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This Week in Gambling
The Brendan Sorsby drama is the gift that keeps on giving, especially among those of us who feel that sports gambling in its current incarnation is a scourge on the athletic world. For those of you who haven't been following, Sorsby is a college football quarterback who began his career with the Indiana Hoosiers before transferring to Cincinnati and becoming their primary starter. Following good seasons in 2024 and 2025, he transferred again in January, this time to Texas Tech. Cincinnati then sued him over an alleged $1 million buyout clause in his NIL deal, which he refused to pay. This would have been nothing more than a minor sideshow except on March 11, the NCAA received a tip from law enforcement about suspected gambling activity, and the following month, Texas Tech was notified that an investigation was taking place. As the NFL Draft took place the last weekend in April, Sorsby was checking into a residential treatment facility for gambling addiction, and the gambling allegations were made public. Over a four year period beginning when he was a redshirt freshman at Indiana in 2022, Sorsby had made over $90,000 in bets, including bets involving his own team, and had others place bets for him when he was prevented from doing so because of either age or being in a state where gambling was prohibited. In the latter case, he had others place over $5,000 worth of bets for him outside the state of Texas, where sports betting is illegal. Keep in mind he had only been in Texas since January.
The timing of the investigation frustrated Sorsby's desire to play in 2026, as challenging an unfavorable determination would require an antitrust suit that wouldn't be resolved by the start of the season. On May 18, he preemptively sued the NCAA, seeking an injunction and a declaratory judgment that they had no power to suspend him. That same day, the NCAA ruled him ineligible for the upcoming season. Texas Tech was initially supportive of Sorsby and made excuses for him: That sports betting is a growing problem among young men, that he completed his treatment program (which evidently didn't last very long), that there should be discipline, but that he shouldn't have his life destroyed over the matter. Sorsby himself made excuses, saying that betting on Indiana as a redshirt made him feel more connected to his team and having a real stake in the games, as if being on the team wasn't enough. Texas Tech ruled him ineligible, but said they would work on reinstating him before the season started.
On June 8, the district court issued an injunction preventing the NCAA sanctions from taking effect, and the reaction from the college football world was severe. The school's conference, the Big 12, made noises about possibly putting their own sanctions on Texas Tech if they allowed Sorsby to play. Scheduled opponents suggested they would simply forfeit their games in the absence of any other action. Ken Paxton warned the Big 12 that the state of Texas viewed any meddling by the conference as an antitrust violation and that they could expect to be sued if they took any action. AGs from Oklahoma, Kansas, and Utah responded that they would back the Big 12 in any lawsuit. The Big 12 then sued Texas Tech preemptively, seeking a declaratory judgment that they had the right to impose their own sanctions. Realizing his quest to play was futile, Sorsby withdrew his lawsuit on June 15 and announced that he intended to participate in the NFL Supplemental Draft.
The Supplemental Draft stems from an odd corner of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and provides an alternative to the regular draft for players who intended to play college football and accordingly missed the filing deadline. Historically, these reasons included things like being declared academically ineligible and graduating early, and occasionally involved NCAA sanctions stemming from activity that's banned in college but is okay everywhere else, like hiring an agent or accepting money from a booster. It's not held every year, and some years when it is held don't result in any players being taken. When it is held, there are usually only one or two players involved, and it's been nearly a decade since anyone of note was selected in one. It operates through a byzantine process where teams are divided into tranches based on the prior year's record and teams within each tranche bid draft picks for the player, and if he isn't selected the next tranche has a shot. So say the first tranche includes Miami at 4 and Washington at 6. If Miami bids a 6th round pick and Washington a 5th rounder, Washington gets the player for bidding higher and forfeits their 5th round pick in the following year's entry draft in exchange. If both teams bid 6th round picks then Miami get the player in exchange for a 6th rounder, etc. If nobody in the first tranche bids then the second tranche has a shot, then the third, then it's over.
