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Big 12 commissioner declines to address Sorsby gambling saga and describes league as `16 strong’

FRISCO, Texas (AP) — Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark wanted to talk Tuesday about the league’s upcoming season, not the Brendan Sorsby gambling saga at Texas Tech that led to a lot of legal wrangling and a since-dismissed court order that had sent shockwaves through college sports.

Even though that was the first thing Yormark was asked about after his opening remarks at Big 12 football media days.

“I appreciate the question. I appreciate other questions that are probably going to come forth today. Today is not the time to address that issue,” Yormark answered. “Today is about celebrating the upcoming football season and celebrating our 16 schools.”

Yormark later spoke about the conference “moving ahead as 16 strong.”

That would include Texas Tech, which the league and its other 15 members were discussing potentially punishing if Sorsby had indeed played this fall for the Red Raiders after the quarterback transferred from Cincinnati, another Big 12 school where he played the past two seasons.

Sorsby won’t play even after being granted a temporary injunction against the NCAA last month that would have allowed him to remain eligible even after he acknowledged making thousands of impermissible bets worth at least $90,000 on college and pro sports. Those include some bets on his own team when he was a freshman at Indiana in 2022, which in past cases had led to players being banned from playing.

Sorsby later dropped his lawsuit against the NCAA, making him ineligible again, after the NCAA appealed the injunction and the Big 12 filed a still-pending federal complaint in U.S. District Court in Dallas. The conference was trying to preserve its ability to use the league’s bylaws for possible sanctions against Texas Tech had Sorsby played this season.

One reporter asked Yormark why Texas Tech fans should believe comments about the league moving ahead as one. The reporter mentioned that the Big 12 last year targeted the school’s tortilla-throwing tradition — passing the measure on a 15-1 vote — while Oklahoma State has an artificial noise exemption for students to bang paddles against the stadium pads along the sideline. He also mentioned Cincinnati, Sorsby’s former school.

Yormark walked across the stage, then asked the reporter to stand up and repeat his question.

“I said we’re going forward as 16 strong, and that’s my answer to your question,” Yormark then answered.

Monster partner

Yormark announced a multiyear agreement with Monster Energy to be the entitlement partner for conference-controlled Big 12 regular-season football games, as well as men’s and women’s basketball.

Yormark said the partnership with the international energy drink brand is “built on the right brand and culture alignment. … (and) will take this conference to places it has not been before.”

It will include a co-branded Monster Energy and Big 12 logo being featured on football and basketball jerseys, fields and courts, with additional integration across conference digital and social media channels. The company’s first partnership in college athletics began last fall when the brand became the conference’s official energy drink.

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What the death sentence for former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad tells us about the future of the country

By CNN
(CNN) — The judge who sentenced Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia last week was himself sentenced to death in absentia by the same regime years earlier.Irony in its purest form.Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan defected from the Ministry of Justice in 2013 joining the judicial bodies of the opposition. His reinstatement as judge after Assad was toppled and fled the country for Russia in December 2024 is an illustration of the country’s pursuit of transitional justice.Some Syrians celebrated in the streets after the death sentence handed down to al-Assad and his younger brother, Maher. Words like “historic” and “symbolic” tripped off the tongue.For the first time, after decades of brutal Assad rule – by both Bashar al-Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad before him - the model of impunity in Syria has been broken, even if the penalty is unlikely to ever be carried out.The Syrian civil war, which started in 2011, killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced millions more and has ravaged the country’s economy.Ibrahim al-Assil, a senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative, said the sentences handed down last week are “significant politically and significant emotionally, but at the same time this is only one part of justice that many Syrians have waited for - and are still demanding.”For the United Nations, justice is just one of the “four pillars of transitional justice” with truth, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence carrying equal weight.What does Assad’s sentencing mean for Syria?When Assad fled Syria for exile in Moscow in December 2024, he left behind institutions and a legal system his family had built over six decades.Al-Assil says the sentencing was “the first step to look at the new state, to ask these questions, are new rules and new institutions emerging in Syria that differentiate between justice under Assad and justice post-Assad.”Another question is whether this sentencing met the standards of credible transitional justice.Amnesty International has urged Syria to end trials in absentia and the use of the death penalty, incorporate crimes under international law into domestic legislation and reform the judiciary. The justice ministry rejected the criticism, saying the proceedings complied with Syrian law and included the participation of victims and their representatives.Fadel Abdul Ghany, founder of the Syrian Network for Human Rights which has been documenting victims of the Assad regime since 2011 says: “We need lots of cases, not only one, especially targeting the highest rank, so that the feeling of anger in between the people is reduced, so that Syria can move ahead.”Al-Assil agrees that more localized trials need to follow, bringing as many perpetrators of the former regime’s brutal system to justice as possible. “For many families, they are still looking for those who disappeared, and they want to know where they are, what happened to them…maybe for a family in Homs transitional justice looks very different to a family in Dara’a.”Few believe Russian President Vladimir Putin would ever extradite Assad from his self-imposed exile in Moscow. The death sentence complicates any extradition under Russian law, but a decision not to hand over a former close ally to face justice would be far more political than legal, experts say.What is going right in SyriaThe legalities of transitional justice may be complex, but this verdict is still seen as a landmark moment for justice.When asked what else gives him hope for Syria’s future, Abdul Ghany says; “I think what’s working is freedom of speech, freedom of criticism… Syrians can speak freely and criticize the government, authority, even the high-ranking.” He added that he frequently criticizes the new government without repercussions.Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former rebel commander who has served as Syria’s President since 2025, has been outward looking since taking power.After Assad’s ouster, Syria has bolstered ties with the United States which has lifted most of its crippling sanctions on the country. It has renewed relations with its Arab neighbors who cut ties with Damascus during Assad’s crackdown on protests and welcomed French President Emanuel Macron to Syria in July, the first Western leader to visit since 2024.Al Sharaa reached an agreement with Moscow just days ago over two key Russian outposts in Syria; the Mediterranean coastal bases will be transferred to Syrian control.Entrenched challenges remain, however, in the quest for national unity in Syria. Tensions between the Syrian Army and the Druze minority in southern Syria continue to spark deadly encounters. Al-Assil says he sees no breakthrough on the horizon yet. “The government still seems to deal with the issue as only security and military issue while it’s also a social issue.”There is also persistent friction between Arab and Kurdish communities in the northeast of the country, and the government has had to respond to pockets of violence against the religious Alawite minority along Syria’s coast.Al-Assil also insists that Syria still needs a national dialogue process “to talk about all those divisions between ethnicities and minorities but also to talk about what Syria is and what they want Syria to be and that process is still not there.”The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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