Petard, hoisted

Sleep with hornets

And they wonder why they wake up stung

-- Matt Nathanson

A friendly judge in Texas has ruled Brendan Sorsby can play football this fall at Texas Tech, and, man, you've never seen such hand-wringing. Nebraska says it will never play the Red Raiders now. Ditto TCU. Ditto the Big Ten as an entire conference.

These things will happen when a young man  not only carpetbags from school to school -- Tech will be Sorsby's third stop, after pre-Curt Cignetti Indiana and Cincinnati -- but brings a truckload of baggage with him. And by "baggage," we mean, "Would bet on how long it takes Mikey to eat a bowl of Life cereal if the odds were right."

Sorsby, you see, is a young man with a problem. He apparently has a raging gambling jones that puts old heads in mind of Art Schlichter at Ohio State; according to investigators, Sorsby's placed thousands of bets while playing college football, including at least 40 on his own team while at Indiana. The kid seems hooked but good.

Nonetheless, the friendly judge waived the injunction slapped on him by the NCAA, whose record in court these days ranks up there with Germany's record in world wars (to steal an old Dan Jenkins line). So now a known and fairly notorious gambler will be playing quarterback for Tech this season.

Cue the hand-wringing.

"We officially lost our soul," moaned one Big 12 athletic director.

"How is anyone going to trust the outcome of a game again?" fretted TCU coach Sonny Dykes.

"I'm stunned that there would be a question at the court level that this is acceptable," Florida AD Scott Stricklin chimed in.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips was in full agreement, telling ESPN the ruling suggests a "horrendous pattern" that is "eroding the integrity of our process."

This is where the Blob is compelled to snark this: "The integrity of your WHAT?"

Because, listen, as right as all these folks are, they're also blind as bats. They can't see that Brendan Sorsby, with the help of Friendly Judge, his slipped in a door they themselves left wide open.

Jim Phillips, for instance?

He presides over a conference that just extended its deal with ESPN through 2036. ESPN, in turn, has a sponsorship deal with DraftKings, an online gambling platform. So every Saturday afternoon when Wake Forest is playing Clemson or North Carolina is tussling with Georgia Tech, play will occasionally be interrupted by a DraftKings ad.

So how can Phillips -- or anyone in any Power 4 conference, really -- honestly say Brendan Sorsby throwing deep outs for Texas Tech is an Armageddon blow to college football's integrity? Seems to me they themselves crossed that bridge when they climbed in bed with people who were in bed with the gamblers -- or at least the gamblers' facilitators.

Sleep with hornets, wake up stung. Yessir, Matt Nathanson stuck the landing with that lyric.

Or to put it another way: Behold college athletics' own petard, hoisted.