Oct 21, 2025; Kansas City, MO, USA; Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark speaks to media during Big 12 Womenís Basketball Media Day at T-Mobile Center. Mandatory Credit: Sophia Scheller-Imagn Images
Brett Yormark deserves an award. Whatever is college football’s equivalent of a Nobel Peace Prize might even be appropriate. What, under his leadership, the Big 12 did in standing up to Texas Tech’s money-bags bullies and their threats just may have saved college athletics.
Yormark and the conference he runs made it legally and explicitly clear that it would impose severe sanctions if quarterback Brendan Sorsby played even one down for the Red Raiders this season. A stiff fine. Big 12 Conference championship game ineligibility. You name it, the Big 12 was ready to throw the book at one of its own if the admitted gambler on his own team (Indiana) got into a game.
Thankfully, it never came to that. Monday night, amid the backdrop of the Big 12’s potential actions, Sorsby declared he’s entering the NFL’s supplemental draft.
Chalk one up for the good guys. Three cheers for Yormark, whose conference (and legal staff) didn’t flinch when Texas Tech’s billionaire backers threatened lawsuit after lawsuit to get their rules-breaking quarterback on the field.
Cheer. Cheer. Cheer.
You know the story. Texas Tech boosters cobbled together $5 million or so to bring in Sorsby, because, you know, great football starts with a (supposedly) great quarterback.
The West Texans so needed a marquee player that either someone forgot to do a background check, or they figured no one would care that their new superstar had a gambling problem.
With Sorsby, Texas Tech was a legitimate contender to play in the Big 12’s first College Football Playoff championship game since TCU lost to Georgia in 2022. And don’t forget, the Big 12 hasn’t had a national champion since Texas won the 2005 BCS national title. Furthermore, the Big 12 has no CFP national titles, compared to the SEC’s six, the Big Ten’s four and the ACC’s two.
But about the time you think the Big 12 can finally get some national respect, Sorsby happens. The NCAA ruled him ineligible to play. A Texas judge disagreed.
Major college sports leaders became so incensed when it became clear that Sorsby was likely to play (after serving a two-game suspension) that they even threatened to no longer schedule the Red Raiders. The tone-deaf folks in West Texas cried collusion. They threatened lawsuits.
Yormark’s conference didn’t flinch, and in a way, the Big 12’s reaction may have unified a sport that had been rife with controversy. A transfer portal without rules. Rosters with NIL totals in the $50 million range. Enormous spending not only on players, but also on coaches.
In a very important way, the Big 12 saved college athletics, but did Sorsby save Texas Tech from being the villains of college football?
That’s still to be seen. Considerable inciteful rhetoric came out of Lubbock the past four months. It’s not like the Red Raiders were everyone’s favorite, anyway.
I covered the Iowa State-Texas Tech game in Lubbock a while back that was paused as taco-throwing, water bottle-hurling students had to be moved from sitting near the Cyclones’ bench.
Even shortly after Sorsby’s Monday night decision, Red Raiders mega booster Cody Campbell issued this statement, reprinted in The Dallas Morning News and other outlets:
“He will be stripped of the opportunity to continue to develop as a better and stronger man, stripped of his last opportunity to compete at the highest level of college sports, and I pray that he can stay on his path to recovery,” the statement said in part. “Brendan, while he made many mistakes that he openly admits, has also been a part of a much larger broken and predatory system, and we believe that all people deserve a second chance. It is gut-wrenching that there is no viable path to providing him with redemption at the collegiate level.”
“Predatory system” is an interesting term to describe a sport that finally allows huge payments for athletes. A system that was willing to pay Sorsby upwards of $5 million. A system that allows college players to change schools whenever they want.
A system that could have been run by the athletes, had the Big 12 not stuck up for itself and college athletics.
“It’s been a challenging week for both our Conference and the college athletics landscape,” Yormark said in a Tuesday morning statement. “The Big 12 looks forward to moving ahead as 16 strong. We wish Brendan Sorsby success in his future endeavors.”
(Columnist Randy Peterson, a past Iowa Sportswriter of the Year winner, can be reached at [email protected] or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)
