- 1 day ago
Grant & Danny can't believe Sorsby bet on his own games and a judge that's a fan of the team granted him an injunction. What kind of precedent are we setting here?
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00We talked yesterday about this Brendan Soresby story, and it has grown even bigger legs to this point.
00:07There is a pushback now within his conference that I want to cover with you on G&D today,
00:13and I want to take calls on this as well.
00:14But let's just get people up to speed on what is going on.
00:18So Soresby is the quarterback at Texas Tech.
00:21He was one of the most highly recruited portal players in college football.
00:28Here, he was one of the top free agents in America, where the money that stacks up for players at
00:34the quarterback position gets unwieldy.
00:37But everybody wanted to get their hands on this kid.
00:40He's going to go in the first round.
00:42A lot of people felt like he could go in the top ten, maybe the top five.
00:45With a great season, Danny, he could be the 1-1 pick in this year's draft.
00:49That's how talented he is.
00:50He has played at Indiana for two seasons, mostly as a backup.
00:54Up 23, he got on the field.
00:56Then it's Cincinnati over the last two years, including this year, where he led his conference in yards per attempt
01:02and quarterback rating.
01:04And now he's going to Texas Tech to be a national power, to try to play in the postseason and
01:10play for a championship game.
01:12Well, it came out that an investigation had been done by the NCAA after his account had been flagged,
01:18where they found out that he had bet $90,000 on sports, which you were not allowed to do as
01:23a college athlete.
01:24And it's not just that he was betting on badminton and cricket and curling and the Olympic triathlon or whatever.
01:35He made 40 bets on the games that his Indiana Hoosiers teams played.
01:4240.
01:43Now, we don't have all the details on those bets.
01:46At least I have not been able to find them, and I scoured again yesterday.
01:49Did he bet on his team to win every single time, a la Pete Rose?
01:52I would love to know.
01:53Not sure.
01:54Did he only bet the year where he didn't play at all in 2022, and then he stopped betting when
01:59he was actually playing in the game,
02:00so he couldn't affect positively or negatively the outcome of his bets?
02:03I don't know about that either.
02:05But what I know, Danny, is you are not allowed to bet on college football if you play college football.
02:10That is an NCAA rule.
02:11You can't bet on a lot of things at all when you're around the facility, but you certainly can never,
02:16ever, ever, ever, never bet on the sport that you play.
02:19And he did.
02:20And so guess what happened?
02:22The NCAA ruled that he was not going to be allowed to play again.
02:27Banned and suspended for the season.
02:29He had an appeal just last week that came back, and the NCAA poured over all the results of the
02:35investigation and said,
02:36Yeah, this is textbook violation.
02:38This is the whole reason that we have these rules is the worst thing you could possibly do in sports
02:44is to bet on games your team is playing in.
02:46He did that 40 times.
02:47Sorry, dude, you're not playing anymore.
02:49Pretty simple, right?
02:50But that's not where the story ends.
02:52So now you get an injunction or an attempted one to step in the way of the NCAA, which, again,
02:59is toothless.
03:00The NCAA cannot win anything in court because there's no framework that basically allows them to set rules.
03:06The only rules existed because the universities and colleges and conferences all sort of voluntarily opted into the structure.
03:14But now that you've got employees or whatever you want to classify players as, there aren't really guardrails anymore.
03:20So the NCAA can slap whatever penalty they want, and now you have protests from Soresby's camp, his lawyers, et
03:25cetera.
03:26They file suit, and wouldn't you know what, a judge that had been retired for nine years in Lubbock, Texas,
03:31you'll never guess where Texas Tech is located.
03:34Lubbock, Texas puts on his gown and finally says, Whoa there, I say, Whoa there, we're going to have an
03:41injunction against this ruling.
03:43He can play as far as I'm concerned.
03:45Next thing you know, Soresby's eligible.
03:47This judge, who is a Texas Tech fan, there's images of this guy being a fan of the team, comes
03:53out of retirement.
03:55In case you missed that part of what Danny just said.
03:57I read somewhere yesterday he'd been retired for nine years.
04:01I don't know the specifics, but I'll just assume that that's correct.
04:04He has been retired.
04:05He comes out of retirement to rule that the punishment of Soresby is not fair.
04:11And that he is going to tell the NCAA with his ruling, You're wrong, his attorneys are right, he will
04:19be suspended for two games, and then he will get to come back and play the final ten games of
04:23the season, the playoffs, the championship game, and be drafted in the first round.
04:27And the argument being made on Soresby's behalf is, the punishment will do damage to him.
04:34That is what the judge ruled on.
04:36That this punishment will do irreparable damage to his football career.
