There Are Thousands of Brendan Sorsbys on College Campuses

Brendan Sorsby bet more than $90,000 on games while he quarterbacked the football teams at Indiana University and the University of Cincinnati. Court records show that he began gambling in high school at casinos with friends and started experimenting with sports-betting apps that allowed him to make wagers on his phone before he was even 21—the legal age. Sorsby said he was enticed by introductory offers that allowed him to deposit a few dollars and receive hundreds in free betting credits.

When he got to college, Sorsby said he placed bets between $5 and $50 on his IU team to win. Soon he was placing thousands of bets, often on random events he didn’t follow, such as Turkish basketball games and Romanian soccer matches. “What started as a seemingly harmless activity with friends gradually spiraled into an uncontrollable compulsion,” court documents say. Now the player, who transferred to Texas Tech in 2026, has been diagnosed with a gambling disorder.

Sorsby’s story isn’t unique among college students. Researchers estimate that 6 percent of college students have a serious gambling problem, and men are most affected. A survey from the American Institute for Boys and Men found that 26 percent of young men age 18 to 24 have used a sports betting app, daily fantasy sports, prediction market or other gambling platform in the previous six months, compared to 14 percent of the general public. While there’s no evidence that those users will develop gambling addictions, psychiatrists who study gambling note that without fully developed adult brains, college students are more impulsive and less risk-averse when they’re betting. Age limits do little to prevent young people from betting: About two-thirds of adults report participating in at least one form of gambling before they turned 21. Meanwhile, prediction markets—increasingly seen as just as addictive as gambling—are accessible to 18-year-olds.

Gambling and prediction market platforms also aggressively target this demographic. A growth manager for the prediction market app Polymarket courted a fraternity at Arizona State University earlier this year, offering members a “chapter partnership opportunity” where they’d get branded merch, free credits and even cash in exchange for promoting the app on their social media, placing a Polymarket flag outside the frat house and giving company reps a 15-minute speaking slot during a chapter meeting.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Polymarket also reached out to fraternities and social clubs across the University of California, Berkeley, offering company-branded beer-pong cups and up to $1,000 for parties. And prediction market apps could soon become even more mainstream—Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly directed a team to develop one to rival Polymarket and Kalshi.

The Sorsby case caused reputational damage to higher ed and its position on gambling. Texas Tech wanted to keep him on the field, despite his clear violations of the NCAA’s antigambling rules. Only when colleges in its own conference, the Big 12, filed a lawsuit in federal court, did Texas Tech guide Sorsby into ending his college playing career and applying for the NFL’s supplemental draft. Earlier this week, the NFL denied his application.

Texas Tech’s support for Sorsby, combined with gambling ads and sponsorships across NCAA games—from commercials, arena ads and tickers across the bottom of screens to stadium naming rights—mean higher ed has some work to do to regain its credibility in the fight against gambling addiction among students.

Solutions will have to come from institutions. Statutory guardrails are unlikely any time soon: Gambling fills the coffers of 38 states, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, is looking to expand what types of swaps are allowed on the platforms.

James Borchers, president and CEO of the U.S. Council on Athletes’ Health and chief medical officer for the Big Ten Conference, has argued for an accreditation system for athletic departments on health, safety and well-being. But what about nonathletes? Several organizations have created action guides for institutions to integrate gambling-addiction awareness into their policies about alcohol and drug use. They also offer frameworks for educating students about the risks of gambling and connecting them to recovery support—Sorsby checked himself into residential treatment for his gambling addiction.

Sorsby’s story brought the problem of gambling on college campuses into the spotlight. But thousands of other lower-profile students not involved in athletics struggle with similar compulsions. With so much attention on the scandal, higher ed could use this moment to increase awareness of the insidious threat of gambling on the entire student body and take action to combat it.