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Mike Bianco confirms Austin Simmons departure from the Ole Miss baseball team

11by:Jake Thompson•about 11 hours•

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Ole Miss pitcher Austin Simmons (Photo courtesy of Ole Miss athletics)

The worst kept secret, if it was a secret, within Ole Miss athletics has been confirmed and acknowledged out in the open.

Austin Simmons will no longer be toeing the rubber on Swayze Field as he shifts the remainder of his time in Oxford to solely focus on football. Simmons is expected to be the starting quarterback for Ole Miss this Fall and the successor to Jaxson Dart.

Ole Miss baseball head coach Mike Bianco confirmed Simmons departure, which has been reported here by the Ole Miss Spirit previously and other outlets. Bianco’s confirmation came via a statement from an Ole Miss spokesman.

“After having a conversation with coach Bianco, Austin Simmons is no longer on the baseball roster so that he can concentrate on playing football.”

In one season with the baseball team Simmons worked 14 innings in 13 appearances and finished with a 3.21 earned run average in 2024. He struck out 20 and walked 11 other batters and did not give up a home run.

The freshman campaign was cut short when Simmons suffered an injury to his throwing arm, shutting him down in late April. He did not have surgery and was full go come Fall camp this past football season.

Simmons would surely have been in the mix for a starting spot in the weekend rotation for Ole Miss, that is once again anchored by ace Hunter Elliott in his final campaign in Oxford.

Serving as Dart’s backup, Simmons showcased what Ole Miss fans can expect moving forward when he led the offense to a touchdown drive in the win over Georgia this past November.

“Certainly we felt this year was going to be very different, at the very minimum,” Ole Miss baseball hitting coach Mike Clement said when talking to the Ole Miss Spirit earlier this month. “It does not take someone brilliant to see how the workings of the quarterback position go and how important the spring and summer are to that position and the function of spring practice and all those things.”

Simmons completed 19 of 32 pass attempts in nine games played, finishing with 282 passing yards and a pair of touchdowns. He will be all football come Spring drills in March.

The Ole Miss quarterback room currently has rising redshirt freshman AJ Maddox and recent transfer Pierce Clarkson out of Louisville. The Rebels did not sign a quarterback in this high school recruiting class.

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