The 19-year-old graduating college before starting at QB for Ole Miss: Meet Austin Simmons
Austin Simmons has always been on the fast track. The quarterback trained with NFL players when he was 12, completed his high school coursework with a jaw-dropping 5.34 GPA at age 16 and left his Miami home to enroll at Ole Miss two years earlier than expected.
There was just one problem for the academic wunderkind with a snappy left arm that lit up the football field and the pitcher's mound: Simmons didn't have a driver's license.
"I had to teach him how to drive in Mississippi," his father, David Simmons, told CBS Sports.
Austin Simmons hasn't yet taken the mantle as Lane Kiffin's next great quarterback, but he is well known in Oxford, where football is king and the starting quarterback makes you Mississippi royalty (Simmons will start this fall in place of departed first-round pick Jaxson Dart). Nearly four months before he slings the football, Simmons graduates May 10 after earning a bachelor's degree in multidisciplinary studies.
Yes, at 19, the new face of Ole Miss football will be a college graduate before he's even introduced as the starting quarterback.
"It's a weird feeling," Simmons said. "Everyone's older than you, and you're looked upon, like, he's just a baby on campus. I'm here, I'm young and I'm just gonna make the most of it."
Simmons' advanced academic pace as a youngster started because of baseball. Fearing he may not eclipse 6-feet, his father focused on developing him as a southpaw pitcher. To better prepare him as an athlete, and the possibility of being drafted to play baseball before enrolling in college, he began high school coursework at home in middle school.
His father also saw benefits from playing sports alongside older kids, so he trained with NFL players when working at quarterback and began playing baseball with a varsity team in sixth grade.
"I don't give them time off. I don't give them any exits," David Simmons said. "We go to school on Christmas. I don't care about Christmas, I don't care about Easter, I don't care about none of that. We don't miss days."
David Simmons played in the Arena Football League and also coached for multiple franchises. At 5-foot-9, he played receiver and defensive back, and there was some thought that his genetics might prevent his son from being tall enough to play quarterback effectively in college. Then, Austin grew to 6 feet in middle school. Today, he's 6-4 and 215 pounds.
Austin's baseball career as a youngster was impressive. He threw back-to-back no-hitters and had a batting average of .365 as a freshman in high school. Dual enrollment allowed him to obtain college credits at Miami Dade College, and he earned an associate's degree before he was 17, which meant he didn't play prep football beyond his sophomore season at Pahokee High, where he was still a two-time all-start selection and threw for 1,913 yards and 15 touchdowns in only six games as a sophomore.
"I got rid of the babysitting part of it. That's all school is, is a bunch of babysitting," David Simmons said. "They want them there at 7 o'clock until 2:30 or 3 o'clock, so parents can drop them off and go to work. … My kid didn't need basket weaving, he didn't need woodshop, an elective. I put him with what he needed for college and added more classes for the same amount of time (he would have been in the classroom)."
247Sports rated Simmons as the No. 58 player in the entire 2025 before he reclassified to 2023, flipping his verbal commitment from Florida to Ole Miss the same day he announced that news. As a 2023 recruit, Simmons was rated a high three-star (88) and as the No. 35 QB in a class of arms two years older than him; the history of reclassified QBs is full of cautionary tales, and skipping two years is practically unheard-of.
"It's a testament to how much I liked Simmons that he was an 88 after skipping two years," says 247Sports Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins, who lives in Florida. "Usually that'd be a non-starter for me."
Simmons redshirted as a football player in the fall of 2023 but played baseball and made 13 relief appearances with a 2-0 record and 3.21 ERA in the spring of 2024, when he should have been playing high school baseball as a junior.
"He's a better baseball player than a football player," his father said. "A lot of people have no idea. He could be (Shohei) Ohtani. If he didn't play football, he would be Ohtani."
Simmons made his football debut at Ole Miss last fall, appearing in nine games with 282 yards and two touchdowns. His biggest moment came off the bench in place of injured starter Jaxson Dart, leading a touchdown drive in the first quarter of the 28-10 upset victory against No. 2 Georgia. He completed 5 of 6 passes for 64 yards.
Private quarterback coach Oliver Bozeman started training Simmons in elementary school. After years of programming as a baseball pitcher, he worked to change his throwing angles as a quarterback, eliminating wasted throwing motions. His quick release is a strength, Bozeman said. His father compares his style to left-handed Tua Tagovailoa, who is known for a quick release and mobility displayed at Alabama and in the NFL. In Oxford, Austin believes he's more like Matt Corral than Dart, who he replaces as the Rebels' starter this fall.
In Simmons' youth football days, Bozeman used Tuesday training sessions to reinforce the youth league's scheme, and on Thursdays he instructed high school schemes to prepare Simmons for the future. Now, Bozeman works on Simmons' college scheme for one day, and NFL schemes on another.
"He's always been that quarterback and kid that retains information," Bozeman said. "It was really easy for him to focus on one thing one day and focus on another thing the next day."
Meanwhile, David Simmons continues to review practice and game film with his son. Understanding post-snap adjustments after years of focusing on pre-snap motions is paramount. Ole Miss senior analyst Joe Judge, the former New York Giants head coach, has also been a "great guy to have in your toolbox," Simmons said.
"He's always there for you to watch film. He's helped me excel in the mental part of the game."
Following his father's mantra of no days off, Simmons planned to travel to Fort Lauderdale the day after graduating from Ole Miss so that he could train with Bozeman.
"This weekend's a nice story — a great story — but now he's got to focus," David Simmons said. "Everybody wants a story but often everybody is gonna get tired of seeing a positive story about them. They'll start looking for a negative story. You gotta understand that."
Several Ole Miss receivers will join Simmons in Florida this week. The quarterback believes that group at Ole Miss is "better than last year."
"He knows what it takes to be the face of a franchise, the face of a university. He's been groomed for this for years," Bozeman said. "I don't want to sound biased because I've been working with this kid for a very long time … I think Austin could possibly be one of the best we've ever seen do it. I'm not just saying that because I train him, but understand where he is and how far he's come thus far."
In the SEC, names like Arch Manning, Garrett Nussmeier, DJ Lagway, Diego Pavia and Gunner Stockton dominated the top 10 lists of quarterbacks. Simmons, who has +3300 odds to win the Heisman Trophy per FanDuel Sportsbook, might be the next man up.
"You always hope to be the best quarterback," he said. "I don't like losing and I don't like being second, either, so I'm just gonna be the best quarterback I can possibly be and let my game speak for itself. I'm not going to speak right now because I have to earn that type of spotlight. I don't even have the experience to even be mentioned in those conversations right now."
The young gun will get his chance in the fall.
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