FRISCO, Texas — Cincinnati football coach Scott Satterfield told The Athletic on Wednesday that Texas Tech was among multiple schools that spoke with former quarterback Brendan Sorsby’s camp about transferring before the Bearcats’ 2025 season ended, violating the NCAA’s tampering rules. Sorsby’s agent denied such contact.
The Sorsby drama of the past few months has lingered over this week’s Big 12 Media Days, even as Sorsby has left Texas Tech to prepare for next year’s NFL Draft following court battles and pushback over his admitted NCAA gambling violations and attempts to play.
Asked about Sorsby’s departure from Cincinnati to Texas Tech via the transfer portal last winter, Satterfield said he sat down with Sorsby with three games left in the season to see where he stood on his future. The quarterback said he would wait until the end of the season and decide between returning to Cincinnati, going pro or entering the portal, according to his former coach.
“We had already heard that schools had reached out — Texas Tech in particular had already reached out — with four games left,” Satterfield said. “So we knew we wouldn’t be able to compete financially with that, so we’d started looking for quarterbacks. … (After the season), he knew that if we tried to come up with money to pay him, we’re not going to have enough for other positions. Wished him good luck, and that was it.”
Sorsby filed formal paperwork with Cincinnati on Dec. 15 to enter the portal in January. When reached by The Athletic for comment Wednesday, Ron Slavin, Sorsby’s agent, denied pre-portal contact.
“Never heard from teams (during the 2025 season),” Slavin told The Athletic.
Texas Tech also denied any wrongdoing. “We are not aware of any impermissible contact related to Brendan Sorsby’s recruitment,” the school said in a statement to The Athletic.
Schools are not allowed to contact players from other programs until the transfer portal opens in early January, but intermediaries such as agents and trainers are frequently used to get around NCAA tampering rules.
After a 7-1 start to the season, Cincinnati lost its last four regular-season games. When asked whether any potential tampering could have played a role in the season’s shift, Satterfield downplayed it, saying Sorsby was practicing well and played well against TCU.
“(Tampering) happens no matter how you finish the season for everybody,” he said. “If you’ve got a good player, people are going to contact them. It’s just how we live right now. Everybody’s got agents, and so the player never does it. They don’t really talk to anybody. The agents do all the talking, and they talk to the GMs out there recruiting people. It’s the world we’re living in right now, so there’s nothing you’re going to do about it.”
Cincinnati still has an active lawsuit against Sorsby to collect a $1 million exit fee over his departure, stemming from an NIL agreement. A status conference hearing is scheduled for Friday.
Cincinnati has also received a letter of inquiry from the NCAA regarding the investigation into Sorsby’s gambling, according to someone briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. That is not unexpected given the known details about Sorsby’s gambling at multiple schools.
Satterfield wouldn’t comment on it but reiterated the school’s stance that it was unaware of Sorsby’s previous betting on Indiana football as a team member there or his betting on Cincinnati men’s basketball while at UC, which is against NCAA rules. A school spokesperson wouldn’t comment specifically on the letter but reiterated Cincinnati’s general stance on the matter.
“We have had continuous conversations with the NCAA since the initial reports related to impermissible sports wagering began,” the school statement said. “As we have stated before, we do not believe any athletics official or staff member was aware of any impermissible sports wagering.”
Sorsby’s time with Cincinnati has come under scrutiny regarding how much the program knew about his gambling, a topic that was reignited when Slavin went on a Dallas radio station June 17 and stated: “If anybody should be questioned or be catching heat it should be Cincinnati, because they knew for two years and never said anything and didn’t do anything about it.”
The school continues to push back.
“Absolutely we didn’t know,” Satterfield said Wednesday. “If we knew he was doing anything illegal, we would not have played him.”
Satterfield confirmed previous reporting from The Athletic that an attempt by Sorsby to bet on UFC had been flagged in 2024, but that is not against NCAA rules because it is not an NCAA sport. Multiple people briefed on the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, also told The Athletic that in the summer of 2025, ahead of Sorsby’s second season with the Bearcats, the quarterback approached Cincinnati’s compliance office to clarify again that he could bet on UFC. He was again reminded of the gambling restrictions for college athletes.
A separate record request obtained by The Athletic revealed that Sorsby had a Bet365 account registered under his name in Kentucky, where he lived, that made roughly 300 wagers in 2025 solely on mixed martial arts (such as UFC) and NASCAR, all of which were permitted under NCAA rules.
— Justin Williams contributed to this report.
