How far will Texas Tech go? Plus: World Cup meets college football
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Hello. Scotland is going to win the World Cup. You heard it here first. On to college football, I guess.
Parlay: How far we gonna take this?
If you’re a really rich person in just about any decade, but especially this one, observing the world has taught you one consistent lesson: You are apparently allowed to get away with whatever you want.
If anyone tries to cite things like “rules” and “laws” at you, you can ignore them, based on how other people in your class operate. Consequences seem to be for regular people, not people like you.
So when Cody Campbell — the billionaire Texas Tech booster appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott to the school’s Board of Regents — decides he wants Brendan Sorsby playing on his team no matter what, he is surrounded by endless evidence that he can just keep doubling down until it happens.
No matter if it makes him the bad guy to the entire rest of the country (and to large portions of Lubbock too, actually). No matter what breaks. What incentive does a really rich person have to care about things breaking? That stuff is for normies to worry about.
Monday, a judge casually decided Sorsby must be allowed to play football for the Red Raiders despite the NCAA having suspended him for placing bets on at least one of his previous teams. Since then, Texas Tech has committed to a rarely precedented level of brinksmanship against almost literally the entire rest of college sports, starting with the Red Raiders’ own conference.
- Campbell has publicly threatened the Big 12 for its members discussing potential sanctions, calling it “collusion.” And when asked about the College Football Playoff theoretically banning Tech, he called that an “antitrust violation.” (He also said LSU wouldn’t have gotten the same criticism if it’d landed Sorsby. Brother, I realize you’re desperate to become more widely reviled than Lane Kiffin, but you’re not there yet.)
- State attorney general Ken Paxton, who was impeached by the Texas House in 2023, has also threatened the Big 12. Paxton currently trails James Talarico in various Senate race polls, meaning it’s bold to preemptively side with Tech against Baylor, Houston and TCU — and against the fans of every other Texas team, too.
- The most curious threat in defense of Texas Tech comes from attorney Jeffrey Kessler. Familiar name! Tech leadership keeps saying it didn’t fund Sorsby’s lawsuit. OK, noted. Yet Sorsby’s lawyer, Kessler, is now warning the Big 12 against “sanctioning Texas Tech.” So who’s paying Sorsby’s lawyer to fight for the school itself?
How many more sabres can possibly be rattled in defense of rostering and presumably fielding a formerly perma-banned player who could instead just go to an NFL practice squad? If any of these are bluffs, how many might the Big 12 (or the Playoff or an informal alliance of power schools) call at once? Then what?
How far is Texas Tech board chairman Campbell really willing to go? Years of lawsuits against the Big 12 and whoever else? Becoming college sports’ biggest pariah, all in defense of playing a quarterback who might elevate the 2026 team from nine or 10 wins to 10 or 11, with maybe one Playoff win to show for it?
Gonna risk getting kicked out of the conference for this? Then having to hope the ACC wants yet another lawsuit-prone member? Or going independent despite being far smaller than Notre Dame and far more annoying than UConn? Really think you’re that much more valuable to the Big 12 than, say, Tulane could be? A team from a much more attractive market, one as close to Houston as Lubbock is to Fort Worth? You know, unlike Tech, the Green Wave have actually scored points in a Playoff game …
And that’s not even the biggest worry, as Stewart Mandel explains:
“I’d be less concerned about ticking off the Big 12 than the Big Ten and SEC. … If a Super League does come one day, Texas Tech would presumably want to be included. This is why it’s paramount it starts turning its long-irrelevant football program into a national powerhouse to make it more attractive to the big boys.
“But if Tech keeps on its current path, there’s little chance the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia and Alabama will ever want to be associated with it. Why would they invite a rogue actor with no regard for even the most basic rules into their club?”
I do not know whether Georgia and Nebraska are making particularly principled moral stands by banning their teams from scheduling the Red Raiders. But I know the Red Raiders are worth only as much as several other schools who seem likely to generate fewer headaches.
