Joel Klatt takes aim at college football over blatant tampering for top QB not in transfer portal

It's no secret that college football is in its seemingly lawless Wild West era, especially when it comes to schools pursuing players from other programs even if they aren't already in the transfer portal.

That "blatant" tampering struck a nerve with Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt this week after Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson revealed he was declaring for the NFL draft despite receiving NIL offers as high as $6.5 million to transfer to another school.

"He's going to turn down college, and he's going to go to the NFL even though he apparently was offered massive, massive dollars to stay in college, albeit to transfer -- by both Miami and Tennessee. He even admitted that the offer hovered around $6.5 million from Miami, which is wild. Wait, how is he getting offers if he's not in the transfer portal? Like, isn't that tampering? Come on, come on," Klatt said. "Like, it's just so blatant at this point."

Simpson made the revelation to On3's Chris Low, telling him Miami and Tennessee initially offered him $4 million, Ole Miss also came in around that number, Tennessee later said it would raise its offer as high as $5 million, and then Miami pushed its offer to $6.5 million.

“Miami was kind of like, ‘All right, we’re moving on,’ and then they lost out on Sam Leavitt (who signed with LSU) and came back with that big number,” Simpson said, per Low. “And then Ole Miss called again and said they could match it.”

Although there seems to be no governance or repercussions, schools aren't permitted to contact potential transfers until their names are formally entered into the transfer portal.

Simpson never entered the transfer portal, and he said he ultimately passed on the lucrative offers because he didn't want to undermine his legacy as a team captain at Alabama or the time he had invested in that program by becoming a one-year rental at another school.

Klatt called out college football coaches for not banding together to curb the rampant tampering within the sport now.

"And, by the way, I'm not just pointing at Miami and Tennessee. Yeah, he names them right there so we know that they made offers toward him, but come on folks, don't we know that this is prevalent? Don't coaches complain about it all the time?" Klatt said.

"And yet, the coaches get together at the AFCA, and they talk about rules changes and things that we can change in college football, and we don't get them to lock arms and say, 'Listen, we're going to try to tackle tampering, which we all hate'? No, no, no, no, we don't get them tackling that, we get them changing a redshirt rule.

"What? I'm sorry, what? We didn't need a new redshirt rule. ... I don't understand this at all. Again, decision-making in college football is frustrating. They should have locked arms and tried to tackle things like the transfer portal and specifically tampering. Which, if they all go in there and try to make some rules and then abide by those rules, then college football would be in a better place. But they didn't -- they fixed the redshirt rule, which I didn't even realize we needed to fix."