SDSU football players know the risk of sports gambling

A week ago, Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby announced that he would forgo his final year of college and enter the supplemental NFL Draft. The decision came on the heels of a saga that involved legal rulings after the NCAA found that Sorsby placed a wide range of bets from 2022 to 2025.

Sorsby reportedly wagered at least $90,000 across his four seasons at Indiana, Cincinnati and Texas Tech, which he had just transferred to in January. In total, Sorsby placed at least 2,900 bets during that span and placed at least 40 wagers involving Indiana football when he was on the team.

After an investigation, the NCAA ruled that Sorsby ineligible, but he and his lawyer filed a lawsuit which resulted in a Texas court granting a temporary injunction that granted him eligibility after serving a two-game suspension.

This resulted in chaos around college football for a couple days with many coaches and athletic directors criticizing Texas Tech for allowing Sorsby to continue his career. On June 15 the Big 12 Conference filed a lawsuit against Texas Tech, the school president, athletic director, the Texas Attorney General and other parties that were involved. 

That lawsuit is believed to have pushed Sorsby and Texas Tech to the decision that he should forgo this season of college football and go to the NFL.

The twists and turns of Sorsby’s eligibility highlighted a major problem in not just college football, but all sports, which is gambling.

Anytime you watch a game of any sport on TV in 2026, you’re bombarded with gambling ads. Whether it’s commercials or advertisements on the field or court, you’re being told to gamble on what you’re watching.

Those ads are mostly for apps that you can easily access on your phone. In South Dakota, gambling on actual games is only legal within the city limits of Deadwood and at select tribal casinos. However, you can bet on player props anywhere through apps on your phone like Prize Picks, Sleeper and Underdog.

That, along with being just an hour from the Iowa border, where gambling on actual games is legal anywhere in the state, it’s not hard for people in South Dakota to get sucked into sports gambling. Hell, anytime I’m in a state that allows it, I like to place a couple bets.

College athletes have different rules when it comes to sports gambling. Per NCAA rules, student athletes are not allowed to bet on a sport that is also an NCAA championship sport. For example, a player is not allowed to bet on any college sport, but is also not allowed to bet on the NFL or NBA. They can’t even bet on golf or tennis because that is a championship sport in the NCAA.

South Dakota State football coach Dan Jackson said he talks with his teams a few times a year about gambling and the rules that go along with it. He added that sports betting is an easy addictive hole to get sucked into.

“We talk about [gambling] a couple times a year, just as a reminder of what they can and cannot do. I show them cases [where athletes got caught] over the years, just to show them that it’s not worth it. … I also talk about just the trouble that gambling can cause and the addiction part of it. Yeah, we address it for sure,” Jackson said.

Sorsby’s gambling was not illegal by federal or state law because he did not play in the games at Indiana when he wagered on them, but there have been cases of players fixing games in the NCAA. In fact, back in November six college basketball players triggered permanent ineligibility for betting-related game manipulation. These cases weren’t as high profile because they did not involve the star quarterback of a major university.

In 2023, 17 people from Iowa State and Iowa, including players, coaches and student-athletes from different sports, were found to have gambled on sports. Iowa State’s starting quarterback at the time was Hunter Dekkers and he was charged with underage gambling and was found to have placed 26 bets on Iowa State sporting events, including a 2021 Iowa State football game that he did not play in. He was ruled ineligible by the NCAA and ended up having to play his final season of college football for Iowa Western Community College.

I was curious what triggers an NCAA investigation, so I asked Jackson. He said that the NCAA is using AI to search all of these sports gambling apps for names of college athletes. He said if you make an account with your name, the NCAA will find it and figure out what you’re betting on.

Jackson added that if a player was placing bets through a friend or family member's account, an investigation would have to be triggered from word of mouth.

College athletes can bet on sports that do not have a championship in the NCAA. Jackson noted that if the athletes wanted to they could bet on horse racing, UFC or boxing for example. 

Jackson enjoys horse racing, but he said he does not step foot in a sportsbook because there are so many different rules with the NCAA.

“I don’t even step foot into a sportsbook, even when I’m betting on horses. Just because I don’t know the lengths of it. [The NCAA] is definitely tracking it more than you’d think,” Jackson said.

Jackson said he told his players that they shouldn’t even have any apps because of the temptation that is involved with them. But sports gambling isn’t going anywhere. In fact, it will probably continue to keep growing as the years go on and more states make everything legal. That means more of these Sorsby-type situations will pop up and Jackson and his staff will have to preach even louder about the consequences that come with sports gambling.