Colt McCoy is just one win away from history.

Texas quarterback Colt McCoy does not recall every detail from his initial conversation with coach Mack Brown about McCoy’s opportunity to become the winningest quarterback in NCAA history.

But he does remember one name that surfaced during the discussion.

"When coach Brown told me I was close to passing Peyton Manning, that’s what caught my attention," said McCoy, who has won 42 games as the Longhorns’ starting quarterback, three more than Manning managed in his career at Tennessee (1994-97).

It looks like the Heisman race is coming down to three players.

Colt McCoy, in third place, continues to trail the Southeastern Conference duo of Mark Ingram and Tim Tebow. The Alabama running back nabbed five first place votes, the burly Florida quarterback two.

The challengers to the Big Three continue to get picked off, one by one. Last week, it was Houston's Case Keenum, who went the way of Notre Dame's Jimmy Clausen and Miami's Jacory Harris.

The Acho brothers: Impressive, talented and hard to tell them apart.

If you squint a bit from the stands of Royal-Memorial Stadium, Sam Acho and his kid brother, Emmanuel, look almost like the same player.

After all, Sam, the Texas defensive end, is wearing No. 81. Emmanuel, the versatile linebacker, is 18.

"I almost get confused when watching us on film," Emmanuel said earlier this week as the third-ranked Longhorns prepared for Kansas.

The Horns secondary is very stingy.

"[We’ve gone] from getting picked on to nobody looking your way," Curtis Brown said. "It’s a good feeling but a boring feeling at the same time. It’s getting to the point where it’s a hard decision which side you want to throw to."

It’s becoming more difficult for opposing quarterbacks. The Longhorns are giving up just 181.9 passing yards per game (22nd in the nation), down from 259 a year ago. They’ve also intercepted 19 passes, compared to just six in 2008.

The Austin American-Statesman picks their top five Longhorns of all time.

The graduation rates for men's athletics are lagging once again.

The NCAA released its annual Graduation Success Rate report Wednesday, and the University of Texas' football, baseball and men's basketball programs did not get high marks.

For the four classes that entered from 1999-2002 — and in each case were given six years to graduate under NCAA guidelines — only 49 percent of Longhorns football players earned their degrees. None of the 25 schools listed in this week's BCS rankings, where Texas sits at No. 3, had a lower rate.

This should make you feel better.

Oklahoma's football team had the worst graduation rates in the Big 12 under the most recent data released by the NCAA.

According to figures released Wednesday by the NCAA, only 45 percent of the football players who enrolled at Oklahoma between 1999 and 2002 earned their degrees within six years. That period coincides with coach Bob Stoops' first four years as the Sooners' head coach.

Looking for gifts for that special Longhorn?

Basketball

The Horns beat Western Carolina.

"They really get after you defensively," Western Carolina coach Larry Hunter said. "They don't make it easy on you."

At the other end, though, Texas (2-0) committed an unsightly 21 turnovers and missed 13 of 31 free throws.

Coach Rick Barnes said the Longhorns emphasized defense in practice earlier in the week.

"That's all we talked about," he said. "Obviously, we didn't talk about offense enough. We made it a whole lot harder than it needed to be."

Storming The Floor had a saucy game rap up:

Texas 73 - Western Carolina 41

Rick Barnes got to go deep into his bench for this one. We learn by making mistakes, and this game had plenty of those: freshman guard J'Covan Brown got laid out on a hard screen at one point, and had six turnovers to go with his 10 points. Stud newbie Avery Bradley shot an airball on his first try and finished with 4 points on the night. But where better to screw up and live to tell the tale than a blowout? Damion James was his usual assertive self, with 18 points, 7 boards, and a 2-3 evening behind the arc. Harouna Mutombo was the leading scorer for the WCU Catamounts, with ten. He also had one blocked shot; no word on whether he wagged his finger in the no-no gesture.

 Where Dexter goes, so go the Horns.

Barnes mentioned high expectations he has for Pittman. Things he’s not prepared to go public with right now. Should Big Dex live up to them, Texas’ already decent chance of being in the Final Four this season will soar.

Pittman literally has worked his rear off to get where he is today. But it has become evident through UT’s first two games that he’s also worked on his inside game.

J'Covan Brown is a work in progress.

Brown is one of the hardest workers on the squad, according to his teammates. Prior to Sunday’s game, he showed up three hours early to practice his shot. On Wednesday, Texas was scheduled to begin its pregame shootaround at 3:30 p.m., but Brown was there an hour beforehand and had a sweat going by the time Barnes walked down to the floor.

"The kid loves the game. He loves to play," Barnes said.

Perhaps all of that extra work is paying off for Brown. His turnovers are up, but so are his points and his minutes. For now, he is the team’s starting point guard — a role that is his to lose.

When I searched YouTube for Texas A&M OU 2009, this is all I got for A&M highlights. Well, at least the band played well that day.