04:41This is the equivalent, forgive the lack of decorum, I guess, in the example.
04:47This is the equivalent of someone robbing a bank at gunpoint, and then at their trial, their attorney arguing, if
04:56you send him to prison for 15 years, it's going to be bad for his family and bad for his
05:00life.
05:01And a judge going, I actually agree with that.
05:04Yeah, it makes sense.
05:04We're not going to send him to prison.
05:07There's a rule, man.
05:08You knew the rule.
05:09And by the way, this is not a show-up-on-time rule.
05:12This is not a don't-skip-class rule.
05:15I think this is the rule in sports at this point, especially with legal sports betting now.
05:19Yep.
05:20This is the holy grail.
05:21This is the end-all, be-all.
05:24The single biggest issue facing sports from a popularity standpoint, the one fly in the ointment for the NFL, for
05:32college football, for these leagues that are untouchable, is the possibility that maybe you could have some awful team on
05:41the take.
05:41Take some player who's betting against themselves.
05:44The integrity of the games, yeah.
05:45The rowing games.
05:46The entirety of the integrity of your sports are on the line.
05:48The worst thing you could do.
05:49Pete Rose got the death sentence for betting on teams that he was a part of and managed.
05:56And by the way, never bet against them.
05:58There's a guy named Hunter Deckers.
06:02Do you remember Hunter Deckers?
06:04No.
06:05Nobody should.
06:07He played at Iowa State.
06:09He was a quarterback.
06:11And in the same conference, where Texas Tech is right now, where we just found out that Soresby's going to
06:16be allowed to play this season,
06:18Deckers got the, basically, career death sentence banned from college athletics because he was found to have been betting on
06:26games a couple years ago.
06:27This was before the NCAA had become feckless and just unable to win any cases, to your point.
06:33So you know what they did?
06:34They had a rule.
06:35He violated it.
06:36By the way, it's not like you don't know what the punishment is.
06:38This is not some Roger Goodell, we're going to have a hearing, you might get two games, you might get
06:4112.
06:42If you bet on college football and the team you play for, you'll never play again.
06:46Everybody knows it.
06:47It's right there for you on the wall when you look up the rules in your locker room.
06:51This kid Deckers did.
06:53Iowa State has no way to bail him out.
06:57There's no judge that can step in.
06:58The NCAA said your career is over.
07:00Your entire football life has been derailed.
07:02Still hasn't played another down.
07:04Same conference.
07:05Fast forward a couple years.
07:06And this guy, after betting 40 times on the team he plays for, based on a fan of his team,
07:17putting the judge's outfit back on to slam the gavel once, is going to get to play.
07:22And there's nothing the NCAA can do about it.
07:25So this all happened yesterday.
07:27We talked about this on the show.
07:28I think it's one of the outrages of all time in sports.
07:32There's a lot of bad, there's a lot of corruption in the world where you look at it and it's
07:38so unfair that it's stomach turning and it's angering.
07:41And I could get into, you know, the specifics.
07:44We don't need to.
07:45We all see it.
07:45We know what it looks like.
07:46When there's nothing you can do about it, everybody knows this is crappy and it just happens, right?
07:51So this is a terrible look.
07:53But the development last night that I want to talk about is the Big 12's reaction.
07:58Have you seen what they're doing?
08:00So there's a little bit of a pushback here, right?
08:03Formal and informal.
08:04The ADs in the Big 12 in the conference are banning together to say, what if we boycott Texas Tech?
08:12What if we refuse to play them this year?
08:15The Big 10 has come out and said, we will not play this football team.
08:20As a conference.
08:22Other conferences could do the exact same thing, by the way.
08:26Where they could make the decision to band together to say, you're on our schedule, we're not playing that game.
08:32And I love it.
08:34I think this is the only path forward.
08:37Because the NCAA has lost.
08:39Yeah, they cannot win.
08:41The way that I've read this, it's over for them.
08:43I mean, they have lost this case.
08:45This judge's word was the final word on this.
08:48Soresby will be eligible and will be playing football.
08:50For Texas Tech.
08:52Assuming Texas Tech doesn't say that he can't, and why would they?
08:55Well, I can tell you why they would.
08:56Right.
08:57I mean, they don't have, you know, their head on straight to do that.
09:02So what if the Big 12 says, actually, man, we're not going to play you.
09:07We're going to act like you guys don't exist.
09:09Because this is such a bad thing for our conference.
09:11It's such a bad thing for our sport.
09:13It's such a bad thing for sports in general.
09:15For the integrity of anything that matters to anybody.
09:17If you're allowing a guy to get away with this, why would any player ever fear betting on or against
09:25his own team again?