The topic of the supplemental draft actually came up as early as April, as Sorsby's agent indicated that it was an option if he didn't get to play for Texas Tech, and that he had inquired about the process with the NFL. With the application deadline of June 22 looming and the college situation looking increasingly dim, the NFL route looked like the best shot. Within hours of announcing Sorsby's intent to pursue a pro career, his agent was telling media that he had already received calls from 26 teams. He scheduled a pro day for July 10, days before the CBA-mandated supplemental draft deadline of July 16. He claimed that all 32 teams would be in attendance. Yesterday, this whole facade came crashing down. In a sternly-worded letter, from the league's General Counsel, the NFL informed Sorsby that they would not be holding a supplemental draft this year. It is so good it's worth quoting in its entirety, as no summary could do it justice:
The reaction from Sorsby's attorney was that the decision violates the CBA and that he was taking the matter up with the NFLPA, but it isn't clear that the union intends to do anything. As he's not on a team, Sorsby isn't entitled to any representation, and even if he were, the CBA leaves the decision to have a supplemental dragt entirely at the discretion of the league (something tells me that this isn't often a point of contention).
While it is, in a sense, satisfying to see an entitled prick like Sorsby get his comeuppance, in another sense this only kicks the can down the road. Remember, the judge originally granted a preliminary injunction, meaning that his lawsuit had a good chance of succeeding, or at least the judge thought it did. College athletics has become such a mess that at this point I believe that the house must be burned down to kill the cockroaches, and a court ruling that the NCAA had no power to declare a player ineligible for one of the two cardinal sins of athletics (the other being PED use) is tantamount to saying that they have no power at all. The Big 12 suit would have resolved questions of whether conferences had the power to enforce their own restrictions. Texas Tech winning every game by forfeit would have created an unusual situation where the team technically has a good record despite not playing, or only playing only jobbers. What if the Big 12 had lost their lawsuit, and the only meaningful game Tech played all year was in the conference championship, where they got steamrolled by, I don't know, BYU? The worst thing that could have happened to college football right now was a pyrrhic victory that convinced the casual fan that the sport wasn't a total farce, and this was it. Even Indiana's championship this year wasn't as feel-good as it seems, because that only happened because a large booster base allowed Cignetti to basically throw money at players. I don't want to pretend that the old system was equitable, even going back to the 1960s or earlier when things were supposedly pure, but in recent years things have only gotten worse. I'm not under any impression that college football will ever operate the way I'd like it to—even proposed congressional intervention only seems aimed at reinstating the shitty pre-NIL status quo—but the only chance of getting there is if the sport manages to destroy itself in spectacular fashion.
I wanted the Steelers to take Sorsby in the supplemental draft. But I doubt they would have and instead will be floating in the our QB isn’t good enough to win a championship land. Also wanted them to sign Willis. They seem very reluctant to take the kind of risks you need to in order of finding a top 10 QB. Allar has potential with all the physical traits but he’s still a developmental QB who had bad coaching at PSU so maybe there is a 25% chance it all comes together. That is just not enough risks to take at a position like that. And they refuse to be bad enough to get a top 5 pick where you can land a great prospect. Which you can’t get to trading up if you start at pick 20. So they will end up drafting the 4th best QB in a strong QB class who generally has a major flaw.
Kalshi just raised at $40b valuation or half of CME. I wouldn’t invest because gambling has two bad business traits - there are a lot of firms competing and my vote in our Democracy would be to regulate it out of existence.
I don't think the Steelers would have taken Sorsby, and I don't understand why you think he would be the answer at QB. If he were some superstar, maybe, but he was projected as a third round pick if he had decided to enter the draft this year, which puts him in the same league as Allar and Mason Rudolph. The problem I have with Willis is that the guy made 3 starts in 2 years and everyone started acting like he had potential that he hadn't shown at all when he was in Tennessee. It's almost as like he had such a reputation for being bad that when he came in and wasn't terrible everyone was impressed and subsequently overrated him.
