Well, you had to know it was coming. NCAA pushes back, denies the Sorsby request, so they head to the local judge and get a temporary injunction until a hearing can be held, which I’m sure will be scheduled for somewhere around March of 2027.

Color me unsurprised.

The coach saw the text message from a reporter and couldn’t believe it.

He had to Google it to make sure it wasn’t a joke. It was not.

A Lubbock County court granted Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby an injunction Monday morning that upholds a two-game suspension for betting on college sports, including placing bets on his own team while he was on Indiana’s roster in 2022.

“What are we doing with that ruling? I mean, seriously?” he said.

NCAA rules stipulate the penalty for betting on your team is permanent loss of eligibility, but that rule was superseded by the court Monday, upholding a two-game suspension that was offered by Sorsby’s representation, led by Jeffrey Kessler.

“Gambling is one of the rules in sports that’s one of the few rules that exist where, if you break it, you are now basically getting blackballed from the sport,” said one Group of 6 head coach. “And now one of the harshest rules you can break, he did it, and he can still play. To me, this is one of the worst things I’ve seen in 20 years of coaching.”

Assuming the anonymous coach is currently employed, that would mean they’ve seen Harbaugh and his team of merry miscreants and their falling out at Michigan; Joe Paterno’s fall from grace; Auburn declaring 9 faux national championships with their most recent real one coming on the back on a paid quarterback; NIL and the Transfer Portal…I could go on and on. While not on par with Paterno’s issues, saying something like this shows the gravity of the decision.

What went from seeing famed Georgia players ruled ineligible for selling memorabilia for mere thousands of dollars to a signal caller laying nearly $100k on bets, some for his own team, is a shocking change of scenery that even the most embittered college football fan could’ve imagined. Just think, we’re only three year removed from this:

To this:

It’s just a running joke at this point…the NCAA, that is.

And the aftermath…well, let’s say that people are finding ways to defund Texas Tech, no matter how many oil barons are out there.

And Josh isn’t done…not by a mile. Not that we’d ever entertain the idea of scheduling Texas Tech, but let’s just say if the NCAA won’t regulate college football, college football will, in turn, regulate you by not scheduling a damn game with you. This is further positioning the SEC and B1G to break away from the NCAA, and the age of amateurism has officially written its last chapter, and it wasn’t a good ending, by any means. Think “The Sopranos” and multiply the ending by 1,000 and you’re getting close to the disappointment.

But Brooks has a point…if the Governing Body won’t regulate, we’ll regulate where it hits the hardest…in the wallet. You can’t have a team on TV if no one wants to play them. Especially if every can’t cheat on the same level, amirite?

And, to add fuel to the fire, Texas Tech is aligning themselves with the moral compass of college football:

So, just so you’re not surprised, I’m sure the following things will likewise go unmitigated in the very near future:

• Launching over the goal line, specifically throwing “little people” into the endzone. Someone will get an injunction to allow a middle school cheerleader to be on the team.
• Using a live raccoon to pillage the opposing team’s sideline’s snacks and medical equipment during games. Also, said raccoon will lift the team’s iPads and playbooks, because you can’t trust a raccoon, can you?
• Actively having a member of your game staff dress as an opposing coach and standing on the sideline with a headset on, directly communicating to the home booth the upcoming plays.
• Allowing Notre Dame to play in the CFP, regardless of record, and getting an automatic bid to the championship game.
• Teams taking a knee on first, second, and third downs to attempt to points shave when playing long-time points-spread antagonist, Kirby Smart.
• Tackling players from the sideline, Woody Hayes style.
• Auburn claiming every national championship since the inception of football, both pro and college and high school. And middle schools. 11,789 national championships, baby!
• A player actively portaling at halftime of a game to the opposing team.

The Senator would be losing his shit at this point, as would the rest of us if we were reading his take on it.

College football, as we have known or ever knew it, has officially dropped six feet in the ground and we didn’t even play Taps.

At least we can tell our kids about it, and they’ll wonder in wide-eyed amazement about this mythical thing we called “college football”. We’ll blow the steam off a cup of coffee one cool morning on the porch and talk about a time when linebackers wore neck rolls, free safeties were 235 pounds, and how quarterbacks as good as Eli Manning or Eric Zeier were generational. The game-winning touchdown in the waning seconds of a game that made us spill beer, make children, and name them after our favorite team’s name. Or their quarterback. Or their star player. The time a fall Saturday turned into one of the best days of our lives. How the noon kickoff of SEC Football on Jefferson Pilot Sports was the start of the best day ever. Why? It’s becoming harder and harder to recall.

Somewhere, in a time not so long ago, there was such a thing that illicited such passion from all of us. The game was won or lost, people cheered or people cried. Fans stormed the field. Newspapers on Sundays were valuable for the pictures and memories and we hung them from our walls. The replays were a trip down memory lane, if we needed it, and the names of those who played the game and played for our favorite team were etched in our brains next to grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. It was passion. It was love. It was (sometimes) better than sex.

And our kids, they’ll look back at us, with questions in their eyes, wondering how we were so passionate about a game that’s better played on PlayStation where you can control the outcomes and bet the over. And how anyone but a hired mercenary or AI robot played such a violent, brutal game. Why take all that risk for no financial reward, Dad?

“Sweetheart, it was for something called pride. Glory. Legacy. Sorry if you’ll never understand why.”

“Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age”. – James Joyce

College football is aging poorly. Glad we all knew it when it was in its prime.