I don’t think it has ever happen before in pro, college or high school football. Over the weekend, number one college football team Texas was playing at number seventeen Tennessee. Texas Edge Rusher Colin Simmons had five sacks. On one of the sacks, he brought down Tennessee’s freshman quarterback for a sixteen yard loss. It would have been fourth and twenty-nine. Then it happened. Simmons jumped up and pretended to unzip his pants and then simulated urinating on the field. The penalty flag came out. He was called for “Unsportsmanlike conduct for simulating using the restroom.”. The team broadcasting the game reacted immediately. Kirk Herbstreit said, “Just an absolute idiotic move by Colin Simmons doing that. He is suppose to be one of the leaders on defense. Play by play man Chris Fowler agreed calling the gesture “idiotic” and “it doesn’t get much more vulgar, either.”
It gets worse. Simmons was taken out of the game for one play. Coach Steve Sarkisian later said, “We took him out, we addressed it and put him back in. At that point, I’m not going to give the guy the death penalty, right? Over an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We gotta fix it though. That can’t continue as we move forward. So, I touched on it with the team in the locker room. We’ll address that on Monday and what that looks like. And how to control our emotions and the best way-I know guys get excited when they’re making plays. The best thing you can do is celebrate with a teammate.” I guess the coach considers pretending to urinate on the field his an appropriate way celebrate with teammates.
After the game, Simmons said, “I apologize for the celebration. I was definitely in that mode, feeling myself, but it happens. Charge it to the game.” So, his first reaction to making a big play was to pretend to urinate. Sarkisian went on to demonstrate what he thought the root of the problem was. “And unfortunately in our society right now, we live at the look at me society. And all you guys have your Twitter accounts and as fast as you can type something, because you want everyone to look at your account and get clicks. Well, that’s the world 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. And so we’ll try to improve on that. But five sacks was pretty cool today.” The last sentence just shows how out of touch Sarkisian is. He sounds like a sixteen year old kid. Simmons should have been benched for the rest of the game and at least suspended for the next game even if he is one of the best players on the team. The coach’s job is teach and guide players to work hard and do the right thing and be held accountable for their actions.
We haven’t heard if the Athletic Director called Sarkisian into his office and told him this was all unacceptable. He made the football program and the university look bad. The school pays Sarkisian millions of dollars and Texas is number one in the country. That’s what really matters.
Players celebrating in college football has gone way over the top. Former Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz told players after they scored a touchdown to “Act like you’ve been there before.” Yankee great Mickey Mantle was quoted as saying he always looked down when rounding the bases after hitting a home run because he didn’t want to show up the pitcher. Showing some class never gets old, something the “look at me” generation should consider.
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