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A district court judge in Lubbock, Texas, will take center stage Monday afternoon as attorneys for Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby seek a landmark injunction against the NCAA that could allow him to play this season after admitting to placing thousands of bets over the past four years, including on his own team.
The betting saga involving the currently ineligible Red Raiders star quarterback has caught the attention of the college athletics world, and his time at Texas Tech could be coming to an end after just five months.
Now, in Lubbock District Court documents obtained by OutKick, Brendan Sorsby’s attorneys are putting everything on the line in hopes that a judge will grant him an injunction to play, and they are basing part of their case on the diagnosis of a doctor at an Arizona rehab center.
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Hoping to get a judge to rule against the NCAA, Sorsby’s legal team provided a wealth of information to the court Friday, including how the quarterback was able to place so many bets while enrolled at Indiana, Cincinnati and Texas Tech.
ESPN’s David Purdum was the first to report the amount of money wagered.
According to a 111-page affidavit filed, the quarterback had placed $90,000 worth of bets over the past four years, dating back to his first year playing for the Indiana Hoosiers. Sorsby, according to his attorneys’ filing, used multiple gambling apps to place bets, including FanDuel, Underdog, Hard Rock Bet and PrizePicks.
Brendan Sorsby of the Cincinnati Bearcats battles during the first half against the TCU Horned Frogs at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 29, 2025. (Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
BRENDAN SORSBY ADMITS TO PLAYING ON HIS OWN TEAM, SUES THE NCAA IN LUBBOCK COURT FOR COURT ACTION
But he didn’t do it alone, he received help from friends to place bets on different sports that included the NBA, the PGA Tour and the MLB, in addition to college football.
The quarterback admitted to transferring at least $60,000 to friends who placed bets on him.
And the most consequential of all might have occurred while he was quarterback of the scout team in Indiana. Sorsby, through the filing, admitted to placing at least 2,900 bets worth more than $30,000 during his time in Bloomington.
Betting on his own team cost Texas Tech QB his eligibility
The harmful bets occurred during the 2022 season, when Sorsby says he placed at least 40 different bets on his own football team during the redshirt season. The court record says the quarterback was placing bets ranging from $1 to $114 over a two-month period from September to October of that year.
In his defense, Sorsby claims he only bet on the Hoosiers to win and that he stopped betting before playing in his Indiana debut which was against Penn State that season. Under NCAA rules, a player can play in up to four games and still retain a redshirt season.
Future Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby yells during the first half of the game between the Houston Cougars and the Texas Tech Red Raiders at the United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas, on January 24, 2026. (John E. Moore III/Getty Images)
But in addition, NCAA rules prohibit a student-athlete from betting on any sport that also has a championship game at the college level. This means that betting on your own team to win is obviously against the rules. Because of this, along with thousands of other bets placed on different sports, the NCAA has deemed Sorsby ineligible for the upcoming 2026 season.
In a previous motion, attorneys representing Sorsby blamed the NCAA for not supporting the quarterback during this situation and instead using his gambling addiction against him.
“Mr. Sorsby is currently ineligible to play for Texas Tech due to prior violations of NCAA sports betting rules. Instead of supporting a student-athlete’s recovery from a gambling addiction, the NCAA has weaponized his condition to prop up a façade of competitive integrity,” the complaint reads.
While Sorsby maintains that he “never bet on the Indiana team and/or individual members of the team in a game in which he participated. He did not engage in any activity designed to influence the outcome or integrity of an intercollegiate competition or in an effort to affect the win-loss margins,” he is fighting an uphill battle.
Gambling only continued with the Red Raiders, using friends to place bets.
There were questions about whether Sorsby had stopped gambling after enrolling at Texas Tech, but the quarterback admitted in the filing that his addiction continued to grow while he was in Lubbock.
The documents claim Brendan was using accounts belonging to two friends to place bets, while admitting to sending $5,000 to those same friends so they could bet on MLB, NBA and PGA Tour events for him.
“Given the money I had and won with NIL, the total amount of money I won between 2022 and 2025 was not a big deal to me. I never tracked my bets over time, but I’m pretty sure I lost more than I won,” Sorsby said in the presentation.
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Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby jumps over Nebraska defensive back Malcolm Hartzog Jr. to score a touchdown during the second half of an NCAA college football game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
But given everything that has happened over the past four years, with Sorsby recently completing a 35-day stint at a rehab clinic in Arizona, the quarterback is still receiving support from Texas Tech.
In a letter sent to the NCAA on Friday regarding its fight for reinstatement, the school continued to suggest that a two-game suspension would be sufficient punishment for the crime.
“By imposing a two-game suspension on Sorsby and allowing him to continue his final season of eligibility, the NCAA would not be creating a bad precedent or ignoring existing precedent,” the school said. “This is a case of first, and perhaps last, impression.
“Has the NCAA ever had an athlete admit to placing thousands of bets, and the only bets on his former team were for his team to win when he was not prepared for the game and when the student’s doctor indicated that he made those bets because of an adjustment disorder with anxiety that caused him to make those bets to feel like part of the team?”
Is the penalty appropriate to the crime? Red Raiders fight for Sorsby
Yes, Texas Tech believes a two-game suspension would be enough punishment for Sorsby to admit to placing bets on his former team while on the roster.
And the Red Raiders, along with Brendan’s lawyers, are essentially painting the NCAA as the bad guys.
“Imposing a career-ending sanction on Sorsby will send a message to current and future athletes hiding in the shadows of the stigma of questioned mental health and addiction that they should remain silent and never seek help or treatment because the NCAA will take a punitive approach by automatically applying the maximum sanction,” Texas Tech argued.
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It should be noted that Brendan Sorsby did not reveal his gambling problems until the NCAA learned of his past transgressions, plus Texas Tech did not know about the problem when he enrolled at the school. It was a notice to the NCAA that initiated this investigation.
Now, Sorsby, along with Texas Tech and the entire world of college athletics, awaits a district court ruling that could shake the entire foundation we currently live on.
