After all of that, Brendan Sorsby is not going to play college football at Texas Tech in 2026. He will still get paid.
The Red Raiders are not asking him to return a single penny of his fully-guaranteed NIL deal.
Although the exact payment structure of Sorsby’s NIL deal is not public, money has already been exchanged between the two parties over the last five and a half months. The former Indiana and Cincinnati quarterback does not have to give anything back to the college football program for which he will not play.
Brendan Sorsby won’t play college football at Texas Tech.
Sorsby, 22, entered the transfer portal on Dec. 15, 2025. The rising fifth-year senior had one year of eligibility remaining. He ultimately committed to Texas Tech over LSU on Jan. 4, 2026. He arrived to campus not too long thereafter.
The Red Raiders spent the entire spring practice period under the impression that Sorsby would be the starting quarterback. A team that got blown out in its College Football Playoff debut thought it had secured a replacement for Behren Morton. It spared no expense to do so. Everything looked like it was going according to plan.
Sorsby worked with the 1s in the spring and got comfortable in the offense. He threw four touchdowns during the spring game.
And then it all came crashing down. Sorsby was caught betting on sports. An investigation found that he placed more than 9,000 wagers — totaling at least $90,000 — over the first four years of his college football career. That included at least 40 bets on Indiana while he was at Indiana. The NCAA banned him from the sport for life once his gambling history was exposed.
Texas Tech was not willing to accept the ruling and took it to court. Brendan Sorsby eventually received an injunction against the NCAA that deemed him eligible to compete for the Red Raiders in 2026 after a two-game suspension. He was cleared to play.
Sorsby met with Texas Tech on Sunday night and reaffirmed his commitment to the program despite widespread backlash from every major player in college football. Everything was still on track but the saga was far from over.
The Big 12 made a creative and potentially devastating legal filing on early Monday morning that threw Sorsby’s plan into disarray. If the court was to rule in favor of the conference, it would be able to sanction (and potentially crater) the Red Raiders.
That, coupled with an appeal from the NCAA that could rule him ineligible before the start of the season, led Sorsby and Texas Tech to part ways. He is not going to play college football in 2026.
The quarterback had until the June 22 deadline to apply for the NFL’s supplemental draft. All of the uncertainty created a predicament. Sorsby could either turn pro, with a reassurance that a team is willing to select him in the supplemental draft, or risk being ruled ineligible prior to the season and be forced to sit out an entire year. He chose the former. The school agreed.
The Red Raiders are still going to pay him his NIL money.
Texas Tech megabooster Cody Campbell released a long, self-indulgent statement on Monday night. In the statement, he revealed that the university is not going to “seek the return” of any money paid to Brendan Sorsby through his NIL agreements with the university.
More simply put, Sorsby gets to keep all of the money he was paid from Jan. 4, 2026 through June 15, 2026 even though he is not going to suit up for the Red Raiders in the fall. He will still get paid for his five and a half months of work.
How much exactly? This is where the details get murky.
Sorsby reportedly signed an NIL deal worth somewhere between $5-6 million. The money was fully guaranteed.
However, payments were put on pause when the quarterback entered rehab for gambling and the payment structure is unclear. Perhaps Sorsby received a large signing bonus. Maybe he was going to get paid a monthly sum of ~$500,000 per month over the next 12 months. We don’t know for sure.
What we do know is that whatever Texas Tech did pay Sorsby is his to keep. That could be $500,000. That could be $6 million. I would guess that number falls closer to the former than the latter but I cannot say for certain.