Colin Cowherd slams NCAA leadership, media overreaction to Brendan Sorsby situation

College football pundits have not held back in how they feel about the injunction that will allow Brendan Sorsby to play for Texas Tech this season despite admitting to gambling on games.

“Sickening,” “devastating,” and “hypocritical” are just some of the words people have been throwing around as they contemplate the future of the NCAA and the sport itself.

However, not everyone thinks the sky is falling. Colin Cowherd, never afraid to be the contrarian, thinks Sorsby isn’t the problem here. The NCAA and the media are the real villains.

“The reaction, wow. You’d think he hacked into NORAD,” Cowherd said on his eponymous podcast. “…Sorsby’s a college kid who grew up in the first gambling generation. Of course this was going to happen.”

Sunday thoughts on Brendan Sorsby pic.twitter.com/gIeqfbjYjj

— Colin Cowherd (@colincowherd) June 14, 2026

While the NCAA initially ruled that Sorsby would be ineligible after an investigation showed that he’d gambled on Indiana games while there before eventually transferring to Texas Tech, Texas judge Ken Curry granted Sorsby an injunction, allowing him to play.

“In college, a retired judge decides the case? That’s on the NCAA,” Cowherd said. “Gambling isn’t even illegal. It just violated NCAA bylaws, and that’s different.”

While Cowherd agrees that the quarterback deserves some form of punishment, the ever-evolving nature of gambling’s relationship with college football requires that responses to such situations be revised as well.

“These are young athletes navigating a brand new environment none of us dealt with when we were 22,” he said. “This stuff is new. Mistakes, big ones, are going to happen. Punish them appropriately. Move on. Not every violation is a UAP filled with spacemen. …The media’s job is supposed to be perspective, and not turning every fender bender, even the bad ones, into a freeway fire.”

Cowherd joins Michael Wilbon, and Tony Kornheiser feels that the situation is more nuanced than critics want it to be. The NCAA and its media partners are in bed with gambling companies, and there’s a sense that they do deserve blame for fostering an environment that led to this. As to whether or not that absolves Sorsby and Texas Tech, that’s another story.

But there is almost certainly a nuanced conversation to be had about the ties between sports betting and pro and college sports leagues, though it seems unlikely that the people raking in all the money will want to have it.