OKLAHOMA CITY — One quarterback’s eligibility now has two state attorneys general fighting over it, and they are not on the same side. On Friday, Oklahoma’s Gentner Drummond wrote to the Big 12 urging it to suspend Brendan Sorsby, and in the same letter he dismantled the threat his Texas counterpart had made a day earlier, calling Ken Paxton’s warnings “meritless” and “facially absurd.”
The escalation is remarkable even by the standards of a saga that has already produced a court injunction, an NCAA appeal and a contempt threat. Paxton had told the conference on Thursday that any sanction of Texas Tech would expose it to more than $200 million in liability. Drummond’s reply, in effect, was that his fellow Republican attorney general did not know what he was talking about. The Big 12’s authority to enforce its own bylaws, the Oklahoma AG argued, is independent of the court order that restored Sorsby, and Paxton’s antitrust theory “will fail.”
Drummond did not hide his contempt for the underlying situation. Texas Tech’s maneuver to restore the quarterback, he wrote, amounts to “a shameful chapter in the story of college football,” and the school “has acted in a manner adverse to the Big 12 and the integrity of college football as a whole.” He urged the conference to use Bylaw 3.6, the provision that lets it sanction a member that damages the collective interest, the same bylaw Paxton had warned would trigger a lawsuit, reported by ESPN.
Neither attorney general is a neutral party, and the geography explains the alignment as much as the law does. Paxton represents Texas, home of Texas Tech, the school whose quarterback the court restored. Drummond represents Oklahoma, home of Oklahoma State, which hosts the Red Raiders in Stillwater on November 14 and would prefer not to face Sorsby when it does. Two state lawyers have found principled-sounding reasons to want exactly what their home teams want. That is not a criticism so much as a description of how this fight was always going to break.
The facts underneath have not moved. The NCAA declared Sorsby permanently ineligible after finding he placed at least 40 impermissible wagers, including bets on games involving his own team, part of roughly $90,000 staked over four years. A Texas judge restored him with a two-game suspension and a trial set for February. The NCAA’s appeal will not resolve before the season it concerns has been played. None of that is in dispute between Drummond and Paxton. What they disagree about is what a conference is allowed to do in the gap the courts have left.
That question lands on Brett Yormark’s desk, and the commissioner is running out of room to avoid it. All 15 of the league’s other members oppose letting Sorsby play, and the full board meets Monday. Whatever it decides, one state attorney general has now promised consequences, and another has promised that those consequences are bluster. The Big 12 has to pick which lawyer to believe, with a lawsuit waiting behind one door and a credibility collapse behind the other.
What no one can say yet is whether Drummond’s confidence is sound or merely louder than Paxton’s. Two attorneys general cannot both be right about whether the Big 12 may sanction Texas Tech, and the only forum that can settle it is the one neither of them controls. Monday will produce a decision. The litigation that decision invites, from whichever side loses it, will produce the actual answer, and not for a long time.
