NFL Insider Tom Pelissero: Why Brendan Sorsby Is Not Returning to Texas Tech

Before explaining why Brendan Sorsby won't return to Texas Tech, Tom Pelissero made one thing clear: Sorsby is not a victim. He made the bets, some against the rules, got himself into trouble, went to rehab, and came back to a Texas Tech program willing to embrace him. What happened next, Pelissero said, had very little to do with Sorsby himself.

His framing was an earthquake. The ground has been shaking under college football for years, with no apparent rules and everything decided in the courts, and everyone's instinct is to grab onto something. Sorsby used that court system to his advantage, paying for Jeffrey Kessler and top representation to win an injunction overruling the NCAA's eligibility ruling. Pelissero noted similar recent fights from Trinidad Chambliss to Diego Pavia, but once a case enters the courts, everyone loses control of both the outcome and the timeline.

That was the problem. As much as Sorsby and Texas Tech believed they could survive the earthquake, the ground was never going to stop shaking. The Big 12 was threatening to sue to keep him out of the conference championship game, attorneys general were making noise, and the NFL supplemental-draft application deadline loomed the following Monday. There was a real possibility that one of these many fronts could have kept Sorsby from playing football anywhere.

Left with few good options, the plan became to withdraw the lawsuit against the NCAA, which lets the ineligibility ruling stand, and then apply to the NFL supplemental draft. If he's ruled ineligible, Pelissero said, the expectation is that he'll be accepted into that draft, and the football world will see where it goes from there.