Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire said it has been business as usual in the football operation through the turmoil surrounding the Brendan Sorsby gambling saga.
The 54-year-old Texas native credited the school’s leadership and boosters when asked at Big 12 media days on Tuesday how he has managed an offseason he couldn’t have imagined in his younger coaching days.
“We’ve all been in this together,” McGuire said. “I have good mentors, and I have a very strong football team. If you would walk into that building from right now, or even January, any point of this saga, the football side of it, you wouldn’t think that anything was wrong, different.”
McGuire again defended the school’s support of Sorsby, including the plan to let him play even after the Cincinnati transfer admitted he placed bets on Indiana games when he was a freshman with the Hoosiers.
Sorsby played the past two seasons with the Bearcats before joining the defending Big 12 champion Red Raiders on a lucrative deal for his name, image and likeness.
The QB ultimately abandoned a legal effort to regain his eligibility after the NCAA suspended him for gambling, and has said he will wait until next year to enter the NFL draft.
Texas Tech, which went 12-2 last season, stood behind Sorsby when he went to rehab over his gambling and after he sued the NCAA to regain his eligibility.
“I’m not going to ever change that I’m going have my players’ backs,” McGuire said. “It’s really easy to tell a mom or a dad that you’re going to be there to help their son grow into the man they’re supposed to be, and then all of a sudden, whenever adversity hits, or something like the situation we had, that you turn your back on them.”
McGuire said he talked to Sorsby in the past couple of days, and Sorsby is working out in the Dallas area, where he played in high school. McGuire said he expects Sorsby to make occasional trips to Lubbock and that he will have access to the school’s athletic facilities.
“My biggest thing why I want to be there is because I have addicts in my family,” the coach said. “Some of them are no longer with us. But the biggest thing for me right now is he continues to get help so there’s no relapse and he can be the person and the player that he’s meant to be.”
Tight end Terrance Carter Jr. said he stayed in touch with Sorsby through the offseason after their relationship blossomed in just a few months together.
“When we found out he was going into rehab, I sent him a quick text, ‘I love you, bro,’” Carter said. “We still text a lot to this day. So I can say our relationship is strong. It’s more than just football for me. So just being there for my brother, that’s all I can do.”
Will Hammond Could End Up As Red Raiders’ Starting QB
Quarterback Will Hammond started twice and came off the bench once for an injured Behren Morton before tearing the ACL in his right knee last season.
McGuire said Hammond could be ready for the season opener Sept. 5 against Abilene Christian, but it’s possible the Red Raiders could wait until the third game Sept. 18 against Houston.
Without the knee injury, Hammond might have been the projected starter this season, and Carter said he was confident in the quarterbacks regardless of Sorsby’s status.
That’s not to say Sorsby’s former teammates were indifferent toward his fate.
“Coach McGuire always preaches about the ‘what’s next’ mentality,” center and captain Sheridan Wilson said. “This is just, unfortunately, just another ‘what’s next’ moment. It breaks my heart, obviously. It breaks a lot of people’s hearts because that’s a friend of ours. We’d love to have him on the team, but at the end of the day, we’re still chasing the Big 12 championship. We have to move on.”
While Texas Tech officials were widely criticized over the possibility of Sorsby playing for the Red Raiders after admitting to gambling on his team’s games at Indiana, McGuire said fellow coaches were supportive behind the scenes.
Some of the criticism came after Texas Tech posted a video in which president Lawrence Schovanec, athletic director Kirby Hocutt and McGuire tried to explain their reasons for supporting Sorsby.
“Some of the statements we made, we were making them to Red Raiders,” McGuire said. “I was not going to change the public opinion across the board. What we were trying to explain in any video or anything like that was to get our fan base and our boosters and our alumni to understand exactly what we were trying to do. We owed it to them. And really that’s the only people that we owed it to.”
Reporting by the Associated Press.
