Big 12 sues Texas Tech and Texas AG Ken Paxton over Brendan Sorsby eligibility ruling

The Big 12 has opened up the next stage in the battle surrounding Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby.

The Irving-based athletic conference filed a federal lawsuit on Sunday against the university and three top officials over the school's intention to allow Sorsby to suit up for the Red Raiders football team in the fall. It comes a week after Sorsby and Texas Tech obtained a court ruling in Lubbock County preventing the NCAA from punishing Sorsby over betting on sports.

The lawsuit also names Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as a defendant, after Paxton threatened the Big 12 with punitive fines if it attempted to take its own action to punish Sorsby or Texas Tech.

The lawsuit, filed in Dallas federal court, said that the Big 12 seeks to "leave no doubt in the minds of its many other upstanding student-athletes, its potential future student-athletes, its rival athletic conferences and their member institutions, and the general public of exactly where it stands on an important moral, ethical, and legal issue." It asks the judge to declare that the conference has the right to punish Texas Tech and for an injunction to prevent Paxton or the university to "seeking to deter, coerce, prevent, or punish" the Big 12 for enforcing its bylaws.

The case has been assigned to Judge Karen Gren Scholer, an appointee of President Trump in 2018. The judge has not yet set a hearing in the case.

Brendan Sorsby sports betting controversy

In January, Sorsby, a Denton native, signed with Texas Tech to play quarterback for his fifth and final season of college eligibility. The agreement included millions of dollars in direct payments and fees tied to his name, image and likeness (NIL) rights.

In March, the NCAA began investigating after allegations surfaced that Sorsby placed bets on his own team when he was a member of the Indiana University Hoosiers in 2022. The investigation revealed that Sorsby bet on Indiana 40 times, among thousands of wagers on college sports totalling over $90,000.

The NCAA declared Sorsby ineligible due to its strict rules against athletes gambling on college sports.

Texas Tech leaders sued in Lubbock County court, claiming that Sorsby had received inpatient treatment for a gambling addiction. They also said that he had stopped betting on his own team by 2024, when he was on the University of Cincinnati's football team, and he never bet on games he played in.

"We believe the right thing to do is to not ruin this young man's college career for something that happened four years ago," athletic director Kirby Hocutt said last month at the Big 12 spring meetings in Frisco. "There's penalties for everything that you do, and we would accept that and expect that, but at the same time, let's help this young man who has been very vulnerable and has admitted to some wrongdoings. Let's give him a second chance and help him."

Last week, Judge Ken Curry granted Sorsby a temporary injunction preventing the NCAA from enforcing the suspension. Curry, from Tarrant County, was assigned to the case after the regular judge recused himself due to a conflict of interest as a Texas Tech alumnus.

The injunction said Sorsby would still miss the first two games of the upcoming season, a penalty that had been proposed by his attorneys.

Conflicting legal opinions

The Lubbock County injunction sparked immediate, widespread outrage in the universe of collegiate athletics. As CBS Sports reported, Georgia and Nebraska have publicly declared that they will not schedule Texas Tech in any sports heading forward. Big 12 administrators also met to consider sanctioning Texas Tech or Sorsby.

The conference is not bound by the injunction, and has its own bylaws that allow it to punish member institutions. 

"It is critical to both the Big 12's values, reputation, and even financial well-being that these interested parties maintain their belief that Big 12 games are decided by fair athletic performance, particularly where Conference games determine standings, postseason opportunities, championship eligibility, and the public reputation of The Big 12 and its member institutions," the lawsuit says.  

However, on June 11, Paxton send a letter to the conference which claimed that the Big 12 would be violating state and federal antitrust laws if it attempts to punish Sorsby or Texas Tech. Paxton threatened that the conference and member schools would face more than $200 million in liability.

The next day, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sent his own letter to the Big 12 which characterized Paxton's letter as "meritless" and his assertion that the conference could not punish a member under longstanding rules is "facially absurd." 

Further, Drummond recommended that the Big 12 should punish Texas Tech and described its conduct as "a shameful chapter in the story of college football."

NCAA asks for emergency stay to Lubbock County injunction

Separately Monday, the NCAA asked a Texas appeals court to stay the temporary injunction from Lubbock County district court.

The filing, with the Court of Appeals for the Seventh District of Texas in Amarillo, also asked for a resolution of the case by Aug. 28, which it said would spare the potential disruption of a ruling after Texas Tech begins its season on Sept. 5. 

"The trial court's temporary injunction sweeps beyond anything Texas law permits," attorneys for the NCAA wrote. "It undermines the integrity of college sports, rewrites member-adopted rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, immunizes Brendan Sorsby from discipline for admitted and serial violations of NCAA anti-gambling rules, incentivizes a run on courthouses across the country to challenge even the most obvious and straightforward student-athlete eligibility decisions and demolishes the status quo."