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By Reice Shipley
Contributing Sports Writer
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Texas Longhorns star edge rusher Colin Simmons stole the show in the team's Week 4 win over the Tennessee Volunteers on Saturday.
But unfortunately, Simmons' individual performance wasn't the only reason he made headlines in the game.
Simmons had a career day on Saturday, recording a career-high five sacks in the Longhorns' 20-17 victory. However, a post-sack celebration where Simmons simulated urinating on the field that ultimately resulted in an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty quickly became a story of its own.
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On the call of the game on ABC, Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit publicly called out Simmons for the vulgar celebration. Many watching at home similarly noted the immaturity of the gesture on social media.
Simmons did offer an apology for the celebration publicly after the game. But Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian was still asked by reporters following the game how he addressed the situation with his team.
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Sarkisian did note that while he believes this kind of action "can't continue" from Simmons, he did only take him out of the game briefly to discuss the situation with him before quickly putting him back in the game.
"We took him out, we addressed it, and put him back in," said Sarkisian following Saturday's game. "At that point, I'm not going to give the guy the death penalty over an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We have got to fix it though. That can't continue as we move forward. As I touched on with the team, we'll address that on Monday and what that looks like, and how we control our emotions in the best way."
Sarkisian also spoke to why he believes these types of unsportsmanlike conduct penalties happen, claiming that he believes the media's attempt to "get clicks" on social media
"Unfortunately, in our society right now, we live in a 'look at me' society. All you guys have your Twitter accounts and as fast as you can type something because you want everyone to look at your account. You get clicks. That's the world that we live in. So we’ve got to get to — it’s about the team and focus on the team, and not so much ‘look at me.’ So we'll try to improve on that. But five sacks was pretty cool today too."
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It's hard to see the correlation between media members rightfully taking to social media to post clips and commentary and players like Simmons having very obvious lapses in judgement like we saw on Saturday.
Regardless, it sure seems like Sarkisian was largely content to keep letting Simmons dominate on the field in spite of his controversial penalty.
Sarkisian and the University of Texas will get some time to potentially work on the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties moving forward with a bye week coming in Week 5 before they take on the Oklahoma Sooners in the Red River Rivalry in Week 6.
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