's the first conference game. We all remember the debate about it being played on a Friday. You might be feeling pretty good about that chance. If tech hasn't broken in its new quarterback by then yet, if things are still a little bit shaky, you'd feel better about your shot at winning that game. If you're an Oklahoma State believer, the Cowboys get tech in Stillwater. Now that's late in the season, but they do get tech in Stillwater. So it may take on the feeling now, the Big 12, of what it was the previous couple of years before the tech takeover last year. Like, hey, this could be pretty darn wide open. We don't know exactly who's going to step up, but it'll be one of these teams. And then I, you know, I would view it that way where you just throw Texas Tech in as one of those teams. Right? I'm not anticipating that Brendan Soresby is going to play this year. That does not seem very likely right now, based on precedent with the NCAA, and I think this is something they absolutely cannot be very lenient on. And I know people will say, hey, it's what everybody his age is doing or whatever, but I mean the NCAA is very clear on this, and there's a clear motive. You just can't take any chance on anybody having doubts about the outcome of games being fixed. You don't want that at all. You you cannot risk that. And the NCAA is very, to their credit, up front with the athletes about all of this. I mean, this could be a whole big picture segment, too, about the hypocrisy of all the leagues being in bed with the gambling companies and taking money from them and then punishing people for using that. Like, I get it. I get it. That's not what I'm going to do right here, right now. If we're talking about Texas Tech and what it means, I don't think Brendan Soresby's going to play. So I think tech is just another contender instead of the favorite. That's what it has done to tech in my eyes, as of right now. It doesn't mean that they can't win the league. They certainly can, but this is going to put a lot more of tech's, uh, I would say, like the infrastructure that they have there to the test, right? How good was James Blanchard doing his job at GM this year again of identifying talent in the right places? How good will Joey McGuire be at keeping the culture together? How good will the entire coaching staff be at making it all fit together and work? Can Shield Wood create the same type of defense that he had last year, even after losing guys like David Bailey and Jacob Rodriguez? It's going to put all that to the test much, much more. And remember, Texas Tech was basically three touchdowns better than everybody in the Big 12 outside of Arizona State in a game when their quarterback was hurt. Uh, so there is a pretty large gap that the rest of the league has to make up. It'll be really interesting to see how this goes if it's going to be no Brendan Soresby at QB. And certainly on a personal level, look, I wish the best for Brendan Soresby. Like a gambling addiction can completely ruin your life. So you want to see him get help first and foremost. He's got a lot of football ahead of him, whether it's going to be in college or just moving on to the NFL. There can still be a happy ending for him. I hope he gets the help he needs, sincerely. Uh, and Texas Tech is not, this is not like a Tex totally done situation. Don't get me wrong there at all. But this definitely hurts. Definitely hurts. Man, it's been a wild week on the channel. It's been a wild week in college sports. Click here to find out why we may have some ACC realignment chaos brewing soon and how the Big 12 has an in with Miami, if and when it happens.