Brendan Sorsby saga ends after Big 12's 'devastating' legal complaint in the middle of the night
· Yahoo Sports
DENVER — On Monday evening, within the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton here, a handful of NCAA Division I conference commissioners milled about ahead of their annual three-day meetings scheduled to start Tuesday.
One of those included Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, who found himself squarely in the lobby as the Brendan Sorsby saga, abruptly, came to a close.
Visit esporist.com for more information.
"It's been a challenging week for both our conference and the college athletics landscape," Yormark said in a statement to Yahoo Sports on Monday night. "The Big 12 looks forward to moving ahead as 16 strong. We wish Brendan Sorsby success in his future endeavors."
While declining to reveal much else during a brief interview, Yormark expressed gratitude for the league's outside counsel, the global law firm Sidley Austin, which helped orchestrate the Big 12's groundbreaking legal complaint filed Monday morning in federal court — a threat that, presumably, helped usher Sorsby toward the NFL Supplemental Draft. Natali Wyson, a partner at the firm, "provided the legal guidance and executed the Big 12's strategy," Yormark said, in filing a complaint against Texas Tech, its school officials and the Texas attorney general's office.
In fact, it was Texas attorney general Ken Paxton's letter last week that, oddly enough, paved the way for the school's filing Monday, according to legal experts who spoke to Yahoo Sports. Paxton's letter threatened legal action against the Big 12 if it were to sanction Texas Tech.
It opened a lane for the Big 12's suit. The league's filing on Monday asked a federal judge to bar Paxton's office from preventing the conference from exercising its right under the bylaws to sanction Tech. The conference sought no damages in the filing and did not challenge a state court ruling that deemed Sorsby eligible, but instead requested a judge to permit it to take action in light of Paxton's legal threats — a lawsuit that many within the legal community expected the Big 12 to win.
"In 40 years as a lawyer, I've never seen such a devastating legal filing come out of left field," said Tom Mars, a noted attorney in recent college sports cases, most of them against the NCAA, conferences and schools. "It was as creative as anything I've ever seen."
Quite literally in the dark of night, Sidley Austin attorneys made the filing on behalf of the Big 12 in the Northern District of Texas federal court in Dallas.
The lawsuit was filed around 1 a.m. ET, according to court documents.
On Monday at or around 7 a.m., Yormark informed Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec of the complaint in a courtesy phone call.
The call started a whirlwind of a day that ended with Sorsby out of college football.
Later in the day, Schovanec joined the other Big 12 presidents and chancellors in a scheduled call about the situation. After speaking to the group about his side, Schovanec left the call before the remaining 15 presidents discussed options to sanction the school, including a monetary fine and conference championship game ban.
In addition to the Big 12's filing on Monday, the NCAA and its team of lawyers filed with Texas state court an emergency appeal that encouraged the court to delay its ruling on Sorsby and to expedite an appeal decision before the college football season began. Or else, the NCAA filing said, the court will "teach all athletes that when you break the rules and receive discipline, the solution is not to take responsibility but to find a different umpire."
In the meantime on Monday, more issues mounted against Sorsby's plans to play. Both the Kansas and Utah attorneys general publicly released letters they sent to the Big 12 in support of the conference sanctioning Tech and criticizing Paxton's letter as inaccurate and filled with unfounded claims. The University of Michigan canceled a volleyball match scheduled with the school, too, the latest program to prohibit contests against Tech in light of its intention to allow a player to compete after admitting to betting on his own school.
Sorsby's decision to apply for the NFL Supplemental Draft ends one of the most gripping and one-sided fiascos in the modern history of college athletics — a sordid, four-month affair that began with the NCAA investigation earlier this spring. The association received a tip on Sorsby's gambling from a sportsbook through federal law enforcement.
A 47-page legal filing from Sidley Austin, as it turns out, may have been the impetus to close the book on the ordeal. In the complaint, the league made three main requests to a federal judge: grant an injunction to allow it to exercise its First Amendment rights to invoke its authority under its bylaws; dismiss Paxton's claims that any sanction is an antitrust violation; and grant it the right to penalize a member school for violating the dormant Commerce Clause, which prevents state governments from enacting laws that impact competition or commence across a variety of states.
The Big 12's legal threat put Sorsby in an interesting dilemma: Continue down this path, possibly subjecting Texas Tech to a Big 12 sanction protected through a federal injunction, or apply for the NFL Supplemental Draft (the application deadline is next Monday).
Sorsby's counsel is expected to withdraw his lawsuit from the Texas state court, meaning the quarterback will return to being ineligible, paving the way for his access to the draft. The supplemental draft is normally reserved for players who are not eligible to play in college.
Sorsby's decision came 24 hours after Texas Tech board of regents members and school officials met with the quarterback in a lengthy conversation about the future — one that ended with the school supporting the player's wishes if he wanted to continue to remain in college, according to those present at the meeting.
On Monday, those wishes changed.