When Ole Miss’ offense trotted onto the field for its opening drive against Arkansas two weeks ago, Austin Simmons, who had started the Rebels’ first two games, wasn’t with them.
Instead, Ferris State transfer Trinidad Chambliss led coach Lane Kiffin’s offense. Simmons had suffered an ankle injury a week earlier in a win over Kentucky. He had been listed as probable on the Rebels’ initial availability report but was available on reports later in the week.
The SEC has clear penalties for teams that violate the availability reporting policy, beginning with a $25,000 fine.
But Kiffin and the Rebels weren’t fined. Why? Because they didn’t violate the policy.
Simmons limped around for four snaps on his gimpy ankle and threw a touchdown pass during the game.
“That’s why we left him off,” Kiffin said Wednesday when asked by The Athletic about omitting Simmons. “Because he was available. It’s an availability report. It’s not a specific injury report.”
Availability report. Not an injury report. It’s a key difference, and two specific instances in two weeks have sparked conversation about what teams report and the gray area when it comes to the line for disclosing a player’s status.
Both Ole Miss and Utah omitted their injured starting quarterbacks from the report in successive weeks. Neither broke the written rule, as both players appeared in the game, but there’s a question about whether the spirit of the rule was violated — and if the rules should shift as college football tries to bring information about injuries into the light more than ever to protect players from people who may try to seek information for gambling reasons.
“We all know everybody’s banged up a little bit. If we put everybody who was nursing something here and there, we’d have 20 guys on there,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said. “But truly, guys that are hobbled or not able to participate in a full practice, they should be listed on those reports.”
In 2023, the Big Ten became the first conference to institute league-wide availability reports for conference games. Last year, the SEC instituted league-wide availability reports in four sports. This season, the Big 12 and ACC followed suit.
SEC associate commissioner Garth Glissman, who handles the availability reports for the conference, said the reports were necessary because of the widespread legalization of sports betting.
“The only way you combat the demand for inside information is with transparency,” he said. “You take away the value of inside information by systematically making it available to the public.”
Schools enter their information into a database, which is then publicly distributed three days before a game and daily after that. The SEC’s policy considers someone probable to have a 75 percent chance of playing, a questionable player at 50 percent, doubtful at 25 percent, and out at 0 percent. It says schools have a duty to act “in good faith,” and “acts of gamesmanship” are prohibited.
Thus far, no SEC schools have been penalized for violating the rules of the availability report. And honesty has been a hallmark early on. The SEC’s research has yet to reveal any school listing a player as out on the injury report and participating in a game later that week.
Glissman said schools — who must release a list of game-time decisions 90 minutes before kickoff — averaged just 0.5 game-time decisions per team per game last season. That number is down to 0.33 this season, which may ramp up as injuries follow suit in games.
But of those players, exactly 50 percent have participated in games for which they were listed as game-time decisions, Glissman said.
Football fans are used to clear, simple information when they make bets or fill out their fantasy football lineups for NFL games. But the college availability report — though it looks markedly similar — is different. In professional sports, a player’s right to medical privacy is waived as part of a collective bargaining agreement. College sports have no such agreement, creating that gap and making a well-intentioned policy imperfect at best.
Ole Miss QB Austin Simmons is not listed on the SEC availability report (again). pic.twitter.com/Aq65t556u6
— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) September 25, 2025
It’s not built to sort through a situation like Ole Miss, where the backup at 100 percent might be better than the starter at 70 or 80 percent. Chambliss thrived in the win over Arkansas and hasn’t given the starting job back to Simmons since.
It reminded Glissman — who came to the SEC after nearly a decade working with injury reports in the NBA as senior director of basketball operations and eventually vice president — of LeBron James’ mysterious broken hand in the 2018 finals.
“I pretty much played the last three games with a broken hand,” James said after his Cleveland Cavaliers were swept by the Golden State Warriors, explaining that the injury happened after he punched a board in the locker room following a frustrating Game 1 loss.
At the time, NBA teams were only required to list players’ availability in the playoffs. Reporters — and the public by proxy — had no idea about the injury to the biggest star in sports on basketball’s biggest stage. Neither did the Warriors.
The rule has since changed.
“The first thing I thought of was, this is college football’s first LeBron-like case,” Glissman said of the Simmons injury.
A similar case emerged out of Saturday’s Utah-Texas Tech game.
On Monday, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham noted that starting quarterback Devon Dampier missed practice last Tuesday and Wednesday and was limited in Thursday’s practice ahead of Saturday’s crucial 34-10 home loss to fellow Big 12 contender Texas Tech.
“He was doing the best he could,” said Whittingham, consistently one of college football’s most tight-lipped coaches in regard to injuries. “I’m going to tell you that it definitely impacted Devon.”
Dampier was never listed on Utah’s availability report entering the matchup of ranked teams.
Just like Ole Miss and Simmons, Utah was certain Dampier would play in the game. So it didn’t disclose his injury or practice status.
As a result of Whittingham’s comments, the Big 12 invited Utah onto a call, reminding them of the rules and processes surrounding the conference’s weekly reports, a person familiar with the discussions said. Utah was told to publicly address the discrepancy, or the Big 12 would do so, but there was no punishment discussed or threatened.
Monday evening, the program released a statement explaining that Dampier’s status for the game was never in doubt.
— Utah Athletics (@utahathletics) September 23, 2025
In the gray area, Kiffin and Whittingham have adhered to the rule while, perhaps, muddying the stated purpose of the rule: preventing the existence of inside information that could be of use to people in the gambling world.
“I think we all should operate with total integrity and transparency on it. Period. I don’t really keep up with it a lot, so I don’t know who has done that or not done that,” Auburn coach Hugh Freeze said. “But my view on it is I think we all agree this is what we’re gonna do, and we should operate with 100 percent integrity.”
Arkansas coach Sam Pittman, whose team was preparing for Ole Miss’ uncertain quarterback situation, said his staff has people watching injured players in pregame to decipher who will or won’t play.
“We weren’t supposed to feign injuries. We do that. We’re supposed to be correct on our injury report. Some do. Some don’t,” Pittman said. “Most of the time you’re preparing for either or so you’ve got a plan A and a plan B. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it because it’s all about an integrity deal.”
Georgia coach Kirby Smart said he’s mostly uninvolved in handling his program’s injury report and lets trainers handle disseminating the information for who is and isn’t available. His program has always tracked it internally, but the difference now is making that information public.
“It is what it is. If I think a guy is questionable to play today when I fill it out, then I say he’s questionable. If I think a guy’s doubtful, I’m gonna say doubtful,” South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said. “I got enough to worry about getting a team ready to play without trying to play games and be sneaky and things like that.”
No coaches have attempted to list a healthy player as injured, but it’s almost impossible to track whether or not players are dealing with an injury that might keep them sidelined or limited.
College football could, Glissman noted, eventually institute a practice report like the NFL does, but it isn’t required as part of the availability report. That could avoid issues like the one that arose with Dampier.
However, Glissman noted the SEC is “comfortable” with its current policy and isn’t exploring any changes.
“At the end of the day, that report was not created to be an advantage or information to each other as coaches. It was created to dissuade issues and be more transparent for another industry that gains revenue based on knowing that information and trying to keep those things out of our building,” Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “However coaches use it, I think, is fair to them, as long as we’re trying to protect the integrity of the game from the gambling side of it.”
(Photo: Justin Ford / Getty Images)