Last month, Attorney General Ken Paxton waded into the explosive college football saga involving Brendan Sorsby, the Texas Tech University quarterback who had admitted to placing thousands of improper sports bets, including on his own team’s games, resulting in the NCAA declaring him ineligible to play.
In a June 11 letter, Paxton’s office warned the Big 12 Conference on behalf of Texas Tech that any move to sanction the university for fielding Sorsby would be “unlawful” and potentially expose it to $200 million in damages.
One day before he sent that letter, Texas Tech Board of Regents Chair Cody Campbell, one of Sorsby’s most public defenders, donated $274,300 to a fundraising committee supporting Paxton in his bid for U.S. Senate, according to campaign finance records newly filed with the Federal Election Committee Wednesday.
Campbell declined to comment on the record for this story. Paxton’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment or to questions about whether Paxton indicated to Campbell that his office would send the letter if he made the donation. Texas Tech also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Campbell, a former Texas Tech lineman who has donated at least $25 million to the school’s athletics program, was appointed to the board of regents in 2021 and became chair in 2025. Throughout Sorsby’s eligibility drama, Campbell and Texas Tech vocally defended his right to play, casting him as a student in recovery from addiction and his situation as the “outcome of a broken system.”
Campbell is also a major GOP donor. From 2016 onward, he gave $30,000 to Paxton’s state-level campaigns, and in this year’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, he donated to both Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
His June 10 donation to Paxton Victory, one of Paxton’s joint fundraising committees, appears to be among his largest contributions over the years. Campbell also previously gave almost $700,000 to Trump 47 Committee Inc. and $500,000 to MAGA Inc., President Donald Trump’s principal super PAC.
Paxton, who has historically posted relatively weak fundraising totals, is locked in a competitive race against Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico, who has raised record-breaking sums over the course of his campaign. From April through June of this year, Talarico’s campaign brought in more than $30 million — three times as much as Paxton’s haul. Recent public polling has found Paxton and Talarico effectively tied, though a Democrat has not won statewide in Texas since 1994.
Texas Tech announced in May that Sorsby had been ruled ineligible to participate in the upcoming football season after court documents found he had placed at least $90,000 in sports bets while attending Texas Tech and playing football at two other universities. Sorsby placed bets on his own team while playing at Indiana, and in Texas, where sports betting is illegal, he sent money to people in other states to bet on his behalf. The university said it intended to “quickly initiate the reinstatement process.”
Sorsby, who had taken leave from Texas Tech to receive inpatient treatment for his gambling addiction, sued to regain his eligibility. On June 8, a state district judge in Lubbock temporarily blocked the NCAA from prohibiting Sorsby from playing most of the upcoming season.
The NCAA appealed the decision, saying in a statement that it “must continue to aggressively defend against actions that defraud college athletics and threaten competitive integrity, such as betting on one's own sport.”
On June 11, Paxton’s office — led by the antitrust and general litigation division chiefs — sent its letter to the Big 12, warning the conference it would expose itself to liability to the tune of “substantially more than $200 million” if it went ahead and sanctioned Texas Tech.
The Office of the Attorney General “was informed that the Big 12 and schools within the conference were considering sanctioning Texas Tech for honoring the Temporary Injunction Order and continuing its support of Sorsby as a student-athlete,” Paxton’s office said in a June 11 press release.
Soon after, the Big 12 sued Paxton, Texas Tech, the Texas Tech University System, Chancellor Brandon Creighton, Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec and athletic director Kirby Hocutt.
“The Big 12 and its Member Institutions … have no interest in being required to endorse or even appearing to endorse unethical and indeed unlawful conduct that strikes at the heart of athletic integrity,” the conference wrote in its complaint, arguing that Paxton and Texas Tech were infringing on the conference’s First Amendment right to enforce its bylaws.
Campbell announced June 15 that Sorsby would not be a member of the Texas Tech football team this fall as a result of the June 22 deadline to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft, not due to legal concerns.
“The bottom line is that Texas Tech did absolutely nothing but act with complete integrity through this entire process,” Campbell said in a statement. “We broke no rules, no laws, and crossed no ethical lines. We are proud to represent a university that supports its students the way that we do.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
