Take a bow, everyone. We did it.
There’s really nothing to celebrate about, honestly. The last week in Texas Tech land has felt like an eternity for everyone, whether or not they knew who Brendan Sorsby was before he even got to Lubbock.
Plenty of life events exist where a running live story needs to be filed by a news outlet. Hurricanes. Murder investigations. In our case, it was the saga of Sorsby and the NCAA over his eligibility, the judge that let the Cincinnati transfer bypass the previous rulings and remain with the Red Raiders and everything that came with it. And do I mean everything.
Just on Monday, there were five different updates to our Sorsby saga live blog. I was in the midst to updating it a sixth time to share the report from Yahoo Sports that Michigan became the first school to actually act on threats of not scheduling any other Texas Tech athletic teams, canceling a scheduled game with the Red Raider volleyball team set for September.
There was never going to be a good conclusion to this. One thing I can always do is find a counterargument. While everyone else was bashing Texas Tech for even thinking about playing Sorsby after he admitted to gambling on his own team, I could see what Texas Tech was saying, what they were thinking and why they were doing it.
Ultimately, none of it actually mattered. The message wasn’t great to begin with, and Texas Tech bungled it every step of the way. Rather than just sit tight and let the heat die down, they steered into the skid hoping to course correct. It was never going to happen. The only thing that could fix it would be for Texas Tech to come out and say Sorsby isn’t going to play — he can still be part of the team without taking a single snap — or pulling the plug on the entire operation.
Rather than continue to fight the good(?) fight and play the martyr, rationality prevailed. Sorsby is heading to the NFL Supplemental Draft. He won’t be a member of the Red Raiders. Won’t take the field against Houston or return to Cincinnati. Won’t be a distraction for a team that has a chance to repeat as Big 12 championship with or without him.
I have no doubt that Texas Tech meant well in all of this. I can sympathize that they didn’t even expect Sorsby to get the injunction that put the football team, the entire athletic department and the University as a whole in the worst light possible. Had anyone known what was going to come along the way, Texas Tech would have pulled the ripcord much sooner and spared everyone, including Sorsby, this week-long skull bashing from folks all over the country.
It wasn’t just that this was a distraction. It became the only thing that mattered, and was going to remain that way until there was some sort of resolution. Sorsby leaving is the best-case scenario that preserves what’s left of Texas Tech’s public perception.
Perhaps this can even reset things back to normal. Sorsby never did actually play for the Red Raiders, so all those threatened lawsuits over such an event can be tossed in the shredder. A week of (very) bad PR pales in comparison to what would’ve been 10-plus weeks of even more threats, smack talking, name calling and yet another dozen or so lawyers getting involved.
The problems came to a head when the Sorsby situation became about much more than just Sorsby. Michigan actually acted on threats that Georgia and Nebraska made a week prior. The Big 12 wanted to start messing with Texas Tech’s money. As much as Sorsby is a human being who needs support, Texas Tech had to think about the greater good.
Was all of this going to be worth it?
As much I was able to defend Tech’s position on all of this, I’d grown tired of it. I did a string of radio hits last week trying to dissect all things related to Sorsby and had even more requests come in throughout the day. I ignored or declined all of the recent ones because I just can’t anymore.
It’s an exhausting position to be in. After two weeks in Oklahoma City, I wanted nothing more than a mellow week, or even a few days, to decompress and regroup. That went out the window the first business day back. I’ve been scared to walk away from my computer or not check social media for eight straight days because there was always something new coming out about the whole deal.
If I’m this drained from just writing and talking about the Sorsby saga, I can only imagine how miserable everyone around Texas Tech has been dealing with it directly. They have to be just as happy to see this come to an end as anyone else.
There’s nothing bad to say about Sorsby. He has a problem and hopefully can deal with that in his own way. And if Texas Tech means what they’ve said all along, that it’s about the person more than the player, then they’ll keep their doors open for Sorsby for whatever he may need.
Those doors just won’t lead to him playing a college football game in a Red Raider uniform. And that is best for everyone.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Brendan Sorsby, Texas Tech needed the divorce more than anything
