Recently retired Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione might not still be in college athletics full-time, but he's still keeping tabs on everything going on and can give his honest opinion.
Castiglione was recently a guest on the "Amber & Ian" show on ESPN Radio when he gave his honest thoughts on the Brendan Sorsby situation at Texas Tech that has taken over college football this week.
Joe C still not sure boycotting Red Raiders is enough
For those in Norman living under a rock or just ignoring Big 12 happenings now, Sorsby, Texas Tech's prized transfer quarterback from Cincinnati, admitted this offseason to betting on college football, including on his own team, multiple times throughout his career. However a judge in Lubbock on Monday ruled that he's still eligible to play this season despite the NCAA saying otherwise. That result immediately stirred outrage across college sports and led some schools to even boycott playing the Red Raiders in anything.
But even those threats, Castiglione believes, aren't harsh enough.
"If we see the player actually play the majority of the season -- again, there have not been any discussion of consequences -- I think it has to go beyond that," Castiglione said. "I think just not scheduling them is a big step, but it's not a big enough step. This is going to take a huge cut out of the soul of college athletics.
"I think we have to take much more, perhaps you would say draconian action, that would prevent (Texas Tech) from participating in some of the other competitions. Maybe they play their seasons, but maybe there's something more that impacts their ability to participate in the postseason."
"This is going to take a huge cut out of the soul of college athletics."
— ESPN Radio (@ESPNRadio) June 10, 2026
Former @OU_Athletics AD Joe Castiglione on the court ruling that restored Brendan Sorsby's eligibility via Amber and Ian ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/YqrzKBbTCv
Oklahoma has somewhat been dragged into this situation in a way. As Texas Tech fans desperately try to defend their program's decision, the incident with Joe Mixon in 2014 has been consistently brought up, and was even more in response to Castiglione's comments. The point of the argument, though, is consequence, and OU suspended Mixon for the entire 2014 season as he was also handed a misdemeanor assault charge. There's no defending Mixon's actions in any way, but Tech fans bringing up that situation does nothing to better their argument.
This recent issue is also less about Sorsby, but more about Texas Tech as a whole as the entire university goes against what everyone else says (other than a bias local judge) to have the Red Raiders' best player on the field at some point.
Castiglione is correct in stating something has to be done by someone with more power than Texas Tech, or else this will become yet a new problem to taint college sports.
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