The Big 12 Conference Sunday filed a federal lawsuit against Texas Tech and Texas Attorney General William Paxton, saying the university is violating conference bylaws with its plans to allow quarterback Brendan Sorsby, who is accused of illegal sports betting, to play. The NCAA Monday shot back at Texas Tech in state court, after Judge Jon Curry last week granted Sorsby an injunction against the organization.
In the federal lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division, the conference calls out Texas Tech, saying that it is not only violating conference rules, but previously has “gone further than the Big 12 itself by making student gambling a ground for probation or expulsion from TTU, and the State of Texas prohibits sports betting outright and criminalizes it, with the Texas Attorney General even having faced suit because of limitations the State has placed on the practice.”
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Big 12 lawyers wrote that the conference filed the lawsuit after Texas Tech and Paxton threatened the Big 12 with a lawsuit “given the prospect that the Big 12 will continue to express precisely these values that one would have understood all parties to this suit to have shared.”
Big 12 Sues Texas TechDownload
It was revealed earlier this year that Sorsby bet on college football including bets on his own team while playing at Indiana during the 2022-23 school year and at Cincinnati during the 2024-25 school year. At those times, though wagering was legal in Indiana and Ohio, Sorsby would have been under the legal age of 21. According to court documents, he bet on his teams 40 different times, and wagered about $150,000 either himself or by proxy.
Per NCAA rules, Sorsby is ineligible to play college sports after violating the association’s anti-gambling rules. Permanent bans are rare, though there were two in professional sports in 2024. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Jontay Porter, who is awaiting trial after pleading guilty to betting and sharing information about his planned play with bettors, and Major League Baseball Commission Robert Manfred banned Tucupita Marcano after an MLB investigation revealed he had bet on baseball games.
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Other Big 12 members, according to the filing, raised questions about sanctioning Texas Tech should it allow Sorsby to play. At that point, the university and the attorney general said they would sue the conference to prevent it from enforcing its bylaws.
“The Big 12 and its Member Institutions (apparently save TTU) have no interest in being required to endorse or even appearing to endorse unethical and indeed unlawful conduct that strikes at the heart of athletic integrity,” Big 12 lawyers wrote in the complaint. “Instead, the Big 12 seeks declaratory and injunctive relief that will permit it to exercise its rights in full and 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.”
Seven of the Big 12’s 15 members are located in Texas and Utah, neither of which allow legal sports betting. Texas Tech is a founding member of the Big 12, which underwent a massive realignment between 2023-25, adding eight members and losing two. In the complaint, the Big 12 argues that conferences exist, in part, to maintain the integrity of games and sports, and include making decisions about which athletes any one member institution will field and “what those decisions signal about the Member’s commitment to Conference values and what they cause the public to perceive about the Conference’s own values—is compatible with the Conference’s interests.”
A third state AG, this one Utah, has sent a letter to the Big 12 backing the league’s potential sanctions of Texas Tech and criticizing the Texas AG’s legal threats to the conference.
“The harm from Texas Tech’s proposed course of action is not merely legal—it is structural.” pic.twitter.com/N7BwogHWRx
— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) June 15, 2026
Texas Tech is being blackballed by at least two other well-known universities — Georgia and Nebraska. According to the complaint, officials at both schools sent internal memos prohibiting the scheduling of Texas Tech in any sport, and reserving the right to cancel already scheduled games. Also in the background, attorneys general from Texas and Oklahoma have been parrying. After Paxton sent his letter to the Big 12 board June 11, Oklahoma AG Gentner Drummond sent a letter to the conference saying that Paxton’s anti-trust argument is “meritless” and that the conference has the right to sanction.
Oklahoma AG praises Big 12 conference for legal action against Texas Tech https://t.co/AYGW3Uvtxz
— The Oklahoman (@TheOklahoman_) June 15, 2026
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The conference has the right, per its bylaws, to sanction a student-athlete that is deemed ineligible either by the conference or by the NCAA. Under NCAA rules, student-athletes are banned from gambling on all sports. The Big 12 says it could withhold payments from Texas Tech, or ban it from competition.
Big 12 lawyers recount sanctions against Baylor for a 2012 sexual assault issue that it says caused “reputational damage” to the conference. They go on to share multiple gambling scandals — from the Black Sox to Pete Rose to the current NCAA basketball betting scandal — as examples of why gambling violations are “non-negotiable” for the conference. In addition, the attorneys wrote, other conference members are not “required to accept that risk on behalf of its fifteen other Member Institutions, their student-athletes, their fans, and its commercial partners. And no government official has the power to compel it to do so.”
Sorsby’s betting history dates to 2022, and includes wagers on sports betting and prediction platforms Hard Rock Bet, FanDuel, Underdog, and PrizePicks. He bet using accounts created with his own name, as well as using at least one proxy. He bet on his own football teams at Indiana and Cincinnati, in addition to other college football teams, the NFL, and Indiana and Cincinnati men’s basketball teams.
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Per court documents, Sorsby’s betting while at Cincinnati was through a proxy, which is not legal. In total he wagered about $150,000 and placed thousands of bets before he got to Texas Tech. Sorsby admitted that he used a proxy to bet on Underdog, PrizePicks, or Chalkboard after he transferred to Texas Tech.
To date, the conference has not voted to sanction Texas Tech, in part, it says, because of threats from the attorney general if it does so.
In its appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh District of Texas at Amarillo, the NCAA asked for an emergency motion to stay the June 8 injunction Sorsby was granted. The association requested a decision be made before Aug. 28, the start of the college football season. Texas Tech is scheduled to play its first game Sept. 5 against FCS Abilene Christian.
This is such a smart strategic filing by the NCAA.
Sorsby has until June 22 to enter the NFL supplemental draft.
If the appeal remains unresolved, he has to choose between two imperfect options: trust a temporary injunction that could be dissolved before the start … https://t.co/PANuM1iSS8
— Scott Schneider (@EdLawDude) June 15, 2026
Sorsby’s lawyers previously suggested the quarterback sit out the first two games as punishment for the gambling violations, so it appears he would not take a snap until the Red Raiders host Houston Sept. 18.
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NCAA lawyers wrote that Curry’s ruling in Sorsby’s favor “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.”
