NEW YORK – Brendan Sorsby’s application for the NFL supplemental draft arrived three days before the deadline, without documentation, and after two years of federal court litigation against the NCAA. The league’s answer came back Wednesday: there will be no supplemental draft. For the quarterback who spent his college career betting on the sport he was still playing, professional football would have to wait until at least April 2027.
The decision came in a letter from Larry Ferazani, the general counsel of the NFL management council. Sorsby’s petition, Ferazani wrote, arrived “without any supporting information or documentation, and only after abandoning your recent litigation efforts to avoid NCAA sanctions.” The issues it raised were “too significant, and too closely tied to the League’s core integrity interest, to permit meaningful review within the timeline presented.” The league also cited the distraction a supplemental draft would cause as teams prepared for training camps.
Those integrity questions had been accumulating since at least 2022. That year, Sorsby was a redshirt freshman at Indiana, where he placed 40 bets on Hoosiers football while he was a member of the program. The total picture that emerged from the NCAA’s investigation was more extensive: more than 2,900 bets totaling roughly $90,000 placed during his time at Indiana and Cincinnati, with an additional $65,000 funneled through friends to conceal further wagers. He had continued gambling after transferring to Texas Tech. The NCAA declared him permanently ineligible.
Sorsby sued. A Texas judge granted him a preliminary injunction on June 8, ruling he would face “probable, imminent and irreparable injury” if blocked from playing for the Red Raiders this fall. The terms were narrow: he would miss the season’s first two games against Abilene Christian and Oregon State, and he would continue treatment for his gambling and anxiety disorders. It was a college career, not a professional one. Three days before the June 22 supplemental draft application deadline, Sorsby abandoned the Texas litigation and applied to the NFL instead.
The NFL’s response made clear it did not view the timing favorably. CBS Sports reported that the league’s letter outlined not only the documentation failures but the sequence itself: a player who had spent years fighting in court to avoid NCAA sanctions arrived at the NFL’s door at the last possible moment, offering no account of how those patterns of conduct had changed. That the NFL chose to cancel the supplemental draft entirely – rather than hold one and simply decline Sorsby – reflects how thoroughly the league wanted to foreclose any argument that the process had been improperly blocked.
Jeffrey Kessler, Sorsby’s attorney, told ESPN the decision “is a violation of the CBA and the law. We will pursue this immediately with the NFLPA.” Kessler is one of the most prominent labor lawyers in professional sports, with a long record of challenging league decisions through arbitration and federal court. The collective bargaining agreement governs the conditions under which a supplemental draft may be held, and his argument is that the NFL cannot unilaterally cancel one to exclude an eligible applicant. The NFLPA had not formally responded by Wednesday evening.
The NFL’s decision arrives amid a broader reckoning over gambling’s presence in professional and college sports. The same week Kalshi broke single-day fee records during the 2026 World Cup, drawing federal scrutiny to whether prediction markets should be regulated as sports betting, the NFL closed its door on a player whose history represents what leagues mean when they say competition integrity is non-negotiable. Every league operating under expanded sports betting legalization is making the same calculation: the perceived integrity of its games has a floor, and conduct that falls below it carries consequences.
Sorsby’s practical options are limited. He can re-enter the Texas court proceedings if the NCAA appeal allows it – a hearing has been set for February 8, 2027, two weeks after the College Football Playoff National Championship. He can enter the 2027 NFL draft if the CBA challenge fails. Whether he plays college football between now and then depends on an injunction that the NCAA is still actively contesting. Fox News reported that Sorsby completed in-patient rehabilitation for a gambling addiction earlier this year and has acknowledged his conduct in discussions with the NFL, though not in writing.
Ferazani’s letter closed with the line the league wanted on the record: Sorsby’s petition did not “demonstrate accountability for your conduct or indicate whether, or how, you would adhere to the League’s rules and policies governing the integrity of competition.” A player who placed 2,900 bets on the sport while he was being paid to play it has roughly ten months to change that answer.
