The Big 10 outrage over Brendan Sorsby and Texas Tech was completely fake. You can’t cry about a player gambling and then have your officials blatantly rig a game by adding extra time using a secret clock after the game is already over.
I hate gambling and oppose it in all its forms and would love for all of it to be illegal, but corrupt conferences hiring refs to rig games using secret clocks and then paying off their victims to keep quiet is a much bigger threat to the integrity of athletics than a player betting on outcomes he had no control over. That’s exactly what happened last night in Ann Arbor, and everyone knows it.
The Big 10 tried to destroy Texas Tech for the crime of supporting a player who never played a single snap for the school and whose transgressions all started when he played in the Big 10.
Brendan Sorsby is banned from the NCAA, but every single Big 10 referee involved in rigging that game for Michigan will be officiating games next week.
Brendan Sorsby can’t play college football, but the Big 10 employees who used a secret clock to rig a game and then lie about it will all continue to get paid to do the same thing the next time a non-conference opponent threatens a Big 10 playoff bid.
The Big 10 threatened to ban its members from playing Texas Tech because of one player who gambled while he played in the Big 10. Is anyone going to refuse to play Michigan, or play the Big 10, as a result of Big 10 referees blatantly rigging games for Big 10 schools? No? Isn’t that interesting.
Unless and until every school and conference that had a meltdown over Texas Tech officially boycotts Michigan and the Big 10, we’ll know that the entire Texas Tech uproar was fake. It was never about the integrity of the game. It was never about the sanctity of the sport.
What they were actually mad about was a new world in which their ability to illegally pay players under the table no longer mattered, and they hated the new guy who was now eating their lunch.
When every school and conference which cried about Texas Tech directs the exact same threats at Michigan and the Big 10 for what happened yesterday, we can take them seriously.
I’m not holding my breath.
I'm fascinated by the pettiness that is the @Big12Conference . When I was living in my home state of Michigan developing my love of college sports as part of my school newspaper staff my knowledge of Tx Tech didn't extend much past Michael Crabtree's catch and their quirky coach.
But since moving to Texas I've learned a lot more. I've enjoyed following and, yes, defending them from all the virtue-signaling hypocrites who have attacked them over pulling an SEC and getting an injunction to sidetrack NCAA ineligibility. I'll go to my grave believing that if Sorsby had chosen LSU over TT we'd have heard a lot less about it and Sorsby would be suiting up this fall in Baton Rouge.
A big part of the difference is the SEC supports it's own. They've had seemingly countless injunctions in that league yet those schools don't openly criticize each other. They may hate each other behind closed doors, but if that's the case we'll never hear about it in public.
The Big 12, on the other hand, had bitter coaches and athletic directors who couldn't wait to find someone in the media to talk about internal meetings about TT and their outrage that TT would dare consider playing it's $5M portal QB after a judge made him eligible.
And now we're finding out more and more about Cincinnati doing EXACTLY what the others were accusing TT of wanting to do -- knowingly playing a QB who gambled on his own team.
Except Cincy tried to sweep it under the carpet despite being notified in 2024 according to USA Today and Sorsby's agent. Yet there is no outrage for the Bearkats from TCU's Sonny Dykes, or Kansas State's foul-mouthed Gene Taylor, or any of the others who were so outraged at TT. And ever the hypocrite, Cincy even had the gall to vote for sanctioning TT.
There's some indication that behind the scenes only Oklahoma State was supporting TT for doing what 99% of the other universities in the country would do under the same circumstances. That makes sense to me because at the end of the day TT and OSU are probably the most valuable athletic departments and the natural candidates to fill the void left by Texas and Oklahoma.
So why is the Big 12 so petty compared to the SEC when it comes to having each other's backs? My guess is the Big 12 is full of have-nots who are extremely insecure at the thought of anyone becoming the 900 lbs gorilla that TT has quickly become. In the SEC, much like the Big Ten, there are a bunch of gorillas so everyone is pretty secure.
But the Big 12 only has TT and not much else unless OSU returns to prominence or BYU continues breaking through on a regular basis. And the insecurity that comes from that fact means articles like the Iowa State write-up below are never going to defend the league heavyweight. They're just going to be petty, virtue-signaling, and bitter.
I guess the moral of the story is that have-nots seem to only be happy with other have-nots.
Texas Tech needed to beat #1 Alabama twice tonight to advance to the National Championship….
AND TEXAS TECH BEAT #1 ALABAMA TWICE TONIGHT TO ADVANCE TO THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!