Shot:
Chaser:
If there was ever a better example of the current hypocrisy of the sport, from ESPN’s splattering of gambling data and ads all over its website while similarly reporting on the Sorsby case left and right, I don’t know what is.
Category Archives: The Portal Masters
Over, and Under
Sorry, Mr. Sorsby, but the NFL isn’t interested.
The tldr version: take some accountability and try again in 2027. We’ll be watching in anticipation of how you propose to show that.
Guess he didn’t bet on that resopnse, did he?
They Don’t Go to School No More
Here’s an interesting insight into why Branch transferred to Georgia. While the reason is interesting enough, listen to the whole thing, particularly the end where one of the interviewers mentions he’s hearing that some athletes don’t even go to school.
Sad enough to hear that there’s a football program that won’t allow extra exercise, but I’d imagine that what the young man said here wasn’t inaccurate. When’s the last time you heard of an athlete being “academically ineligible”? Does it even matter anymore?
The last one I could think of for Georgia was Caleb King back in 2011. And about that graduation rate…if they aren’t going to class, did they really graduate?
“Strive to Honor Evermore”
Or, in some cases, strive to honor, never.
Never was there a more poignant stringing together of words equating to utter bullshit than what is written here. If you want the shorter version, let me give it to you:
“We ran a risk on an investment, and saw that the futures looked dim, so we’re dumping it, but making it look profitable to any who should choose to pick it up. Go Matadors”.
What an utter abomination and shitshow. The days where the NCAA would make death penalties and kill a career for a minor infraction has given way to media rights regulatory control, and that’s all this is. Texas Tech saw the risk wasn’t worth the reward, and the risk was being excluded from the media empire that is college football.
Oh, and Texas Tech is not pursuing the return of Sorsby’s $5 million dollar contract. At least, not yet.
So much for a kid’s mental health and wellness, if anyone believed that in the first place, anyway.
Even Money
Folks, did I not call this? If only I had bet money on it!
I know from personal experience that if this needed to be heard, it’s completely possible to get it heard much, much sooner than this. But, somewhere between the fine line that is urgency and seriousness is the lack of interest in even hearing this case, knowing that the plaintiff in this case holds zero regulatory authority and that the outcome is likely and open and shut case. Delay it, because what’s going to change, right?
And, yes, it’s been confirmed that he’ll be heard by a Red Raider group of judges:
It’s crazy, because it feels like the bigger entertainment value coming out of the NIL era of college football has not been on the field, but in the courtroom.
Tell me again what Todd Gurley did that was so egregious, during the “good ‘ole days” of college football? Hmmph.
Anyway, it’s been within 48 hours of the news coming out, and the Texas Tech folks are still chirping back about those of us in glass houses, and are righteously indignant to the slings and arrows of college football fandom. On one hand, they enjoy telling others that if it’s just a sin committed at another program, then look at how appropriate TTU’s response was to report, get Sorsby help, and take the…get this…”consequences” of the reporting.
On the other, they are firing back and telling the rest of college football to STFU because we’re all guilty of some sin. Technically, they’re not lying…every program has some skeletons in their closet. But what’s more shocking is the lack of willingness to accept that the school has effectively found a work around in what was considered – outside of domestic violence or felonies – completely taboo as a college athlete, which is gambling on college athletics, especially your own team.
They’re cluelessness is on par with Charles J. Guiteau, who famously assassinated President Garfield and expected to receive a Cabinet position in the next administration, seeing the act as his civic duty, and necessary. He also tried to get the courtroom to join along in sing-alongs. Their position that “it’s not as bad as it looks” is not just blind home-team support, it’s blindly ignoring the long-term ramifications that go beyond buying yourself a CFP eligible team, but making what already is a superstitious and suspect group of fandom question every play call, play, and outcome of every game, wondering if the boys in Vegas made sure the fix was in.
Case in point: a friend of mine long argued that Nick Saban and Bill Belichick were as successful as they were because they befriended the mid-west mafia during their time in Cleveland, and then took their connections to the east coast and the south and continued to profit off the partnership while in New England and while in LSU and Alabama. While I’m not so sure about the Southern Mafia, the Southern Political groups are not without their fair share of corruption and monkeyshines. Belichick is completely believable in that regard, as I never understood how someone like Bill accomplished what he did…with Tom Brady. And, the fact that is seems like Alabama has long gotten the lion’s share of favorable penalty calls and reversals in Saban’s time…well, I’m hooked.
Conspiracy? Crazy? Possible. Now, imagine my friend spinning that tale on the heels of the Sorsby decision.
Sounds completely possible and logical now, doesn’t it.
Maybe that’s the long game of the powers that be in College Football. Make it NFL-lite, let Vegas move the moneylines and allow for influence to reign supreme. Garner a new audience that’s more pro oriented and people will be hooked on five TVs not because they love the sport, but because the mortgage or a possible moneymaking empire are on the line.
Maybe that’s why the Powerball is drawn on Mondays and Saturdays. Well, also on Wednesdays, but you see where I’m going with this.
My tin hat is neatly pressed, fits tightly on my head, and I sit on my couch ready to watch, anyway. Whether it actually protects me from my eyes will be prepared to see, is another thing altogether.
