ESPN’s Josh Pate on the Blowback & Aftermath of the Brendan Sorsby Controversy

The image that summed up the Brendan Sorsby fallout, Rich said, was a Planes, Trains and Automobiles meme: John Candy laughing that they can laugh about it now, wearing a Texas Tech logo, while a livid Steve Martin, branded with the Big 12 logo, wants nothing to do with him. Funny, and a little too true. So what happens now between Texas Tech and its own conference?

Josh Pate doesn't think that ice thaws for a while. From the outside, he sensed a real movement mounting among the Big 12's other schools to take matters into their own hands. Whatever the exact number of teams in the league, all of them minus Texas Tech were in lockstep that Sorsby playing there was the wrong outcome. Texas Tech knew it, too.

Pate offered context without excusing it. Lubbock and West Texas culture, he said, already defaults to an us-against-the-world mentality. It's a long way and a different planet from Dallas and Houston, a place most of America has never seen and that's quick to fight. Combine that defensiveness with these circumstances and Texas Tech's combative posture starts to make more sense. But the lingering effect is a program feeling some type of way toward its own conference, and Pate doesn't think anyone forgets this anytime soon.

He also believes the Sorsby camp badly underestimated the blowback. Within the confines of the sport, Pate argued, the integrity of the games is paramount, and betting is the bright line. The NCAA has stumbled badly on bigger societal matters, from Baylor to Penn State, to the point where people don't even expect it to police those. But enforcing a rule as basic as you can't bet on the games should be squarely within its purview, and that's what had everyone up in arms. The NCAA, in Pate's view, thought it could game the calendar, win the injunction, drag the process out, and play the season before anything mattered. They misjudged how unwilling the public was to swallow a gambling case.

That, he said, is why crisis-management and PR firms get paid so much. You need someone who can see through the fog, or you act in a way that makes you look oblivious to how the outside world is reading you.

Rich tied a ribbon on it by isolating the real accelerant. It wasn't the NCAA asking for an expedited ruling. It was the Big 12 declaring it should be able to suspend Sorsby under its own rules, and then Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filing preemptively to warn there would be hell to pay, which pulled in attorneys general from other Big 12 states. Pate agreed, relaying that people far sharper on the law than he is have said point-blank: if Paxton doesn't write that letter, Sorsby is probably playing for Texas Tech this fall. That letter gave the Big 12 the legal standing to do more than shout on social media. Once it landed, it was game on.