Cleveland, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Carolina, Arizona, both New York teams, Tennessee, and until recently, Detroit and Buffalo have all been consistently terrible long enough to draft several top prospects, with nothing to show for it. Even New England, who rebounded relatively quickly after the Brady era, took two tries to get it right. The last time, technically speaking, that a team sucked and drafted a top QB prospect who won a Super Bowl for them was, well, the Steelers, when they won with Roethlisberger in 2009. If you loosen this definition a bit you can bump it up a few years to 2012, though Eli Manning was technically acquired via trade. Going back to the Super Bowl winners since then:
If you include Super Bowl losers than you're going to find a lot more guys from the top of the draft, but that's besides the point. Teams can easily acquire their starter via trade, free agency, through lower round selections, or through trading up. While we're here, let's look at QBs drafted in the top 10 during that period, excluding the past couple years:
Of the 21 guys on this list, only 5 (Goff, Luck, Allen, Burrow, and Herbert) would be obvious improvements over what the Steelers had the past several years. Tannehill and Mayfield are maybes. Anyone else would be a bust in Pittsburgh. I can only imagine what Steelers fans would say if we got a top pick and spent it on a guy like Tua or Zach Wilson. But the best examples for comparison are the Bengals and Chargers. Bengals first. It's a really easy comparison to make since they play in the same division. In the six years since Burrow has been in the league, the Steelers have finished ahead of the Bengals 4 times while the Bengals have bested the Steelers only twice. We can put an asterisk next to 2020 since Burrow was a rookie, but even in the contemporary era of complaining about the Steelers it's still a 3–2 advantage. And the Steelers have done better lately as well, with Cincy having missed the playoffs for three seasons and counting. This is not a team that is in a better position than the Steelers.
The Chargers, though, are an even better comparison, because they're an example of a similarly situated team that did absolutely everything people said the Steelers should have been doing over that period. They were a team that was good on paper but managed to disappoint with a lot of flukey close losses, and they unepectedly ended up with a low draft pick. With Rivers exiting, they spent it on a QB who lived up to the hype, and eventually dumped their coach as well. They have a good young QB, a decent core, and a hip young offensive-minded coach. They proceed to make the playoffs three out of the next six seasons, losing in the first round every time. Two of those appearances come after firing the hip young coach and replacing him with an old guy who believes in team defense and running the ball. It's not too hard to imagine an alternate universe where the Chargers have a decent 2019 and, following Ben's injury and the loss of the killer Bs, the team finishes 5–11 and management decides that with a guy like Herbert available it's time for a rebuild. Tomlin is let go, Ben throws a tantrum and gets sold for scrap (he is about the same age as Rivers), and they hire an "innovative" wunderkind as head coach. In 2020, 7–9 is an improvement, 9–8 in 2021 is even better, and in 2022 they actually have a winning season and make the playoffs, and though they lose in the first round, they're improving, and this is what progress looks like. Until they have another 5 win season the following year and they hire a Tomlin clone to get the team back on track an consistently have 10 or 11 win seasons and early playoff exits. And everyone talks about how they really righted the ship.
This is what pisses me off about the constant bitching about the Steelers of the past 5 or 6 years. Yes, is disappointing when you make the playoffs 5 out of 6 years and get blown out in the first round every time. But it's better when making the playoffs at all is considered an improvement.
IMO your data on where QB are drafted is dated. The last 5-8 years of drafts we’ve seen many more QB draft classes clustered with picks 1,2,3 QB if teams like them. And picks 8-20 be true second tier prospects. Good prospects are getting pushed higher up the board. Mahomes, Allen, Ben types aren’t going pick 10 anymore.
Willis is an example of a QB that needed time to develop. His traits are absolutely elite - rocket arm, 4.4 ‘40, Motte poster level Wonderlich score and IQ definitely matters at the QB position. Some reason he only played at Liberty University. Willis was bad in the NFL because he played as a rookie at Liberty which is a giant competition jump.
Elite Traits + 4 years development + 4 good NFL games is 100% an interesting background to bet on. And for the same money as Rodgers.
Steelers have 0% probability of getting a top 3 pick and a shot at a clean QB prospect.
Sorsby had a good shot at going first round this year and most draft prognosticators have him as a top 15 pick without the gambling next year. Not a third round guy. Allar with slightly worse arm, better tape, and far better legs.
I don’t bitch about the Steelers. A lot is well run. It’s just they need to take bigger variance risks to find a QB.
If you need a top 3 pick to land a championship caliber quarterback then I wouldn't worry about drafting one at all, because the only teams capable of being that bad aren't winning a championship any time soon. The Steelers haven't had fewer than 5 wins since Chuck Noll's inaugural season, and they're too competent to get that bad again organically. Deliberately tanking, as some people have suggested, would require them to tear the team down to the studs, at which point they'd get their quarterback but still need to find the rest of the team.
