Colin Simmons just tied a Texas program record that had sat untouched since 1990, and the lasting image from the night is him pretending to pee on the grass at Neyland Stadium. That is the indictment. Five sacks. A 20-17 road win over No. 14 Tennessee. And a celebration so crude the referee had to invent a phrase for the broadcast.
The second-quarter sack on Faizon Brandon was a statement play. Roughly 16 yards lost. Third down turned into a potential fourth-and-29 near the Tennessee 12. Then Simmons pantomimed unzipping and relieving himself on the field. Yellow flags everywhere. Automatic first down. Fifteen yards the other way. The drive lived when it should have died.
The referee did not dress it up. “Unsportsmanlike conduct, defense, No. 1, for simulating using the restroom.” Kirk Herbstreit called it on the air: “Just an absolute idiotic move by Colin Simmons doing that.” Chris Fowler piled on without mercy. “It’s idiotic, and it doesn’t get much more vulgar, either.” Those are not hot takes from the bleachers. Those are the voices paid to describe the sport in real time, and they convicted him on contact.
Five Sacks Do Not Buy You a Free Vulgarity Pass
I am not here to debate whether players can celebrate. The rules committee already modernized that language this offseason. Celebrate with teammates. Do not direct the act at the opponent in a way that stalls the game. Five automatic categories already existed: gun gestures, throat slash, helmet removal, dead-ball contact, pulling guys off the pile. “Simulating using the restroom” just got written into the ledger in permanent ink because Simmons decided the moment required a bathroom joke.
Simmons finished with five sacks, matching Shane Dronett’s single-game mark from 1990 against Texas Tech. Eight tackles. A forced fumble. Texas as a defense rang up 10 sacks. He is 6-foot-3, 246 pounds, and he now sits on 28 sacks across 33 career games. That is edge-rusher production that moves the needle in Austin and in every NFL war room that will open a file on him. And he still felt the need to mime a bathroom break after the second one.
Postgame, Simmons offered the softest possible walk-back. “I also do want to say I apologize for the celebration,” he said. “I was definitely in that mode, feeling myself. But, you know, it happens. Charge it to the game.” Charge it to the game. That is the language of a guy who still thinks the highlight reel is the whole ledger. Herbstreit already flagged the deeper problem: Simmons is supposed to be one of the leaders of this defense. Leaders do not gift a ranked opponent a free first down in a one-score road game because the adrenaline felt cute.
Sarkisian’s Death-Penalty Line Is the Real Soft Spot
Steve Sarkisian’s response told me more than the penalty itself. “We took him out, we addressed it, and put him back in,” Sarkisian said. “I mean, at that point, I’m not going to give the guy the death penalty, right, over an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We got to fix it though, right? That can’t continue as we move forward.” He added that the best thing a player can do is celebrate with a teammate, and that the team would address controlling emotions on Monday.
I hear the practical coach in that answer. You do not bury your best pass rusher in September when the schedule still has seven ranked teams waiting. Texas entered 3-0 as the nation’s top-ranked team and left Knoxville 4-0 with a pair of top-15 wins no other program can claim this season. The margin was three points. The penalty extended a drive that did not produce points, but the principle is the problem. Calling a 15-yard unsportsmanlike that flips field position a death-penalty conversation is how you signal to the locker room that the standard is negotiable when the production is high.
Simmons went back in and kept hunting. Back-to-back sacks in the third. No more bathroom theater. The talent is not the question. The judgment is. Elijah Moore did a version of this at Ole Miss in the 2019 Egg Bowl, simulating a dog on a fire hydrant. The sport has seen this bit. It was already on the wrong side of the line. Simmons ran it back in 2026 against a top-15 team with the whole country watching and the President in the building, and somehow expected the flags to stay in the pocket.
Texas still has a gauntlet left. The Longhorns win big games, Sarkisian said, and he is right to refuse apology for beating a top-15 team on the road. That part of the resume is clean. The celebration is not. A five-sack night that ties a 36-year-old program record should have been pure legacy deposit. Simmons turned a portion of it into a conduct hearing and a “charge it to the game” shrug. Sarkisian treated the penalty like a parking ticket with a lecture attached. The rules already told them both where the line sits. The flags did the rest.
