Charlie Strong has suspended two more Texas Longhorns football players, holding two starting offensive linemen from the team's upcoming game against BYU.
According to ESPN, Strong suspended Desmond Harrison and Kennedy Estelle for this weekend's game for a violation of team rules. Strong had dismissed three players during the offseason and suspended three others, including Harrison.
KVUE reported that the suspensions were initially going to be dismissals, but that was never confirmed.
Combined with the season-ending injury to Dominic Espinosa, the Longhorns will now have the most inexperienced starting offensive line in college football, with just five collective starts among them. Though they beat North Texas 38-7, the Longhorns will also go into their game against BYU without quarterback David Ash, who is experiencing concussion symptoms.
Since leaving his job as head football coach at Louisville for the same post at Texas, Strong has apparently been strictly imposing his team rules. Receiver/running back Daje Johnson and safety Josh Turner are still indefinitely suspended, ESPN reported.
"If you take away something that is important to them, and football is really important to a lot of these players, you just want to make sure that with the games taken away from them they understand how important it is to represent this great university not only on the field, but off of the field," Strong said in a pre-season press conference. "With core values, I say it all of the time, if a young man doesn't want to be a part of this program, just break a core value and you are telling me exactly where you want to stand. [They are] honesty, treating women with respect, no drugs, no stealing and no guns, very simple. [They are] values that we have all grown up on, and values that we use in every day living for a lot of us.
"They just have to understand that. There is a lot of pride within this program, and we are going to bring that pride back."
