At first glance, the Brendan Sorsby ruling doesn’t have an immediate impact on Notre Dame. However, considering the Texas Tech quarterback will only miss two games this season, thanks to one of the most dunderheaded rulings issued by a judge in the last decade at least, the Red Raiders’ signal caller could directly affect the Fighting Irish later this season.
Sorsby, who admitted to breaking NCAA rules for years by gambling on college sports, including gambling on his own team, had been suspended for the season. However, the injunction issued on Monday morning allows Sorsby to be immediately reinstated and will instead be suspended for Texas Tech’s first two games of the 2026 campaign.
With Sorsby under center, Texas Tech is a College Football Playoff shoo-in, if for no other reason than it has one of the easiest Power 4 schedules in the country. And that’s where Notre Dame is suddenly affected. Should Brendan Sorsby lead the Red Raiders to the CFP, there’s always a chance it could butt heads with the Irish.
Without Sorsby, and with massive questions about who would play quarterback, head coach Joey McGuire’s squad might have been lucky to go bowling. This injunction, where the judge ruled that the NCAA had breached its contract with the Tech quarterback and caused him irreparable harm, will no doubt affect the Big 12 far more than anyone else, but Notre Dame shouldn’t be happy to see this kind of ruling come down, for a whole host of reasons.
Brendan Sorsby injunction gives Notre Dame football another CFP variable
First and foremost, the Irish shouldn’t be happy that the NCAA was essentially told they cannot enforce even the most obvious and uncomplicated rules. The sheriff just had to hand in their badge and gun. Even if that gun was mostly shooting blanks in this new litigious era of college sports, at least there was the danger of some sort of punishment. Now, to quote the late Aristotle Onassis, “The only rule is, there are no rules.”
Notre Dame is the better team than Texas Tech on paper. The Red Raiders certainly didn’t look like an impressive CFP team last year when they were dominated by Oregon, after a 2025 regular season in which they faced very few remotely good teams.
Still, the playoffs are a different animal. What if Notre Dame is without a key player due to injury (he can no longer miss time due to breaking NCAA rules, so that’s a plus), say Leonard Moore? What if Sorsby throws a game-winning touchdown to the side of the field that Moore normally patrols? Suddenly, the injunction becomes a major factor in the Irish missing out on the national title.
If Monday’s injunction helped cause “irreparable harm” to Notre Dame’s national title hopes, what relief will Marcus Freeman and Co. be able to seek? Can they go to court in South Bend and find a friendly judge who issues an injunction against the NCAA giving the title to anyone else?
The college football world is now in a world of ridiculous hypotheticals that could somehow come true. Notre Dame, meanwhile, as well as every other team due to play Texas Tech after Week 2, is punished by a judge who decided the NCAA can’t punish anyone.
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