Willis has always looked good on paper, but his NFL sample size is too limited to spend any serious money on him. Sure, he's getting the same money as Rodgers, but Rodgers is a known quantity on a one year deal, not a project on a 3 year deal (though I believe only one is guaranteed). If the Steelers think they can compete this year (and they're better on paper than last year, when they won the division), then they weren't going to spend starter money on a dice roll who was only going to ride the bench if Rodgers came back. If they want to take that chance they have two guys on the roster who can do it for peanuts. The Dolphins are in the middle of a rebuild and can afford to take a chance like that. You need to keep in mind that guys like Mason Rudolph and Mike White look good in small sample sizes. Hell, Duck Hodges briefly looked like a competent game manager. Then the opposition gets enough film on the guy and realize how limited his bag of tricks is and put together a defensive strategy that he's incapable of responding to. Not saying that's Willis, but we simply don't know yet.
Mitch Trubisky, Justin Fields, and Kenny Pickett were all high variance risks, they just weren't risky because the team had little to lose. And when they didn't work out people still bitched about it. Paying one of these guys 22 million a year would up the risk factor but wouldn't make them smarter. Letting Allar, Howard, and Rudolph would have been a high variance risk, and one they would have been willing to take if Rodgers didn't come back, but there's no point in criticizing the Rodgers deal because any of these guys could still theoretically be the starter if they do well in camp and Rodgers loses it.
IMO Willis 100% boosted the Steelers Super Bowl chances this year. The floor is lower but his ceiling is much higher than Rodgers at this point.
It’s nice winning 10 games a year, but you want championships and playoff victories. You do need to take risks to win big or some how get lucky and find Brady. The Rams have had bad years and Super Bowls. Same with the Eagles.
Some times you do need to bet on a 4 game sample size. The guy whose won MVP’s and are not on AARP are not available in free agency.
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Things were better when the NCAA ruled (poorly) and paying players was an open secret that would occasionally result in someone getting in trouble.
Texas Tech is an interesting case because they are run almost entirely according to the whims of one Cody Campbell, founder of Double Eagle Energy, which is a large oil and gas E&P company out of the Permian Basin. Texas Tech has never really been a storied program, but they had some success under Mike Leach in the 2000s, and now more recently due to Campbell and crew writing blank checks under the new hyper-capitalist race to the bottom that has become college football. If it's going to be this way for much longer, someone needs to introduce Elon to my Sooners.
College football was THE sport for me growing up and as an adult. I liked other teams as a kid (the Green Bay Packers, Atlanta Braves) and I cheer for the Oklahoma City Thunder as an adult. None of these teams could or can hold a candle to the burning desire I had for my college football team. Not even close. I've watched Black Lives Matter co-opt the sport in 2020, then only to have NIL consume it shortly thereafter. In 2022, Cale Gundy (one of the longest tenured coaches in the sport) was forced to resign because he quoted a rap lyric that had the N-word in it.
I still watch my team, but it's not the same. I don't see these players in the same way. They're now just paid athletes going to my school because my school had the best deal they could get.
Yep.
Its one of those situations where the constraints in place made it more 'special.' As a student, you expect to actually run into the players on campus. They were expected to spend a full 4 years there, and attend (easy) classes. They weren't millionaires (yet) but had a good shot at making it big in the NFL if they did well.
Ultimately, I'd be fine if the college football players make money from their likeness, but the team as a whole should still feel entangled with the college its tied to in ways that aren't easily severable, and that's just completely lost now. "Student-Athlete" just isn't really a thing.
I don't want to just randomly lay another problem at the Boomers' feet, but it sure looks like they're the ones who decide to break the system by both being the deep pockets that keep pumping up the athlete's values AND keep pulling out the guardrails on various behaviors and restrictions on the athlete's loyalties b/c they want to make their preferred team as competitive as possible.
Overall seems like another example of a 'runaway' system where everyone pursuing their immediate interests shifts the whole edifice elsewhere, at the detriment of the whole.
I have many thoughts on such things.
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This is a frequent issue you see in society where “semi-legal” is better than “illegal” or “legal”. Most things we consider vices are mostly fine if the upper class does it but can be disastrous when everyone has access to it. Prostitution, drugs, alcohol, gambling, homosexuality, infidelity, etc all fit in these categories.
