Brendan Sorsby Redux

There are still some loose ends in the Brendan Sorsby Matter.  The NFL has not held a Supplemental Draft since 2023, and the last player taken in a Supplemental Draft was back in 2019.  That year, the Cards took Jalen Thompson, DB, with a fifth-round pick that they forfeited in the 2020 “regular Draft”.  Brendan Sorsby arrives at Supplemental Draft status on a different trajectory than previous participants to be sure and that leaves some unanswered questions.

• If Sorsby is such a talent, will a team try to grab him in Round 1 and thereby forfeit their first round pick next season?  Well, there are folks out there who think he would be the top-rated QB coming out of college next year if he were to play college football in 2026.  However, the last QB taken in the first round of a Supplemental Draft was Dave Brown by the Giants back in the early 1990s; that did not work out well for the Giants.  However, two other QBs taken in the first round of earlier Supplemental Drafts worked out very well – – Steve Young and Bernie Kosar.
• Might the NFL banish Sorsby entirely rendering all this moot?  I am not an attorney, but my guess is that the league would be challenged in court if they tried to do that and the potential loss in such a situation is too great to risk.  The NFL survived the “Paul Hornung” and “Alex Karas” suspensions; it survived Joe Namath’s bar that was a “crime hangout” and it survived Art Schlichter.  Brendan Sorsby is not exactly terra incognita for the league.
• Might the NFL issue a suspension of some type for Sorsby?  Sure, the NFL has precedent for that kind of behavior.  In fact, Terrelle Pryor seems to be a reasonable precedent there.  The NCAA suspended Pryor for 5 games; he “fled” to the Supplemental Draft; Roger Goodell suspended him for 5 NFL games saying that the Supplemental Draft was not intended to be a haven for players who got on the wrong side of the NCAA.  As of today, Sorsby would be suspended for 2 games as per the decision of a judge in a lawsuit Sorsby filed against the NCAA; so, a 2-game suspension from the NFL would have precedence here.

This storyline has had so many twists and turns over the past 6 months or so that it would not surprise me if the next headline would be that Brendan Sorsby had been abducted by aliens from the Xygork Nebula and there would be no Supplemental NFL Draft this year because Sorsby was the only player who had declared for such an event.  I am tempted to say, “What are the odds on that?”  But that would be a cheap way to close out my comments this morning.

Moving on …  Now that the NBA season is over and the Knicks have had their parade in NYC, I want to make a general comment for the league mavens to consider:

• Change the dress code for coaches in games!

I certainly do not mean to imply that coaches should have to be attired in tailored suits costing thousands of dollars each; they are there to coach a team not to be a fashion-plate.  However, when the coaches show up in athleisure wear and pullovers with team logos, they look more like animated sandwich-boards for NBA merchandise.

• Memo to Adam Silver:  You can do better than this.

Next up …  Check out the MLB standings this morning; the Chicago White Sox lead the AL Central Division by a percentage point.  Over the last three seasons, the cumulative record for the White Sox was 162-324; that is a winning percentage of .333.  That is quite a turnaround even if the 2026 season is less than half over.

Switching gears …  The other night I was grazing among the sports channels and happened across a telecast of a Pirates/A’s game from Sacramento.  Because that field and the story of how MLB came to be in that stadium is interesting, I stopped and watched a couple of innings.  I came away with a couple of thoughts:

• The A’s are playing .500 baseball this year.  Their lineup has some interesting young players who do not cost much and who should continue to develop skills.  There is a young core there; it may not turn out to be legendary; but it is a solid foundation.
• The park is a millstone for the team.  I cannot believe that any top-shelf MLB free agent would sign up to play there even if the owners decided to open up the wallet and spend what was necessary.  So, that young core of players is pretty much on their own for the next several years.
• In 2028, the new Las Vegas stadium is set to open; unless the architect was a complete loser, the facility should be attractive to free agents who might sign on there and help the team excel.
• However … the seating capacity of the new stadium will be 33,000 and with 81 home dates, that means the maximum home attendance would be 2.67M paying customers.  Is that enough for ownership to “open the wallet”?

Finally, with Father’s Day looming, I’ll close here with this observation from Tim Russert:

“The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………