Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson formally declared for the 2026 NFL Draft, ending speculation about his future in college football. In the past few days, reports linked several schools with mammoth offers to the Crimson Tide quarterback to forego the draft and return to college football for an extra season.
Is There Tampering Surrounding Former Alabama QB Ty Simpson?
The schools mentioned in the reports trying to woo Simpson included SEC heavyweights, the Tennessee Volunteers and the Ole Miss Rebels and national championship contenders, the Miami Hurricanes, who reportedly offered a $6.5 million deal to the quarterback.
During Thursday’s segment of the “Joel Klatt Show,” analyst Joel Klatt was livid with the Hurricanes and Volunteers for trying to tamper with Simpson, despite the quarterback not being in the transfer portal.
“How is he getting offers and he’s not in the transfer portal? Isn’t that tampering? It’s just so blatant at this point,” Klatt said. “He names them right there, so we know they made offers toward him? But don’t we know that this is prevalent? Don’t coaches complain about it all the time? And yet, the coaches get together and don’t say, ‘We’ll tackle tampering.’
“We don’t get them tackling that. We get them changing a redshirt rule. Decision-making in college football is frustrating. They should have locked arms and tried to tackle things like the transfer portal and specifically things like tampering. If they all go there and make some rules and abide by them, college football would be in a better place.”
After Simpson signed the papers formally entering the draft, Tennessee was left in limbo with quarterback Joey Aguilar’s eligibility case postponed, while Miami lost out to the LSU Tigers in the battle to sign quarterbacks Sam Leavitt and Husan Longstreet.
Simpson Details the Difficulty of Turning Down a $6.5 Million Offer
During an interview with On3’s Chris Low, Simpson detailed the difficulty of turning down the massive financial offers from the Hurricanes and the Volunteers to join them for one season.
“Miami was kind of like, ‘All right, we’re moving on,’ and then they lost out on Sam Leavitt and came back with that big number,” Simpson said. “And then Ole Miss called again and said they could match it. I had a knot in my stomach. I didn’t know what to do.
“I really felt good with my decision to go pro, but that amount of money to play college football again for what amounts to about eight months makes you stop and think. I remember my parents telling me that $6 million was more than they had made the whole time they had been married, but the thing they wanted most for me was to be happy.”
Simpson was one of the standout quarterbacks in college football during the regular season, earning a PFSN College QB Impact score of 81.7 after accounting for 3,567 passing yards, 28 touchdowns and five interceptions, while adding 93 rushing yards and two scores.
