Ohio State Buckeyes beat reporter Stephen Means of Cleveland.com sees parallels between Monday's ruling that allows Texas Tech Red Raiders quarterback Brendan Sorsby to play in 2026 and the fallout of TTUN's Connor Stalions sign-stealing scandal.
Sorsby was reinstated after being granted an injunction in his ongoing lawsuit against the NCAA. He will be suspended for Texas Tech's first two games of the season after being found to have placed thousands of bets during his career with the Indiana Hoosiers and Cincinnati Bearcats from 2022 to 2025.
Sorsby even had out-of-state confidants who placed bets on his behalf once he arrived in Lubbock. For that behavior, he is missing a home game against the Abilene Christian Wildcats and a road contest in Corvallis to face the Oregon State Beavers. This is to say, Sorsby and TTU got a slap on the wrist.
The Stalions ruling included the following: $30 million in fines, primarily due to forfeiting two seasons of postseason revenue sharing and a 10% cut in the football budget, four years of probation, a 25% reduction in recruiting visits, and a 14-week ban on recruiting communications. Means felt the two situations had a similar impact on the perception of the NCAA; that is, they demonstrated how toothless the non-profit has become.
"This is a man who admitted to wagering at least $90,000 across more than 9,000 bets during his college career, bets that included the Indiana football team he played for in 2022," Means prefaced before saying, "This message is simple: You can do whatever you want. All you need is a gullible hometown judge who’s willing to tell the NCAA that he doesn’t care what it thinks.
"This is just the latest example of how powerless the NCAA is today. It’s no different from what the conclusion of Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal taught us last summer."
What Connor Stalions did was way worse than what Brendan Sorsby did
Sorsby didn't compromise the competitive integrity of the game when he placed all of those bets. He didn't bet against his team, and he didn't throw games. If he had, there'd be no letting him back into the fold. Instead, he bet on his teams to feel something more on Saturdays. He was chasing something that life wasn't giving him.
Stalions, on the other hand, wore disguises and showed up on a team that's not the Wolverines' sideline to steal signage and get an edge in a future matchup with the Michigan State Spartans. What Stalions did was a spit in the face of competitive integrity. It was, by every stretch of the imagination, cheating.
With how much money TTUN brings in, what the Wolverines got slapped with was very minor. A drop in the bucket at most. The recruiting visits hurt, but recruits know what they're getting monetarily before setting foot on campus. So even that doesn't hurt that much.
Sorsby, of course, also got a slap on the wrist. But he deserved it. Punishing him further would've been a sign of hypocrisy from everyone involved. Banning him would've gone way further than the NCAA went with TTUN.
The Wolverines should've been punished more. You can make a case that Sorsby should've been punished less. As similar as the situations seem, Sorsby did a lot less to damage football than Stalions did.
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