09:27You literally just need to know a judge or a judge that likes your team.
09:30That's all you would need.
09:31You could find plenty of those with college sports.
09:34So the, in principle, it makes perfect sense to me that, you know, you have to kind of have, because
09:40this is, again, what the NCAA was.
09:41It was conferences, colleges, universities, everybody's sort of bending together and go, let's abide by these rules together.
09:49So this is now an informal makeup of that.
09:51And I imagine there'd be future lawsuits and injunctions and things like that where, you know, you're now punishing, you
09:58know, the softball player at Texas Tech.
10:00It's because they won't, because Nebraska won't play them in anything because of Brandon Soresby.
10:04Well, is that fair?
10:05Is that right?
10:05I don't know.
10:06Again, it's always so hard to kind of do these bits of enforcement.
10:08The old way of the NCAA, just to kind of go down this road, is, let's say, Grant, 10 years
10:13before me, was paying off players and provided housing for your AAU coach or my AAU coach and a couple
10:20other things.
10:20We find out about it, and then I don't get to play in a bowl game because of something that
10:25happened 10 years ago.
10:26That's how long the trailing enforcement was.
10:28Is it fair?
10:29No, but that's kind of the best we got.
10:32So now look at this situation.
10:34There are going to be a bunch of people at Texas Tech that are negatively affected and have nothing to
10:38do with this.
10:38All they did was, in good faith, play hard, get a scholarship, try to go play major college sports, and
10:45they won't be able to because of their policy towards this guy.
10:48Which I feel bad about.
10:49And yes, I do too, but at the same time, this is the only way to have any kind of
10:55enforcement is if it's self-policed without some of the guardrails that real professional sports have with CBAs, leagues,
11:03unfair discipline of the Troy Vincents and the Roger Goodells of the world.
11:06This situation is so perilous and could be so damaging that it is worth all of the lack of fairness
11:15and injustices that would come from those other kids and those other sports and people on that campus getting screwed
11:21over.
11:21I think the future, in some ways, of college sports is on the line, in a sense.
11:27Decency and just what is correct is on the line.
11:30Like someone, somewhere, I think all we ever want is to know, when everyone sees the shady thing happening and
11:36knows that the corruption is taking place in front of us,
11:40you just want to know, you want to know that somewhere along the line, someone will stand up and do
11:46something.
11:47Right?
11:47When you, if someone's committing a crime in front of you, if someone's doing something terrible to someone on a
11:55public transportation train or whatever,
11:57you want to think someone will stop the person.
12:00You know what I'm saying?
12:00Yeah.
12:00Will anybody do anything or will this guy, because he's good at football, just get to go play football after
12:10breaking the most serious rule that you're not allowed to break?
12:15And it's not just about this one incident.
12:18If this dam breaks here and the levy opens, if the water comes flowing out of this situation by him
12:29playing football, you're never putting it back in.
12:32Like, where does this end exactly?
12:34So the NBA has had a number of, I call them minor, but scandals in this regard.
12:40The machine keeps rolling on.
12:41The Tim Donaghy scandal should have been the most alarming, oh my God, crazy situation.
12:46We kind of met it with a shrug, and his best buddy that he was texting hundreds of times a
12:50day is doing finals games or doing playoff games,
12:52and nobody shrugs and thinks twice about it.
12:54Terry Rozier, Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones, Jontae Porter, these names are now kind of footnotes as the machine sort of
12:59rolls on,
13:00because the NBA, in those cases, reacted very strongly and suspended, banned, and did all sorts of different stuff.
13:06Where guys were, in the Jontae Porter's case, allegedly, whatever I have to say,
13:10he was taking himself out of games going, ah, my ankle hurts, and hitting all the unders to help pay
13:15off some bets.
13:16That's that, you know, mob-related, that people were sort of placing, unusual betting activity, gets discovered, he's done-zo.
13:21That's it, because you have a process in place.
13:25The NCAA is sitting there going, we can't win, we can't enforce anything, somebody on Capitol Hill,
13:32and good luck relying on Capitol Hill, by the way, for anything.
13:35If your savior is a bunch of people getting together and coming to an accord and riding in on a
13:41horse and saving your ass,
13:42you're going to be waiting for a long time.
13:43They're begging and pleading, please come up with some rules and ways for us to enforce anything.
13:48To your point, they can't.
13:50And that's the part that I'm jumping in on here that I care the most about.
13:54You're right, I co-sign everything you're saying, but to me this is a bigger picture where
13:58the whole governing body, potential enforcement, potential rules,
14:03they're all getting thrown out the window, and it all started when we go,
14:07yeah, let's just, let's make sure that the kid can get $100 for his picture at a Wendy's.