Lots of frustration in College Station. Mike Sherman has to curtail the blowouts.

Mike Sherman's final game as a Texas A&M assistant was memorable — for all of the wrong reasons.

Texas 51, A&M 15 in 1996 offered a fan base accustomed to winning a jolt — and the Aggies' worst loss of the R.C. Slocum era to that point. Slocum vowed his program, 6-6 in the first year of the Big 12, would improve. It did, winning the South Division the next season and its lone Big 12 title the year after.

As this decade winds down, however, the rarity of the '96 UT debacle has become more of the norm, as A&M fans have endured a slew of blowouts the past seven seasons.

The Cornhuskers and Wildcats are getting giddy. The excitement is building for Saturday's North showdown.

Sometime before Saturday night's Nebraska game, Kansas State kicker Josh Cherry might need a chill pill.

Emotions already are high over a matchup that will decide the Big 12 North champion and K-State's bowl eligibility.

Now, add in that Cherry is from McCook, Neb., and grew up as a rabid Husker fan with his room decorated in wall-to-wall red.

"This game has so much riding on it,'' he said. "And then going back home and playing in front of so many friends and family, it's going to be unreal. I don't know if I can get enough tickets."

There is no way you cannot like Bill Snyder.

During each road game, he encourages players to leave thank-you notes for the hotel housekeeping staff.

"Treating people with respect," Gregory said. "It goes a really long way."

That’s what Snyder wants his team to project.

"He takes pride in us being men of character," Gregory said.

The Mangino death watch continues. Former players are coming out of the woodwork to talk about their experiences playing for Mark Mangino.

For Kansas University football coach Mark Mangino, the hits just keep on coming.

Among the allegations made by players interviewed by the Journal-World included:

Near-daily verbal attacks on players, in some instances involving personal matters that athletes felt went well beyond the boundaries of a player-coach relationship.

• Verbal abuse of assistant coaches, including a 2008 incident in which Mangino threatened the job of defensive coordinator Clint Bowen.

• Failing to disclose player injuries to the detriment of the team’s athletes.

• Players who left the program at least in part because of the negative environment they were subjected to.

• An incident during the 2006 season in which, according to former linebacker Joe Mortensen, Mangino put his hands on then-running backs coach Earle Mosley after one of the team’s running backs had failed to pick up a blitz during a game. Mosley later left the program and now coaches running backs for the New York Sentinels of the United Football League.

You know this isn't good. The player's parents are organizing.

KMBC's Karen Kornacki has learned that there are at least 20 families of current and former players who have been compiling information and will turn it over to the school during this investigation.

Some of the parents said that they have been documenting evidence of Mangino's temper over the years. They claimed that he has shown himself to be mean-spirited, vindictive and angry.

Mangino is sure the probe will clear him.

"I run this program with a lot of integrity," Mangino told the Kansas City Star without confirming the nature of the probe. "I have been in this conference for nearly 20 years, and what I can tell you is that our coaching intensity is not largely different from the rest of the Big Eight and Big 12 teams I've observed."

Rumors, rumors, rumors. No one really knows Dan Hawkins' fate.

Stoops vs. Stoops. Bob could meet Mike in a bowl game.

An Oklahoma-Arizona bowl game, matching the Brothers Stoops, is not out of the question. If both teams finish strong, they could meet in the Holiday Bowl. If both stumble, they could meet in the Sun Bowl.

Bob Stoops was saying the other day that he preferred not to play Mike’s Wildcats but it wouldn’t be a big deal.

The Big 12 just proposed a power grab.

One thing you have to like about the new bowl eligibility proposal introduced earlier this month by the Big 12: There's no ambiguity about it at all. Just raw, naked power being exercised for the good of the exercisers.

In other words, let's just call it the Baylor Bill and get it over with.

Dan Beebe, the Big 12 commissioner who introduced the idea to a shocking lack of national reaction, thinks it would be a grand idea if the bowl requirements for BCS teams would be lowered so that a 6-6 BCS team could take a bowl game spot from a seven-, eight- or even nine-win non-BCS team. Why? So that Baylor could go to the Motor City Bowl, I guess.

Sports Illustrated polled Big 12 fans. Here are the results.

History remembers only the brilliant failures and the brilliant successes. -Randolph S. Bourne.

Franchione would be one of those brilliant failures. Dennis Franchione to UNLV?

Franchione's name has emerged as a leading candidate for the vacant job at UNLV, according to the Rebel Nation blog published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

According to the blog, sources indicated that Franchione has already inquired to school officials about the vacancy, created when Mike Sanford was fired earlier this week.

I got an annoying Twitter account just to follow these morons. The BCS is on Twitter.

"The SEC is revered to the point of being ridiculous," Jerry Palm said.

SI's Andy Staples doesn't have anything else to write about? He has mapped out TCU's BCS title chances.

And finally...

Condolences to Georgia fans. Uga VII died of heart-related causes.