Paying players had issues on having a level playing field as some schools didn’t cheat.
I'd annotate this that it's typically a high-low vs middle phenomenon.
Very rich people have access to high end escorts where the whole experience is carefully guarded and vetted. Very poor ghetto dwellers have access to street walkers. Your middle class suburbanite is too sweaty and nervous to find the right part of downtown, and too poor to get the concierge service.
Of those gambling was probably the most universal. The local Italian that the cops mostly ignored running a neighborhood book likely wasn’t trying to run a lot of juice and the violence. He likely spent his days hanging out at the local bar taking small bets in the community. Knew every guy within a 10 block radius. A social creature of the community versus people just betting on their phones all day.
Yes, but if he didn't get paid, his boss didn't get his cut. If he didn't want his own legs broken, he had to have legbreakers go out and break the legs of the guy who didn't pay up. The violence was part and parcel of his business.
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Perhaps we need to reinvent "barely legal" through first principles.
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Do you think PED usage is that bad in this day and age?
Gambling you historically don't come back from, unless you're the best pitches since Tungsten Arm O'Doyle and your best friend is willing to take the rap.
Tons of players get PED suspensions at different times and come back from them.
At first I assumed that it was a coverup/fall-guy situation, but is there any actual evidence anywhere? I have never found anything but pure idle speculation. Ohtani seems naïve and child-like enough that him being taken advantage of really does seem plausible.
Any actual evidence has been thoroughly covered up or not reported, there is virtually no one with any interest in looking into it outside of muckraking, and there's just not many of those in sports journalism these days (Russini-Vrabel aside).
But conspiracy or not, if it were Nathan Eovaldi, he would have faced some consequences regarding the whole affair.
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There is no more wretched hive of scum and villainy masquerading as a pillar of respectable society than college football. The players are at best academic frauds -- enrolled in fake classes and pretending to earn a fake degree -- and at worst are public nuisances empowered by administrators and politicians. The coaches are all snakes, recruiting young men with promises of loyalty, comradery, and respect, then skipping town on a private jet the moment a bigger school calls. Not even manslaughter will prevent an overperforming coach from falling up.
And then there are the conferences. Not content with sharing the financial benefits of America's culture of amateur college sports, the big schools collude amongst themselves to hoard all of the viewership and revenue. The resulting turf squabbles are more dramatic than the on-field product, reminding one of European diplomacy during the Long 19th Century.
I still watch it of course.
I'm so glad that I never got into watching sports and did something much less mentally damaging and physically painful; in my case doing trad karate and getting punched in the head all the time.
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I had a family member who played at a big name college football program in the 90s. His GPA, he once told me, was a 0.5. ZERO POINT FIVE.
I guess he wasn’t good enough to get tutors taking his tests for him?
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IMO I would probably hirer a football player with a .5 gpa who clearly outperformed his athletic ability than the average college grad. Football is harder mentally and discipline wise than most college majors. And college majors rarely matter for what you do in business.
Oh, he went on to a successful career.
I would almost compare major college football to engineering. Not in terms of math but it’s a hard major. Even with an athletic training staff there is still a lot of discipline of actually doing the work. Understanding your role in the scheme can be complex. Some athletic geniuses can just be isolated but many positions require an intellect that’s as hard as basic accounting or getting thru a marketing major.
Someone like say Tommy Rees since a ND example was used above who was caught by the cops running from a keggar but managed to be a starting college QB is going to be a functional cog in any organization he ends up in.
I went from playing semi-pro Rugby, where there is some complexity but you can essentially get to a professional level in most positions by being athletic and dogged enough following the ball to about two years of American Football at the highest level of my country (Maybe a 1.5/10 in the grand scheme of America but like people took it reasonably seriously) and even low level amateur Football had about 10x the complexity of Rugby.
I feel like interior Defensive Line is like the only position you can get by without having to atleast instinctively understand a ton of variables and factors in the game and being a premium athlete. If you've got the combination of understanding of a complex system, social clout and boosterism that gets you to a D1 starting QB you should be fine in the vast majority of the economy especially if you're not necessarily a key decisionmaker tasked with progressing bleeding edge science.
