Ty Simpson turned down $6.5 million offer from Miami before entering 2026 NFL Draft

All the money in college football wasn’t enough to keep Ty Simpson from turning pro.

Despite the massive sums of money that Tennessee, Miami and Ole Miss attempted to throw at the Alabama quarterback, Simpson was not swayed into going into the transfer portal to play another year of college football. But it wouldn’t be right to say it didn’t give him pause. 

Simpson revealed in an interview with On3 that offers had poured into his agent, with Miami and Tennessee willing to pay him $4 million before Ole Miss got into the mix around the $4 million range. 

Tennessee was willing to go as high as $5 million, and Miami went up to a staggering $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.”

The massive amounts of money that schools were offering made the QB unsure of what he wanted to do, and the decision was becoming so agonizing that he said he had a “knot in my stomach.”

Simpson said it was something his former coach, Nick Saban, had said to him previously that helped him decide. 

“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?” Simpson explained about Saban’s message. 

The Alabama product announced last week that he was going to the NFL draft, and he reassured Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb on Tuesday that he was going to turn pro. 

“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,” he said. “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.”

Simpson led the Crimson Tide to an 11-4 record while completing 305 passes for 3,567 yards and 28 touchdowns. 

Alabama reached the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff before losing to Indiana in the Rose Bowl.