FRISCO, Texas — Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire still corresponds with Brendan Sorsby every few days. Tight end Terrance Carter Jr. keeps in touch with him, too, even exchanging texts Tuesday morning as Carter headed to Big 12 media days as one of the Red Raiders’ player representatives.Sorsby is no longer Texas Tech’s quarterback — not since he announced plans on June 15 to depart the university and prep for the NFL, ending his fight to stay eligible for Texas Tech despite violating NCAA gambling rules. But the quarterback who never played a snap for the Red Raiders continues to loom large when it comes to the reigning Big 12 champions, even as the team’s leaders try to pick up the pieces and move forward into a season that carries sky-high expectations.“I’m gonna rock with him until the wheels fall off,” Carter said.Sorsby transferred from Cincinnati to Texas Tech in January in a coup for the Red Raiders at the time, but stepped away from the program in late April to seek treatment for gambling addiction. He spent 35 days at a facility in Arizona. Details emerged that he bet on his own team while at Indiana and wagered at least $90,000 on more than 9,000 bets over the course of his college career.The NCAA ruled Sorsby permanently ineligible and denied his appeal for reinstatement in late May, but Sorsby filed a lawsuit and a Texas judge granted him an injunction to restore his eligibility on June 8.One week later, after the Big 12 filed a lawsuit of its own in federal court, Sorsby elected to drop the fight and pursue a path to the NFL. (He won’t be eligible for the NFL until 2027 after the league opted not to hold a supplemental draft for him.)The saga — and Texas Tech’s fight to keep Sorsby on the team — pitted the Big 12 against the Red Raiders, who have poured millions into their program to rise from the middle of the pack in the conference into a College Football Playoff contender. McGuire told The Athletic on Tuesday the level of pushback caught him by surprise, especially from conferences and athletic directors.“This has been the toughest thing that I’ve been through as a head coach,” he said.“Did I think this was going to bring everybody together going in one direction? I didn’t see that. But when I look back at it, it’s gonna be something that we gotta learn from.”McGuire said in the wake of the Sorsby injunction, he received private support from friends, including new Oklahoma State coach Eric Morris and BYU coach Kalani Sitake. Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham called him after making a joke in a group text to clarify he was joking. He noted that Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, with whom he publicly sparred with over Texas Tech’s strength of schedule this offseason, also reached out to check on him.Big 12 coaches who were asked for their thoughts on Tuesday mostly stayed out of the fray. Baylor coach Dave Aranda said he told Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark he was “proud” of how the conference handled it.“I hope that at a human level, he’s got the support he needs and that things work out for him. He’s in a tough spot,” Aranda said of Sorsby. “But I’m really proud of the league doing what I feel is best for all the members involved. I think it’s a big moment for us.”Yormark, who declined to answer questions about Sorsby in his news conference and had a testy exchange with a reporter who covers Texas Tech, told The Athletic the conference is “moving forward 16-strong” when asked about its relationship with the university.“There are always going to be disagreements,” Yormark said. “It’s never personal. And then you move forward, and that’s where we are.”As McGuire made the rounds Tuesday, he dealt with questions about the rocky season head-on, with a camera crew working on a documentary for Paramount+ in tow.“I know that as a whole there’s some fences to mend and everything like that,” McGuire said. “My main focus right now is to get this team ready to play.”For Texas Tech’s players in attendance, who addressed the saga publicly on Tuesday, the offseason was a rollercoaster. The only bit of normalcy came in the brief time after Sorsby got an injunction, when he returned to Texas Tech’s locker room.“The world’s on his shoulders and he always came in with a smile on his face,” said offensive lineman Sheridan Wilson, whose locker was next to Sorsby’s.“This guy is battling an addiction. So it’s kind of hard to talk to someone like that sometimes because you don’t really know what to say,” added Wilson. “So what I try to do is just be there for him and listen whenever he needs me, and I let him know he can call me at any point if he needs to talk.”Carter said Sorsby told him Tuesday he missed the team and loved his teammates, and they joked about their parents.“That was pretty much my best friend. Him in the locker room every day, you wouldn’t have known anything like that was going on,” he said. “Seeing him leave, we were all hurt about it.”The Red Raiders, who were 14th in Stewart Mandel’s post-spring top 25, turn now to Will Hammond, who started two games and appeared in eight last year as Behren Morton’s backup. Hammond suffered a torn ACL on Oct. 25, and Texas Tech is hopeful he’ll be ready for its Sept. 5 season opener against Abilene Christian. He’s expected to be released for full participation on Aug. 21, McGuire said.If Hammond is unavailable, Texas Tech will turn to junior Kirk Francis, who arrived at Texas Tech in January after starting 12 games in three seasons at Tulsa.McGuire said he’s reiterated gambling education with his team but also recognizes that Sorsby is unlikely to be the last college athlete caught up in gambling.“You see it almost every day. Put $50 and win this. You see it on every commercial,” Carter said. “I don’t think it’s hard to get addicted to something you’re seeing over and over.”McGuire said the Sorsby saga did make the university re-examine how it vets incoming transfers and recruits.“I’ve had some really interesting conversations with people that have done this for a long time, investigations in the NFL,” McGuire said. “You’re talking about speed dating. Would that have been found out? I don’t know.”He added that he’s previously called head coaches such as Gus Malzahn and Mack Brown to vet incoming transfers from their teams.“We’ve done a really good job of vetting and maybe it’s a point we need to talk about as an industry that if you do know something about a kid, that goes into the information in the portal. If this was a Title IX issue, we would have known about it,” McGuire said. “Maybe we should, as an industry, report those things if you knew about it, that this was in their past, that’s something you share, that there is a red flag.”