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Most positions! For the love of god no wide receivers though.
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"More than football. Highest semester GPA in team history. #ThisIsTexas #HookEm"
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I heard that in Dean Wormer's voice.
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And so the origin story of the greatest hero you've never heard of begins. Now he just has to time travel back to save Ronald Reagan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booster_Gold
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Personally, I will never morally be against a player betting on his own team to win outright. That's why they're on the field, after all. But as soon as the spread/prop bets come into play, yeah, hell no.
I was playing in a Beer League American Football Team in Australia at one point, and the local dominant sportsbook randomly decided to put spreads on our matches (Maxbet was like $500 AUD) in a completely amateur league. My team was the #1 in the league by a margin and was favorite over the worst team in the league by -56.5 one week, and the brains trust of my team came up with a genius idea to make everybody money by all loading up on -56.5. 6 hours later, due to one-way betting traffic suddenly the handicap was -65.5 (And like we were way better than this team but that's a 'every drive is a TD' kinda metric).
I suggested that maybe we try to middle and/or that there was plenty of fat we could do by taking the +65.5 on the opposing team and just electing to only beat them by 40 or something and everybody reacted like I was suggesting we throw the match. Also the match itself went absurd when the full first team stayed in during the 4th quarter up 70-6 running aggressive plays to get over the -65.5 closing line
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The problem is that like most gamblers, they will lose. There's less issue with getting into debt with shady bookies today than there used to be, but a common risk path to fixed games historically has been that a player bets on unrelated games or on himself to win, loses, gets into debt, gets approached with an "offer" to make the money back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevin_Smith?wprov=sfti1
Having worked in the industry and known of a bunch of athlete-bettors (some of whom did turn fixers) this is a very common story, also people running up outrageous nightclub tabs whilst blacked out and somebody from the local underworld having a cunning idea to dig them out.
Professional athletes tend to be very very good clients for Sportsbooks since they've got a combination of self-belief due to being a professional athlete, belief in their own ball knowledge (which is frequently actively counterproductive), a lot of idle time since nobody is training hard for 80 hours a week, a lot of liquidity compared to most other millionaires and generally a lower average IQ than other types. Generally books are very happy to turn a blind eye to their activities but will only intercede if something that looks like matchfixing or illicit knowledge comes down the pipe. Also based on a kinda-friend who deals with these matters, matchfixing is increasingly impractical since there are very few actual siloed sportsbooks (it's all largely serviced by a few huge aggregators), liquidity (Maybe $500k even on major sports and you're gonna get stiffed a lot) versus player pay going to the moon and generally increased professionalization. Most successful fixes these days tend to be of the type where a top 50 Tennis player gets seeded in a major or a decent-level ATP match against somebody in the top 3 and then just guarantees a loss since 'nobody player gets absolutely paddled' doesn't really raise eyebrows and bets on Jannik Sinner to absolutely pummel a random don't flag in the same way that other things do. Also lower-tier guys way more practical to influence for $100k whilst a top tier guy would literally wipe his ass with that money
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It's still a problem because once a player goes down that road then any information is suspect. If you bet on your own team nine out of ten times, what does it say about the one time you don't?
If a player is always really noticeably stoked before games but one time he isn't, what does it say? The problem imo isn't information, it's incentives. Betting for your own team has good incentives, betting against your own team has horrible incentives. There may still be an argument to outlaw the former as well and give him a slap on the wrist, but treating them as if they are even in the same ballpark makes no sense.
A player can have self-belief but doesn't necessarily always feel that the market price accurately reflects their chances of winning. Even without necessarily taking a dive.
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It could mean a lot of things. I'm not arguing that betting on your own team is the same morally as betting against it, just that it isn't some benign activity that we shouldn't worry about.
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Maybe every player/coach should be required to bet some nominal amount or some running average on their own team, every game.
Make it like executives' stocks, they have to bet a consistent amount on themselves and can only change their per-game bet during during specific periods.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb has entered the chat
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Would open up opportunity for players to collude: we'll tank our chances to win this game so you guys bet big, if you do the same for us.
Which might not matter much. But it's still the league's best interest to offer a full clear barrier between players and gambling. At least while the public still cares more about this than a gambling partnership can buy.
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