Former NFL star Ryan Clark gets vocal on Brendan Sorsby situation
Former Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby has to wait on the NFL after the supplemental draft cancellation, and former NFL star Ryan Clark doesn’t like it.
Clark, who played with four different teams as a safety between 2002 and 2014, discussed the NFL’s denial of Sorsby during The Pivot Podcast on Friday. Sorsby left college football over NCAA gambling policy violations, and the NFL nixed his chance to play this fall afterward.
“The NFL proved a point with Brendan Sorsby that we will protect the shield at all costs, but the NFL also has a problem,” Clark explained. “Every sport now, especially professionally, pushes betting because when people bet on games, they have more interest in the games.”
Sports gambling has been a growing industry for years and is widely present online and on TV. With the mainstream rise of sports betting, there have been more professional and college athletes embroiled in sports gambling scandals, and some have received suspensions or faced legal consequences.
Clark also acknowledged the reality of gambling addiction and that it is having an effect on and off the field, as is the case with Sorsby who will now sit out of a year of football. Clark broke down why the NFL had to make the call on Sorsby, the only player who applied for the supplemental draft.
“With Brendan Sorsby, they couldn’t say to him, ‘Hey, look, you told us you had a gambling addiction. And it truly doesn’t matter what sport it is, whether you’re betting on baseball or horse racing or whatever it is, because if you have an addiction, that’s going to in some way leak into your football,’” Clark said.
The NFL punted that problem away for a year, and Sorsby has a chance to get his life and career back on track. With the CFL also ruling out Sorsby, it looks like the young quarterback will have time to focus on issues regarding his previous actions.
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