Jonathon Becker

As a veteran Texas litigator who has fought my fair share of TRO/TI battles, several things to be aware of regarding the temporary injunction order issued to allow Brendan Sorsby to play for Texas Tech this season: (1) The temporary injunction obtained by Sorsby is valid through the date of trial. So by setting the trial date for after the college football season ends the Lubbock County state district court effectively awards Sorsby ultimate relief; he can play the full season under the TI, excluding only the first two games carved out in the text of the TI order. (2) In Texas a TI is subject to immediate (“interlocutory”) appeal. The appeal will go to the 7th Court of Appeals in Amarillo, Texas. (3) The problem with the appeal is that even an accelerated appeal of the TI order is likely to take at least 9 to 12 months, meaning the college football season will be long over before the Amarillo Court of Appeals affirms or vacates the TI. (4) The only way the interlocutory appeal of the TI order gets resolved before the college football season ends is if the Amarillo Court of Appeals orders expedited briefings and decides the appeal “on the papers” without oral argument. But even such an expedited appeal is likely to run well into the college football season. (5) At bottom, as Diego Pavia and now Brendan Sorsby illustrate, these sort of emergency injunctive proceedings are a huge problem for the NCAA: hometown judges (in Texas elected at the county level) err on the side of granting the TI to allow the key player to play for Hometown U, and the college football season is much shorter than the appellate process. So the preliminary ruling on the emergency injunction effectively decides the entire case and, if granted, allows the player to play a full season.