Massive NIL overtures from other schools couldn’t delay Ty Simpson’s NFL dreams

The sums of money being thrown at Ty Simpson were staggering, even by today’s gaudy NIL standards, but he kept going back to something his old coach, Nick Saban, told him.

“He’s always had a way of helping you see things clearly, sort of like your grandfather,” Simpson told On3 on Tuesday, soon after officially filling out paperwork to apply for the NFL draft.

But over the last several days, Simpson admitted his head was spinning as he tried to wrap his hands around his football future. Should he turn pro, which he initially decided to do last week? Or should he enter the transfer portal and play another season of college football elsewhere and become the highest-paid player in the country.

Simpson said the offers were pouring into his agent. Miami and Tennessee both said they would pay him $4 million. Ole Miss also jumped in around the $4 million mark, and Tennessee said it could possibly go as high as $5 million. Eventually, Miami ran the tab up to $6.5 million.

“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.”

And while nothing was in writing, Simpson remembers Sunday being a blur. He was supposed to go duck hunting after church, but couldn’t do it.

“I had a knot in my stomach,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

As he did when initially deciding on the NFL route last week, Simpson again turned to prayer and talked candidly with his parents. His father, Jason, is the head football coach at UT Martin.

“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,” Simpson said. “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.”

It’s about that time Simpson remembered Saban’s words when they talked soon after Alabama’s season ended on New Year’s Day, a disappointing 38-3 loss to Indiana in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff.

Saban’s message to Simpson was simple: “Take the money out of it. If everybody was offering you zero dollars, what would you want to do? Would you want to come back and play college ball, or would you want to go play NFL ball?”

From the time he was a kid, Simpson’s dream had always been to play in the NFL. And with feedback from NFL personnel that he projected as a solid first-round pick, Simpson knew the money was already going to be there, probably even more, so his decision was made.

Having already made an announcement last Wednesday that he was headed to the NFL, Simpson said he followed up with Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb on Tuesday morning to assure them that his decision was final, that he was indeed turning pro and not planning to return to college and play somewhere else. He said it was important that DeBoer and Grubb hear the news from him with everything that was out there about other schools willing to pay him millions of dollars.

“KD and Coach Grubb have been so good to me,” Simpson said. “I’m sure they were wondering what was going on because they wanted a decision from me last Thursday so they could start building their roster for next year. I was honest and told them what I’d been offered, but that I just couldn’t do it because of everything I stood for and what Alabama had meant to me and the legacy that I built there. Everybody would just remember me as the guy who took all this money and went to Miami or Tennessee for his last year. But I was a captain. I put my hand and footprints in the cement at Denny Chimes.

“I would have lost everything that I built at Alabama.”

And, yet, Simpson said the business part of college football in this era is always going to present opportunities that players owe it to themselves and families to at least consider.

“It’s no different than coaches,” he said. “What would a coach do? Lane Kiffin was at Ole Miss, built a great team, a team that went to the playoff, but he went to another SEC school to better himself, better his career and get a better salary. Now, of course, he’s hated at Ole Miss, but that’s the business side of things. That’s life. It’s sort of always been that way for coaches, but now it’s new for players.”

Simpson said he never made $1 million in NIL money in a season at Alabama, but he also noted that he started in just one of his four seasons.

“I know people always say it’s not about the money, and I could have made way more money somewhere else, but I was happy at Alabama and wanted to stand on what I built there. That’s the way I wanted to go out,” Simpson said.

Simpson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Alabama during his four years on campus and waited his turn to be the starter after coming in under Saban as a five-star prospect. He said that journey, and playing for both Saban and DeBoer, will better equip him for life in the NFL.

Simpson finished second in the SEC last season with 3,567 passing yards and 28 touchdowns. He threw only five career interceptions in 523 attempts, but he didn’t make his first start until his fourth year on campus. He said every year he was at Alabama that he had chances to transfer, but he was set on being the Crimson Tide’s starting quarterback.

Simpson said the closest he came to transferring, and he’s still not sure he would have pulled the trigger, was after the 2024 season. He grew up in Martin, Tennessee and was a fan of the Tennessee Vols as a kid. So when there was talk that Nico Iamaleava might enter the winter transfer portal following the Vols’ playoff loss to Ohio State, Simpson was intrigued.

“I would have had to jump into the portal with him still on the team,” Simpson said. “He stayed and didn’t leave until the spring, and you couldn’t transfer within the SEC in the spring portal. I was a Tennessee guy growing up. It just never worked out that way for me to go there. It wasn’t God’s plan. His plan was for me to go to Alabama, and I couldn’t be happier.”

Simpson would be the fifth Alabama quarterback taken in the top three rounds of the draft since the 2020 draft. He said he received grades from 18 different NFL teams and that all but one had him as a first-round pick on their board.

“The one that didn’t said I could interview my way into the first round,” said Simpson, who was driving to Mobile on Tuesday to begin working out with quarterback guru David Morris at Quarterback Country.

The 6-2, 210-pound Simpson showed his durability and toughness throughout this season despite taking a pounding. He said he played through a building disc in his back, bursitis in his elbow and had a reaction to some medication that inflamed the lining in his stomach.

“I couldn’t eat anything but chicken noodle soup and crackers for two weeks going into the Auburn game and SEC championship game,” Simpson joked.

And then in the playoff loss to Indiana, he said he cracked the 10th rib on his left side (the floating rib) late in the first half while scrambling and taking a helmet to the ribs and fumbling, an injury that can be especially painful when trying to bend or twist.

“I tried to go in the second half, the first possession, but couldn’t throw it past 10 yards,” Simpson said.

It’s not the way Simpson would have chosen to end his Alabama career, his only season as the starter, but he hopes to be remembered as somebody who loves football and loves Alabama.

“And somebody who was loyal,” he said.