Texas Tech's disingenuous statement on Brendan Sorsby makes it clear Red Raiders are about winning at all costs

We have been through Lance Armstrong and Ben Johnson. Sports mostly are beautiful, but the lust for success can lead some to unforeseen darkness.

The whole of Texas Tech football seems not to understand it has entered this place. The villainy that has enveloped the Red Raiders is not the charming sort ascribed to a WWE baddie or even to the university’s generously funded softball team. Tech’s handling of the Brendan Sorsby situation is the worst of sports. Not the worst of college sports. That’s too limiting. It’s a hunger for success that threatens to place their 2026 team – at least – in a category from which there is no rapid return.

Sorsby has not yet played a down for Texas Tech. There remains time for the university, athletic department and, of course, the most aggressive donor to the Red Raiders to collectively agree Sorsby might be better off in their program but definitely not on their team.

That’s not what athletic director Kirby Hocutt suggested was imminent in the statement he released Wednesday through social media. He said, instead, “I owe it to Texas Tech, and frankly to the truth, to offer a few facts that seem to be getting lost in the noise.”

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Sorsby has acknowledged many instances of behavior that every athlete in every sport understands has overwhelming consequence: He bet on the team of which he was a member. The standard NCAA punishment for this: permanent ineligibility. Tech correctly declared him ineligible not long after learning of this.

And then its athletic officials did something they’d prefer you forget.

They petitioned for his reinstatement.

This has been standard procedure in extra benefits cases, as rare as they might be now, and routine eligibility disputes. It was wholly incorrect in this circumstance, and it was not inconsequential. That action led to the NCAA’s denial of his reinstatement, which preceded the granting of an injunction Monday by a Texas judge who turned his life’s work into a punchline by declaring it’s enough merely for Sorsby to miss scheduled 2026 games against Abilene Christian and Oregon State.

“Texas Tech is not party to Brendan’s lawsuit,” Hocutt said. “We did not file it. We did not fund it.”

Nowhere in his extensive release did he acknowledge that petitioning for reinstatement was a clear indication the Raiders still wanted Sorsby at QB.

The reaction to Texas Tech’s obvious glee regarding the judge’s Sorsby ruling has been predictably unanimous. Columnists, talk hosts, TV analysts have entered a rare moment of alignment in their contempt. Athletic officials and coaches from other schools and other leagues expressed frustration and outrage.

“I’ve heard the word ‘integrity’ used a great deal in the last 48 hours,” Hocutt said. “As someone who has dedicated his career to college sports, I, too, believe integrity is central to our industry’s success. I also think integrity applies on more than one front. The integrity of sports matters. So does the integrity of how we treat a 22-year-old who sought help, entered residential treatment, and is working every day toward recovery. Those things don’t have to be in conflict.”

Indeed, they do not. It is well within Tech’s right, and possibly the school’s responsibility, to assure Sorsby is properly supported as he recovers from what he explained is a gambling addiction. It can be argued, sensibly, that placing him on an opponent’s football field and making him a target for universal scorn might conflict with that mission. At the least, it is true that placing him on the field given the particular admitted offense conflicts with the established integrity of the sport.

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“Pulling him out of a structured environment, away from his team and his support system, does not protect anyone,” Hocutt said. “It might be a cleaner headline, but it wouldn’t be the right one.”

Sorsby’s absence from the playing field this autumn would protect the entirety of college football. The action he took cannot lead to only minimal consequence, lest it become as common as flopping on an attempted 3-pointer.

Hocutt went on to say, “There is no perfect answer” for this situation, though that is obviously false, and he’d know exactly what that answer would be if Sorsby had chosen to transfer from Cincinnati to another Big 12 school. His construction of a binary choice here serves what the Red Raiders truly desire: a talented quarterback who possibly can help them to win the few games that were lost a year ago. You know what would be a really, really, awesome headline?

Texas Tech agrees to bench Sorsby, promises to support his recovery from addiction

That would not look as sweet on a sports bar wall as one proclaiming the Raiders as College Football Playoff champions. Right now, it’s the one Texas Tech must write, or risk losing its reputation for good.

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