Putting Sorsby in the rearview mirror, and a real cowboy hero to rest
As you read this, Brendan Sorsby is what he was when he woke up Monday – a very well-paid athlete. But by bedtime Monday, he was just not a college athlete any more.
Those Texas Tech Red Raiders love the outlaw role – they do wear black hats — but the past week, it went to an extreme. They were everybody’s enemy, trying to justify Sorsby remaining as their $5 million NIL quarterback although he had just begun treatment for a suddenly diagnosed gambling addiction that undeniably involved him betting on games involving his previous teams at Indiana and Cincinnati.
Although he never actually took a snap for their school, Tech brass got downright righteous about supporting Sorsby in this struggle to repress what he’d done for three years – bet on college sports, among others. College athletes can bet these days, according to the laws in their states, but not on games involving their teams. That’s 1919 Chicago Black Sox and 1980s Pete Rose stuff.
The Hit King said he never bet against his Reds, and there was never evidence he did. But there was plenty indicating he bet on their games. And that erodes the integrity of competition – did the involved bettor maybe give less than best effort to alter the odds?
If that question is asked, it’s already too late. Sorsby had soiled his teammates by his prior wagering. Nobody could watch him quarterback the Red Raiders and have no doubt the next bad play wasn’t on purpose.
That didn’t send him toward the NFL’s Supplemental Draft. An intense wave of pressure, the tipping point coming from other schools in Tech’s Big XII Conference, did that Monday.
Sorsby and those advising him finally realized there were consequences past counseling and far beyond his personal space. Hope he can handle his gambling addiction – he’s hardly the only college student, or college athlete, with one. He’s just now the poster child.
He can play and some NFL – or CFL – team will pick him up and ultimately see just how good he is behind center. Only a relative handful of college players get that shot. He will. Que sera sera.
Texas Tech players will not suffer being questioned about just how hard their quarterback tried. As a pro player, if Sorsby doesn’t lay it all out there every day, he has no chance.
T. Berry Porter knew that 80-some-odd years ago.
He was 16 years old and he knew it then, by the time the young man from Leesville became a member of the first professional cowboy association in the USA. He’d been rodeoing before he learned to read. Started at age 3 as a goat-roper.
Those other kids, those older men, wearing jeans and boots and spurs, were busting it to win a belt buckle, maybe a few dozen dollars, in whatever rodeo they entered. The best cowboy won. By the time T. Berry joined what evolved into today’s Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, he was competing for decent money in the 1940s, in places like Shreveport, Fort Smith, Fort Worth, and Lafayette.
His breakout moment wasn’t a moment. It was a month-long competition in Madison Square Garden, with Porter a long way from the family’s Vernon Parish ranch at age 22 in 1949. The New York Knicks played there. They were three years old.
The sports world was different. Boxing and baseball mattered. Horse racing was huge. Basketball, pro football, not so much. Rodeo was just coming into the bright lights and that was obvious by the duration of the World Championships in MSG.
Right place, right time. Young T. Berry Porter was crowned the World Champion Calf Roper in the Garden. Went from off the radar to mainstream star; soon, he was on the Wrangler Rodeo Team and his silhouette was on the patch in the back left pocket of every pair of Wranger jeans sold across America.
Family and his many, many friends will lay T. Berry Porter to rest today in Leesville. He was 99 when he gracefully met his maker Saturday at home.
His story is a perfect example of what’s so wonderful about the upcoming Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame inductions. T. Berry was enshrined in 2019, right alongside Peyton Manning and Les Miles.
Guess who stole the show? The first rodeo cowboy to enter the Hall. Peyt, Les, and the rest loved it. We all did. Nobody more than T. Berry.
Manning, Miles, and the other inductees were cool cats too. Exactly who you’d think they were from seeing them on TV. But along with the glow of A-list celebrity proximity, the lasting joy of the 2019 LSHOF was finding out about T. Berry, the rodeo career he had, the life he was leading – he was still on a tractor, tending to his ranch, every day at age 92 – and in church every Sunday, and helping with the Lions Club Crippled Childrens Home.
No more knocks on poor Brendan Sorsby. We can only hope he can get it together and lead a life halfway as special as T. Berry Porter did. There’s time, if he can make the most of it.
There’s time for you to come see the latest Hall of Fame festivities June 25-27. You’re liable to mingle with some of the best who ever were at what they played, and you’ll find out they are pretty much like your neighbor. Just good folk who did something great.
Although I doubt we’ll ever see the likes of T. Berry ever again.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com