14:11And now no one knows what to do and how to do it, and there's no way to enforce anything.
14:16There isn't.
14:17This whole thing is the Wild West.
14:19It's a joke, man.
14:20Yeah, I mean, there is that conversation to be had.
14:24Like, you're focused on this thing from a 10,000-foot view.
14:28I'm very hyper-focused on this incident.
14:31And again, forgive the analogy, but we all just watched someone shoot somebody.
14:38And we're just watching them walk away.
14:41And nobody's doing anything about it.
14:44Like, we didn't watch him bet, obviously, but we know via the investigation that he did.
14:49And I wouldn't feel as passionately, adamantly about this if it's $90,000 in betting
14:55and he was just some dude in the dorm who's betting on random NBA games
15:00and random NHL games or whatever.
15:05What in sports can you do?
15:08Again, in sports.
15:09I'm not talking about at home or crimes or terrible things to people.
15:12I'm saying, as an athlete, as someone in the sports world,
15:15what can you do that is worse than betting on games that the team that you play for,
15:21and in his case, by the way, you're a quarterback.
15:24You're not just some dude standing on the sideline who plays cornerback.
15:28You're the quarterback.
15:29What is worse than betting on a game your team's involved in?
15:33I go back to Pete Rose.
15:35The death sentence not involved to be involved in anything that Major League Baseball does ever.
15:40He has more hits than anybody else.
15:42He's one of the greatest players of all time.
15:43And the sport acted like he didn't exist until he died.
15:49Because it's worse to do that than it is to commit actual crimes.
15:53That's our precedent.
15:55Domestic assault.
15:56A million other things.
15:57You can keep playing.
15:5880-game suspension.
15:59You serve your penalty and you can come back.
16:02Whether you agree with that or not, that's the State of the Union.
16:05If you do this, you're out.
16:08Again, there's a dude in his conference two years ago who got the death sentence.
16:12I don't know how many bets he made or if the details are exactly the same, but they committed the
16:17same crime.
16:18And this guy is allowed to play.
16:21And the way that it happened, a retired judge who's a fan of the team in the city where the
16:27school exists,
16:30hide your corruption, please, so it's not as infuriating.
16:34It's the rubbing it in the face.
16:36It's the knowing what's happening.
16:38Everyone's seeing it.
16:39That is just so abhorrent to me.
16:41Now, you mentioned Donaghy.
16:43I don't love the comp because Tim Donaghy did 15 months in federal prison for that.
16:4815 months.
16:50Never refereed a game again in the NBA.
16:54Right?
16:55Banned?
16:55Oh, right.
16:56I mean, my point for the comp was he was every day texting another referee.
17:02And they're acting like, yep, just Tim Donaghy did some games.
17:05Here's the penalty.
17:06It should have been, like, fixing games at the highest level, potentially.
17:10But I'm just saying, he went to prison for over a year.
17:15Like, it used to matter when you broke rules.
17:17I just want to just scream into a megaphone, does anyone care about anything ever?
17:22Does nothing matter ever?
17:25This is beyond ridiculous.
17:27It's so insane.
17:28He's just going to go out there and play.
17:30So the only hope I got is that the Big 12 bands together and says, we're not playing you.
17:37Which their athletic directors have discussed this boycott, according to Yahoo Sports.
17:42Multiple schools have had serious talks about not playing them that are on their schedule.
17:46In conference, out of conference.
17:49This quote from Kansas State AD Gene Taylor on the record to Yahoo.
17:53We've had serious conversations about it.
17:55There's still a lot to be discussed.
17:56We aren't scheduled to play them this year.
17:59But it's something we have to look at from a college football perspective.
18:02This is greater than the Big 12.
18:04I think that they either do this or it's over as we know it.
18:10But maybe that's the question asked on the phones.
18:13Like, what is at stake here if this guy can just go out there in week three and play football?
18:17They win the championship and he goes number two overall.
18:22What is at stake?
18:23And I want to know people's reaction to this.
18:25What should happen?
18:27800-636-1067.
18:29Because I think the die is cast.
18:31I mean, it seems like this thing has now been decided.
18:35The NCAA doesn't have any more cards to play.
18:38You've heard the same thing I have, right?
18:40That this is over now.
18:41The judge's ruling is going to stick.
18:44I mean, it's not like this thing gets run up to the Supreme Court in the next couple of months.
18:47No.
18:47Or something.
18:48He's playing football.
18:50The question is, do the other teams show up?
18:52Against who, yeah.
18:54800-636-1067.
18:56You want to join us on...
Comments