In the wake of the surprising news that Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby would be withdrawing from his battle with the NCAA to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft, Sorsby’s agent, Ron Slavin, let loose some of the details that led to the shocking outcome. After Sorsby’s crack legal team had put him in a position to remain eligible to play at least 10 games with the Red Raiders next year, Slavin’s comments suggest that the school pushed Sorsby to head to the NFL.
In an appearance on 105.3 The Fan, a sports radio show in Dallas, Slavin disclosed some of the details of how things went down. Ultimately, Slavin claims the decision to move on was the result of “too much pressure from everybody else on Tech,” though Sorsby still desired a run with the team.
“This wasn’t Brendan Sorsby not wanting to play college football,” Slavin explained. “This was Brendan Sorsby just being advised by the school that, ‘I think it’s time for you’ — you know, we had seven days left to file for the supplemental draft and didn’t know where this thing was gonna go. So, we won in court. We did our job on our side, but, for whatever reason, the world melted down like college football was ruined forever.”
Slavin hedged his language a bit, putting equal intention between Texas Tech and Sorsby, but the overall tone of the interview seemed to indicate that the university had gotten cold feet. Despite the legal victories Sorsby’s team had achieved, Texas Tech began to feel negative pressure from the media and their own Big 12 conference. The school feared that the conference may opt to make an example of Sorsby and bar the entire team from participating in the conference championship or a potential playoff run. The Big 12 had filed suit against the Lubbock school, and the NCAA had requested an appeal of the judge’s injunction.
With Sorsby now headed for the NFL, though, Slavin believes Sorsby should be spared the punishment of a suspension. While some may point to Terrelle Pryor‘s situation in 2011, when the NFL enforced a five-game suspension previously levied by the NCAA before Pryor declared for the supplemental draft, Slavin is pointing to a more recent example.
Slavin doesn’t expect his client to receive a suspension once arriving in the NFL because the NFL did not suspend Patriots wide receiver Kayshon Boutte when it was uncovered that he utilized an alias to place about 8,900 wagers — 17 of which were believed to be on college football games, six of them LSU games — when he was 20 years old at LSU. The news came out after Boutte had already played a season in the NFL, but the league still investigated that matter even after the charges applied to Boutte had been dropped.
Sorsby’s situation seems to have similarities to both. Like Pryor, Sorsby was facing a two-game suspension when he declared for the supplemental draft, but Boutte’s mistakes so clearly match Sorsby’s. It will be interesting to see which precedent’s the league will claim to follow when dealing with the incoming rookie prospect. According to Jason La Canfora of SportsBoom, sources seem to indicate that Sorsby will draw lots of interest in the supplemental draft. It’s believed some teams may try to grab him in the second round, but he certainly isn’t expected to last past the third round.
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