NFLPA’s JC Tretter: Union Is Having Ongoing Talks with Brendan Sorsby’s Team

The Brendan Sorsby saga has bounced from college football to the courts to the edge of the NFL, and now the players' union is paying close attention. NFLPA Executive Director JC Tretter said the organization is in active conversations about a case unlike any the league has seen.

Sorsby, a college quarterback, dealt with a gambling addiction and sought treatment, a path that ultimately cost him his NCAA eligibility before a court injunction set off a chain of events that landed him in the NFL's supplemental draft pool. On Tuesday, the league decided not to hold a supplemental draft at all, leaning on CBA language that leaves that choice to its discretion. Sorsby's attorney, Jeffrey Kessler, who has a long history with the union, is still examining the situation.

Tretter was careful to stay within his lane. Sorsby is not an NFLPA member yet, though he will be one day, and the union had not been part of the discussions until the announcement landed.

"As we get all the information, we've got to make a decision on what could be possible or what we could do," Tretter said. "Those conversations are still ongoing."

What the union guards against, he explained, is precedent. The job is to defend the collective bargaining agreement, and that means pushing back when anyone oversteps the language in it.

"You don't want bad precedent. You don't want somebody to overstep and you not push back on it," Tretter said. "Our job is to make sure we're defending our members."

The broader topic, gambling, is one Tretter framed as more manageable than the headlines suggest. Across roughly 2,500 players, he noted, there have been only about 10 to 12 gambling suspensions, with high-profile cases like Calvin Ridley and Jameson Williams. Players can legally gamble, he stressed, just not inside the facility, and never on games, much less their own team.

He credited education for keeping the number low, and said both sides are motivated to keep it that way. The reason is simple economics. The NFL is the most popular sport in the country and drives enormous revenue for players and owners alike.

"You would never want to get in a position where people are questioning the authenticity of the event they're watching," Tretter said.

That, he added, is why the league and the union have built trainings and leave as little gray area as possible for players to misread. The challenge is staying ahead of it as new players cycle in.

"You can't get complacent on" it, Tretter said. "You have to continue to educate."