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The Big 12 Prefers Not to Talk About the Brendan Sorsby Situation Anymore As media days begin, commissioner Brett Yormark and Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire sidestepped questions about the former Red Raiders quarterback.
Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire was faced with questions about former quarterback Brendan Sorsby on Tuesday at Big 12 media days.
| USA TODAY Network via Reuters ConnectNo, not one bit it seems.
As far as Sorsby is concerned around the Big 12, its see no evil, hear no evil, but you also better double down on speaking no evil.Let me start off by saying I appreciate the question.
I appreciate other questions that are probably going to come forth today.
Today is not the time to address that issue, commissioner Brett Yormark said.Today is about celebrating the upcoming football season and celebrating our 16 schools.
Over the past few years, the league has done everything it can to attract attention to itself and the brand of competitive football it plays.
Now it appears there is indeed a line you cant cross when it comes to the old adage theres no such thing as bad publicity.The line is the Cincinnati-turned-Red Raider signal-caller who just so happened to grow up 15 minutes from the Dallas Cowboys opulent facility at The Star, which the league has taken over this week.
This years media days are clearly an attempt to turn the page on a story which captured rapt attention the past few months.Not a single question about Sorsby or the legal furor he brought about was asked at the main stage for TV cameras in the nearly two hours between Yormark and Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire stepping up to the microphone on Tuesday.
There were other things front and center, such as the multimillion-dollar marketing deal which will brand the upcoming campaign as Monster Energy Big 12 footballone of the bigger red herrings youll find on the media day circuit this year.I probably look at it a little different: None of my business, to be quite honest with you, says Willie Fritz, the Houston head coach who opens Big 12 play at Texas Tech and would have been the first opponent Sorsby faced.
I have enough going on without worrying about those different things.
I let the people in charge take care of all that stuff.While there were a few athletic directors milling about The Star doing interviews, Techs Kirby Hocutt was not among them.
After making an appearance and going through radio row at Big 12 media days last year, board chairman and out-front booster Cody Campbell left the country on vacation.That meant McGuire took any slings and arrows thrown his schools way, even as he much preferred it when attention turned to figuring out how to repeat as champions for the first time in the Big 12 since Oklahoma did so in 2020.
Brendan Sorsby is no longer part of the Texas Tech team, but will still be around the Red Raiders this fall.| USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect I knew wed get pushback and criticism, but you know it was at the conference level, in the AD level, conferences that surprised me, McGuire says.At the end of the day, I still feel that whenever you put the players interest, the players mental health and his physical health first, then I think thats whats important for what I do.
I got in this to help men become the people theyre supposed to be.
Sorsby is still expected to get out to Lubbock this fall, and McGuire confirmed he will be involved with the team, training for next years NFL draft at the Red Raiders facilities and occasionally attending home games.Hes working on his recovery from the addiction then hes working on getting ready for the NFL draft next year, McGuire says.
He is addicted.
Hes a gambling addict.
Thats something hes going to have to deal with.If anybody knows anything about addiction, you deal with that every day of your life.
Hes going to continue to deal with that, but hes a really good person, hes a great teammateI think his teammates would tell you that.
And talent-wise, hes without question one of the most talented players Ive ever been around.
A few of his peers walking around the halls disagreed with that effusive evaluation of Sorsbys talent after seeing him play at Cincinnati in 2025.
There was still a much more jovial and upbeat atmosphere among the coaching community to the Red Raiders presence at media days than you would expect for a school which did not go a week without generating some new headline this offseason.One Tech official even joked that if it had been an AD convention or a room full of conference commissioners, that would not at all be the case as McGuire spent much of his time cracking jokes with the likes of BYUs Kalani Sitake or discussing vacation options with Oklahoma States Eric Morris.
Perhaps thats the result of a little more grounded reaction to a storyor simply a bit of myopiadepending on who you spoke to.One head coach mused that because it negatively impacted so many billion-dollar industriescollege football, the NFL, TV networks and gamblingthere was little chance Sorsby would have been allowed to play in the end, much less before the conference office called in some big legal guns.Ive never been one to talk about other people or other peoples programs, says one head coach.
But obviously thats been a cardinal sin for a long time in sports, and I think we would have been going down a rabbit hole and answering a lot of questions that arent good for the sport if he played.The player everybody couldnt stop talking about appeared instead to be persona non grata around the Big 12 as talk finally turned over to football matters to the delight of the league office.
Bryan Fischer is a staff writer at Sports Illustrated covering college sports.
He joined the SI staff in October 2024 after spending nearly two decades at outlets such as FOX Sports, NBC Sports and CBS Sports.A member of the Football Writers Association of Americas All-America Selection Committee and a Heisman Trophy voter, Fischer has received awards for investigative journalism from the Associated Press Sports Editors and FWAA.
He has a bachelors in communication from USC.