To be clear, I’d never wish anything bad against Texas Tech and its players or fans. All of this sucks more for them than for anyone else. I will always stand in the company of tortillas. Mainly: If one guy, the self-styled savior of college football, has amassed so much power that he can make these scenarios imaginable, that’s a good argument against lone guys being able to amass that much power in the first place.
More, of course:
- So, like … how good is Sorsby, anyway? Bruce Feldman heard mostly positive reviews from coaches. One new worry, about the young man’s mindset: “the scrutiny he’s already gone through, and now the scrutiny that he’s going to receive.”
- From a 2027 NFL Draft perspective, Sorsby lands in Nick Baumgardner’s second tier, behind Arch Manning and company. (If Sorsby were to enter the supplemental draft by June 22, a team that grabbed him would be using a 2027 pick.)
- Two true things, expressed well by Jason Lloyd: Gambling has become a public health crisis among young American men, and bad choices should have consequences.
- On the latest episode of “The Audible”: Ralph Russo was at the annual convention of athletic directors during this week’s news. He’s never seen ADs more aligned on anything than they are against Sorsby’s eligibility.
Also, last night, Texas Tech leaders released a 20-minute video version of everything they’d already said in statements and alumni emails and so forth. TCU’s social media team responded:
— TCU Football (@TCUFootball) June 12, 2026
Quick Snaps
📰 Non-Sorsby news:
- Florida is overhauling the Swamp with the most expensive stadium project in college history: $1.45 billion.
- Next lawsuit up! “Two college football players are suing the NCAA, the Power 4 conferences and the College Sports Commission, claiming the terms of a $2.8 billion antitrust settlement have been unlawfully implemented in California and 17 other states with laws that make it illegal to restrict what college athletes can earn for their name, image and likeness.”
- “USC will elevate Conor McQuiston to director of artificial intelligence, a program source confirmed Wednesday. The hire is believed to be the first of its kind in major college football.” Rolling my eyes and pinching the bridge of my nose at the same time.
🐺 Remember January, when Washington’s quarterback tried to leave, but was contractually bound to stay? What a quaint scandal. The full Demond Williams story, on making amends and stepping up. “The kid was 19.”
🔥 Before 2024 or so, having a good incoming recruiting class could preserve a hot-seat coach for another year. Does that still work? Five guys who need all the help they can get.
💎 As if there isn’t enough going on in sports, the College World Series started today on ESPN. Eight quick things to know about the tourney.
Fútbol Americano: World, meet college football country
Justin Ferguson / Auburn Observer
Fun fact: Texas A&M joined the SEC 14 years ago, yet Lionel Messi has now set foot on Kyle Field more times than the Georgia Bulldogs have. (Next year, the Dawgs finally catch up to him.)
Before the World Cup began yesterday, Argentina played a couple of warmups in SEC stadiums over the past week, facing Honduras in front of 91,102 at Texas A&M and selling out Auburn against Iceland. Messi sat out the former, but scored in the latter, to Jordan-Hare’s delight.
It was beautiful stuff. South Americans and Alabamians joined in cheer of Auburn’s eagle flight. There was an Argentinian drumline on Toomer’s Corner. I might cry if I press play one more time on this video of Auburn’s global crowd united in swag surfing.
Elsewhere on social media, visitors are discovering American icons ranging from local diners to Buc-ees, the Texas-based chain of gas stations that feel like Epcot survival bunkers. Are these things also college football? Heart and soul. Lawrence, Kan., is now Algeria, Kan.
Both the World Cup and the concept of the United States should always remind us of this: It is great when people come together by crossing lines drawn on maps, and nothing erases those lines better than sports, music and food.
Now to brag about the soccer GOAT practicing on my alma mater Kennesaw State’s football field two years earlier:
Have a good weekend. Let’s do soccer, baseball and more.
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