The Unfortunate Lesson: How the Sorsby Case May Silence the Athletes Who Need Help Most

OPENING STATEMENTS

In my work representing college athletes, I've learned that the hardest conversation isn't about eligibility, or NIL deals, or transfer portals. It's the conversation where a young athlete finally admits something is wrong — with their mental health, their relationships, their habits — and asks about the impact on a career and whether doing so could end one.

After watching the Brendan Sorsby case consume the sports world for the past couple of weeks, I'm genuinely worried that conversation is going to get harder to have.

Let me be clear about what this column is not. It is not a defense of betting on your own team. Or a Texas judge’s decision. It is not an argument that the NCAA's rules are wise or fairly applied: they often aren't, and the hypocrisy of an institution that profits from a sports betting ecosystem deserves its own reckoning. The legal arguments Sorsby's attorneys have raised about the Americans with Disabilities Act and addiction as a recognized disorder are legitimate - however abhorrent this individual case may be to some -  and courts will sort them out.

What this column is about is the athlete who didn't get caught. The one who is quietly struggling with a gambling problem right now - or with depression, or an eating disorder, or substance use - and is watching this spectacle unfold and making a calculation about whether to come forward.

That athlete is not going to like what they see. After all, the system was already failing them. 

Before Sorsby, the mental health picture in college athletics was already troubling. According to the most recent NCAA Student-Athlete Health and Wellness Study, with data from 23,000 college athletes, roughly two-thirds know where to get mental health help on campus, but fewer than half say they'd actually be comfortable seeking it. Among male athletes, more than a quarter said seeking therapy would make them feel "inadequate." The gap between knowing help exists and being willing to ask for it is the stigma tax every one of my clients pays.

When it comes to gambling specifically, the numbers are more alarming. The NCAA's own 2024 survey found that only 7% of Division I men knew where to go on campus for gambling help. Only 7%. And that's not because the problem isn't there, as college athletes report problem gambling rates of 7% to 15%, significantly above the general population. The number of men gambling alone, which can be a marker associated with more severe addiction, more than doubled between 2016 and 2024 as sports wagering became legal and proliferated.

The disclosure that follows getting caught is not help-seeking. It's damage control. And this distinction matters enormously. Sorsby did not come forward with a gambling addiction. He was investigated, and a treatment announcement followed. And then the discussion turned quickly to eligibility and getting back on the field. 

And this focus on sports is another unfortunate element of this situation. Because let's also be honest about something the celebratory "he completed treatment" coverage glosses over: there is no finish line with addiction. Anyone framing Sorsby's discharge from a residential program as proof he's fixed, completely misunderstands how gambling disorder actually works. Every day is its own test. It's what anyone who has sat with an addict knows to be true.

Athletes know they need help. They also know from watching what happens to those who seek it publicly that disclosure carries real consequences. A British academic study found that people were significantly less likely to want to sign a professional football player after any mental health disclosure, and least likely after a disclosure involving substance use or addiction. Gambling disorder, a behavioral addiction, likely triggers the same dynamic.

When a high-profile athlete does come forward and faces public shaming for it, the research is clear: other athletes retreat. A recent analysis found that when an athlete faces harassment after disclosing a mental health condition and subsequently expresses regret about going public, it "may dissuade impressionable fans from discussing their own mental health battles" — and the same dynamic applies to the athletes watching.

The Sorsby case adds a new and more corrosive layer. When Naomi Osaka stepped away from the French Open in 2021 citing mental health concerns, the backlash was unfair and damaging. But the narrative was relatively uncomplicated: she needed rest; people thought she was making excuses. The Sorsby situation is structurally messier. His disclosure has been weaponized in litigation, debated on legal and ethical grounds, and used as a flashpoint for every grievance in college athletics: conference realignment, NCAA authority, the commercialization of amateur sports. Schools are threatening to boycott games against Texas Tech. Cam Newton said publicly he doesn't buy the story.

For the athlete sitting with a real mental health problem, the lesson the Sorsby case - and even because of the way Sorsby and his team have handled this - teaches is not that it gets better when you ask for help. It's that your disclosure will become a national argument about whether you deserve sympathy.

A genuine mental health framework for gambling would decouple early treatment-seeking from eligibility consequences. You seek help voluntarily, before you're caught, and your career is protected while you recover. The NCAA has the infrastructure to build this, as it has already established mental health best practice guidelines and required Division I schools to have licensed mental health professionals on staff. Adding a protected early-intervention pathway for gambling disorder is not a radical proposition. It's what any functioning employee assistance program in the private sector already does.

The Sorsby case has opened a conversation that needed opening. We have a real, burgeoning problem with youth gambling, as a recent survey conducted on behalf of the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) revealed that nearly one in four adults reported placing a bet prior to turning 21. The ubiquity of gambling apps and prediction markets will only make this worse.

But conversations opened by litigation and spectacle tend to generate heat without generating change. The athletes who need to hear that it's safe to come forward aren't reading court filings. They're watching the reaction. And right now, the reaction is telling them to stay quiet.

That's the wrong lesson. And it may be the most lasting damage this case does.

EXHIBIT A

If you’re tracking the status of the Protect College Sports Act, you’ve got to remember that passage or failure isn’t really going to be about what’s right or wrong for college athletics. It’s about priorities for individual congress members and their constituents. And Kyle Saunders, who looks at college sports news through a political-economy lens at Sacred Cow BBQ, provides the context in his latest entry as the bill heads toward Senate Commerce Committee markup. What he indicates is that we should think of congressional action on college sports less as a policy debate and more as a constituency management exercise, every senator is running a cost-benefit calculation rooted in how much athletics revenue flows through his/her state and what party leadership is telling them it's worth. He maps the pressure points: who has to be appeased, what each of them costs, and why the bill's fate has almost nothing to do with its merits. His bottom line is unsettling: the decisive votes may be the cheapest ones available, and nobody's bought them yet. It’s long but a great read.

EXHIBIT B

I’m struggling with the outage, or at least surprise, this week around the details of the shadow economy of unofficial visit payments, including cash in birthday cards, NIL deals conveniently timed to visits, private jets to music festivals. Anyone surprised hasn't been paying attention to college sports for the last 75 years. The defining ethos of college athletics has always been: find the edge, push it, and if it breaks, find a new edge. Congressional interest won't change that. It never has. More to the point: why would it? College athletics is big-time business now. Does anyone think Silicon Valley isn't flying top AI engineers out on private jets to close a recruit? Same game. Different jersey.

ON THE DOCKET

USC linebacker Talanoa Ili and Stanford quarterback Charlie Mirer filed a federal class-action suit last week against the NCAA, all four Power Conference commissioners, and the newly formed College Sports Commission, alleging the CSC's NIL enforcement structure is an illegal price-fixing scheme that suppresses athlete compensation and violates the laws of 17 states that explicitly protect NIL rights. Theirs is a novel theory: the House settlement never preempted state law, and the NCAA imposed a salary cap anyway. What’s also interesting is their approach: filing suit as opposed to appealing the House decision. Get past a motion to dismiss, and suddenly you have discovery and subpoena power into the internal deliberations of the people who designed the cap. That's where this could get really interesting. And perhaps really uncomfortable for the defendants.

FOOTNOTES

"If this is the precedent, then I owe it to my players to bring in people from Las Vegas to teach us how to gamble. Then collectively, we need to decide which games we will play hard in [to cover the spread] and which ones we won't.

-Anonymous Big 12 coach in response to the Brendan Sorsby ruling earlier this week