Big 12 Media Days were always going to bring the Brendan Sorsby situation back into the spotlight, and when commissioner Brett Yormark was asked about it, his decision not to answer only turned up the heat.
Sorsby, the former Texas Tech quarterback and one of the most talked-about transfers in college football, had been expected to give the Red Raiders an immediate boost in the chase for a national championship. Instead, the offseason storyline shifted when it came out that he had been gambling on multiple games, beginning during his freshman year at Indiana.
The NCAA responded by ruling him ineligible for the entire season, which is the standard punishment for that violation. Sorsby’s lawyers then took the case to court and won an injunction, making him eligible this season. After the backlash that followed, it was later revealed that Sorsby and Texas Tech had parted ways as he got ready for the NFL draft.
That chain of events made the topic impossible to avoid at Big 12 Media Days. Yormark was asked about it, but he declined to comment, and that drew immediate criticism from some of the sport’s most prominent voices.
ESPN’s Paul Finebaum unloaded on the commissioner during an appearance on "McElroy and Cublic in the Morning," calling the moment a clear misstep.
"It was a major fail for Brett Yormark," Finebaum said.
"This is a commissioner who has a big-time television, entertainment, and media background, and he completely failed. You have to understand your room at all times.
There was no danger in discussing the Sorsby situation. The league could have taken a high position, saying, 'Listen, we were against it.
We were going to court, and we finally found a legal solution that Sorsby can deal with.' Instead, he tucked and ran."
The criticism isn’t hard to understand. This was the kind of question the Big 12 should have seen coming, and Yormark and his communications team needed a plan for it.
A brief statement at the start of the day, followed by a firm refusal to take questions on the matter, would have at least acknowledged the issue. Instead, Yormark chose not to address it at all, and that left the impression that he was caught flat-footed.
The problem is that the Sorsby case had already become one of the offseason’s defining stories, so it was always going to follow the conference into the room.
By steering away from it, Yormark made the silence itself the story. Rather than shifting attention toward the Big 12’s outlook for 2026, he left people talking about what he didn’t say.
No matter where anyone lands on the NCAA’s handling of the case, the commissioner is now facing more scrutiny over how the conference handled one of its biggest public moments of the year.
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