College sports and sports gambling don’t mix

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

Sports gambling has become ubiquitous since it was legalized by the Supreme Court in 2018. Nearly every state offers the opportunity to bet on games, providing a reliable stream of revenue that fills state and local government coffers.

For many, placing a bet on a game is a benign form of entertainment. For others, it grows into an addiction that bleeds them of their money, and in some cases, their families, their homes and their sanity.

The ease with which casual sports gambling transforms into addiction is symptomatic of how widespread the problem has become, with young men at the highest risk of becoming gambling addicts. When a group of college athletes was discovered to be fixing games in which they were playing, it appeared that sports gambling may have reached rock bottom. Yet the recent situation around Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby shows that rock bottom has a further basement.

Sorsby himself is not why big revenue-generating college sports have become dysfunctional, of course. He is, however, a product of such dysfunction, fueled by the three-headed monster of Name, Image and Likeliness or NIL, the ease at which college athletes can move between schools via the transfer portal, and extended player eligibility.

Individually, each of these factors does not present a concern. Yet when they are exploited collectively by athletes, they create a fertile environment for abuse — one that has facilitated the situation now faced by the NCAA and all power conference teams vying for a larger share of the college sports revenue pie.

Sorsby began his college career at Indiana University. He then transferred to the University of Cincinnati, where he agreed to a lucrative NIL contract. Sorsby eventually reneged on this contract, transferring to Texas Tech University with an even larger contract.

He then confessed to a gambling addiction, including placing bets on Indiana games while he was redshirting. This pushed him to enter a gambling treatment program. To regain his ability to play football this season at Texas Tech, Sorsby filed a lawsuit against the NCAA and was granted a temporary injunction, paving a path for him to play for Texas Tech in 2026. A group of judges, all Texas Tech graduates, ruled in his favor.

Sorsby ended the drama when he declared for the NFL Supplemental Draft. Yet just because he will no longer play college football does not mean that the damage can be undone.

The NCAA and numerous universities, including those in the Big 12 Conference, expressed their dismay with the court ruling. Some schools, including Georgia and Nebraska, indicated that their sports teams would not have played any games against Texas Tech teams this season. If these schools had followed through on their threats, every athlete at Texas Tech would have paid the price for a ruling made by a group of judges regarding one athlete at the school.

The bigger issue presented by the Sorsby ruling is its consequence for every other college athlete. Among this group are those who gamble on sports, perhaps on their own sport, and even on their own team. Given that bets are more than just who wins the game, but whether teams cover the spread; players in skill positions, like quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers, have a measure of control over how much their team wins a game, particularly when they are playing significantly weaker competition.

The NCAA has a zero-tolerance policy with sports gambling for college athletes. The Sorsby situation has blown this policy up, since every college athlete who is caught gambling can now use the Sorsby ruling as a defense, citing “a probable, imminent and irreparable injury.” Hunter Dekkers wishes he had had this option back in 2021.

Just because something is legal does not make it ethical, moral or correct. That is why athletic directors can choose to take the high road and work with their coaches to not play any of their athletes discovered gambling, even if they are eligible. This may mean losing games and championships lost. But it restores some of the values that college athletics have historically held up as important.

Perhaps most importantly, it would send a message to college athletes, those playing today and those who will play in the future, that gambling has no place in their lives while in college, and certainly has no place on the playing field where they compete.

The recent sequence of events surrounding Sorsby demonstrates that rock bottom in sports gambling does indeed have a basement when it impacts who gets to play in big revenue-generating college sports. Indeed, with the lives and values of young people at risk, moral values should take precedent over winning and money.

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.