OKLAHOMA CITY, June 13 -- One quarterback's eligibility now has two state attorneys general fighting over it, and they are not on the same side. On Friday, Oklahoma's Gentner Drummond wrote to the Big 12 urging it to suspend Brendan Sorsby, and in the same letter he dismantled the threat his Texas counterpart had made a day earlier, calling Ken Paxton's warnings "meritless" and "facially absurd."

The escalation is remarkable even by the standards of a saga that has already produced a court injunction, an NCAA appeal and a contempt threat. Paxton had told the conference on Thursday that any sanction of Texas Tech would expose it to more than $200 million in liability. Drummond's reply, in effect, was that his fellow Republican attorney ge...