Message Board Geniuses: Fanbases React to the Sorsby Decision
Do you suppose Texas Tech fans have a shred of concern about the future of the sport?
I’d say “nah”.
Apparently, the Court of Appeals that would handle the next leg of this is chaired by Red Raiders:
Meanwhile, Texass fans are not pleased with their little brothers to the west…
*Checks notes* – Lambos and fat stacks of cash. Got it. While I am on Texas’s side here, I’d say the pot is calling the kettle unethical, just one is more “legally” ethical now that we’re in the era of NIL.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be a day ending in y if we didn’t have someone from our traditional SEC orange fan base whining about why they couldn’t get away with it, too.
“Why don’t we have a corrupt judge?” Boo hoo. Talk to a Georgia fan about the local legal system working against you, then wonder how we managed two National Championships while getting pulled over every other day of the week, and let’s resume the conversation after.
Law in a Lawless Land…or, NCAA Finally Gets a Win? Don’t Bet On It…
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.
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.
You Might Not Have a Union, But You Certainly Can Strike
With the back and forth in Washington and in the front offices of the SEC and B1G, there’s something to be said that there are many who are attempting to put the kibosh on the wild and reckless spending that is coming out of the NIL and Portal era of College Football.
But would cutting spending in half be the end of it all? Long term, maybe yes. Short term, it’s opening up a new world of problems…player strikes.
Think of it this way. Schools at the top level are essentially paying $40 million for their football rosters and $20 million in basketball right now. If that pool of money shrinks by half — and it likely would, by design, if the Protect College Sports Act becomes law — it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the wildfire of discontent that could follow.
“There’s a virality to it,” one source who operates in the space told Yahoo Sports.
Historically, organizing college athletes into a real labor movement has been an impossibly difficult task. Various groups have tried to build underground movements, but they only go so far.
It’s not just a numbers problem — try getting a football locker room of 100 diverse backgrounds to do anything in unison, then multiply that by the amount of teams you need to execute a real national boycott — but an issue of incentives. Pre-NIL, most athletes fell into two camps: They were either making a pit stop before the NBA/NFL, or they had no future in pro sports and just wanted the education. Neither had much reason to rock the boat.
As former Michigan basketball player Duncan Robinson revealed to The Athletic after graduating, he and two teammates started down the road of organizing a player boycott of the open practice on the Friday before the 2018 Final Four. They approached players on the other teams, who also had interest. And then, because of concerns it wouldn’t be a unified front, they backed away.
And that was just for an open practice, not a Final Four game with millions of people watching and massive amounts of money at stake.
I’d imagine that a pay cut would warrant many to reconsider their current line of employment, but given that there would be no other options, save for being a MLB early prospect, what else would they do?
Oh, they might decide to sue. Unionize. Then imagine what would happen next.
Trolling a Joint Together
The SEC, the B1G, together again. Dogs and cats living together. It’s the rapture (of money, probably).
I will agree, if you want something to go slow, get politicians involved. So, yes, they have a point to that…but to suggest that anyone in college football has pivoted quickly to regulate anything is a laughable farce.
And don’t get me started on the “equity” that is being quietly communicated here, too. One of these two groups has reaped the benefits of the NIL era more than the other, so for the two to come together and pretend they’re on the same page is lunatic fringe material, too.
And finally, “lasting stability for college athletics”…is doing some heavy lifting.
Howdy, Partner
I mean, what could possibly go wrong with this?
Mustang Partners today announced an innovative, multi-year partnership with Krida, a digital engagement platform founded by Bhavesh Kalia, a graduate of SMU’s Cox School of Business. The agreement will launch the SMU Mustang Coin as a new fan engagement platform designed to connect Mustang fans, student-athletes, and students through interactive digital experiences and community-driven programming.
Krida is a Dallas-based platform redefining how universities engage with their fans in the modern era of college athletics. Built at the intersection of sports, culture, and digital engagement, Krida partners with schools to launch official digital fan engagement programs – such as the SMU Mustang Coin – that unlock interactive experiences, exclusive access, and rewards that deepen participation and strengthen community connection.
“This partnership is truly ‘By Mustangs, for Mustangs’ and we are so proud to support an SMU graduate and entrepreneur and join together as first movers in this exciting new space,” said Brian Ullmann, Executive Deputy Director of Athletics. “Our partnership with Krida reflects Mustang Partners’ focus on identifying new, bold, untapped opportunities that enhance the fan experience. In this hyper-competitive era of college athletics, it is critical for SMU Athletics to continue to innovate and create new opportunities.”
“Returning to SMU just one year after graduating to build something meaningful with the university is incredibly special,” said Bhavesh Kalia, Founder of Krida. “This partnership is about creating new ways for fans to engage, for students to learn, and for Krida to continue building for the future.” (emphasis added)
So a recent grad has a thunk, it involves copious amounts of money to lure athletes to the University on a palace made of sand, and people are expected to invest heavily in it and expect that, of all places, SMU, nothing will go wrong.
History has a strange way of repeating itself, and I think we might see it again sooner than later.
Also, desperation is a smelly cologne.