NCAA Football colorado Buffaloes

Leave it to Texas Tech coach Mike Leach to come up with a brutal assessment of the issues surrounding Kansas coach Mark Mangino and the allegations last week he has been both physically and mentally abusing his players.

Kansas athletic director Lew Perkins has launched an investigation into Mangino's actions after one of his players reported that the head coach poked him during a walk-through practice a couple weeks ago. Since then, several former players have come forth to discuss Mangino's alleged abusive behavior and sometimes mean-spirited verbal attacks.

Leach has never been guilty of playing the politically correct game and he certainly didn't disappoint during this week's Big 12 football coaches call when the subject turned to the storm Mangino is facing.

Colorado coach Dan Hawkins has been adamant the past few seasons that having his son, Cody Hawkins, play quarterback for the Buffaloes was no different than other recruit.

Hawkins did a complete turnaround during Monday's weekly press conference, saying if he had to do it all over again he would not have recruited his own son.

"Not for him, no. Nope. Not at all," Hawkins said. "It's not fair to him. Here is a guy who is trying to do his best to win games and to help his team and does everything right, he's a good student and he's getting killed on Facebook and getting killed on his cell phone.

The Big 12 North remains a ways from returning to the prominence it enjoyed when the conference first formed in the late 1990s, but if Saturday's matchup between Kansas State and Nebraska for the division title is any indication then better days are certainly on the horizon.

After years of struggles by the Kansas State Wildcats and the Nebraska Cornhuskers, which have coincided with a dip in the North's strength, the two meet Saturday in Lincoln for a winner-take-all showdown. Neither team has had quite the season it anticipated but each has won enough for the right to play for the Big 12 championship, likely against No. 2 Texas, Dec. 5.

"Certainly we've been in this position before, probably in different ways," said veteran Wildcats coach Bill Snyder, who broke out of a three-year retirement to return to the sidelines this season. "By the same token, I can't remember other than the very early years that playing against the Nebraska teams was not a great challenge and certainly key ball games were after those initial years after they beat us so soundly."

The Oklahoma State Cowboys rallied in the second half to defeat Colorado, 31-28, on Thursday night at Boone Pickens Stadium to remain in contention for their first BCS bowl.

With Zac Robinson sitting out the game due to a shoulder injury, the 12th-ranked Cowboys (9-2, 6-1 Big 12) turned to junior Alex Cate but it was third-string sophomore Brandon Weeden who rallied them from a 21-10 deficit against the struggling Buffaloes.

Weeden completed 10 of 15 passes for 168 yards and two touchdowns. His 28-yard touchdown pass to Justin Blackmon while rolling right gave the Oklahoma State Cowboys the lead for good with 8:11 remaining in the game. Weeden also had a 47-yard touchdown throw to running back Keith Toston earlier in the second half.

The comparisons between the Texas Longhorns 2005 team and this season's team are inevitable.

At this point in the 2005 season, the Vince Young-led Longhorns looked pretty invincible. After a tough early season game against Ohio State , they romped over opponents with relative ease on the way to the BCS national title. These Colt McCoy-led Longhorns are doing the same with only their annual rivalry game against Oklahoma serving as the lone close challenge in putting together a perfect 9-0 record and a No. 2 national ranking.

It's just the second time since 1983 that the Longhorns have been 9-0. The other time, of course, was in 2005 when they put together an undefeated campaign that ended with a dramatic national championship victory over USC.

It seemed like a sign of positive things to come in Boulder, Colo., when Parade All-American running back Darrell Scott chose Colorado over Texas and Southern California two years ago.

But it was the fairy tale that was never realized as injuries and questions about his physical conditioning clouded a two-year career. Scott, easily the biggest and most high-profile recruit of Dan Hawkins' Colorado tenure, informed the coaching staff Tuesday that he is leaving the program.

Hawkins said in a released statement the sophomore "is leaving for assorted personal reasons." He assumed Scott would be transferring to school closer to his Ventura, Calif., home.

There is nothing new about Bob Stoops matching coaching wits with old mentor and boss Bill Snyder. They've done plenty of that over the years in Big 12 cross-divisional play.

But that doesn't mean Stoops isn't a little surprised to see Snyder, 70, back on the Wildcats sideline. The longtime Kansas State coach retired four years ago to pursue opportunities outside coaching, but was lured out of retirement last winter.

Stoops, whose 22nd-ranked Sooners host the Wildcats on Saturday, admits it's a little unexpected to be going up against his old boss again, but he was stunned when Snyder was no longer there, too.

Conventional wisdom says Tyler Hansen should have been wary.

You don't commit to a program where the quarterback you will be competing with for time is the head coach's son. Period.

But that is exactly what the lightly-recruited Hansen did two years ago when he committed to Dan Hawkins and the Colorado Buffaloes, with Cody Hawkins already entrenched as the team's signal caller. Ever since, it had been a rollercoaster ride for Hanson.

It's just three weeks into the full-swing of Big 12 play but the North Division is looking like any of the six teams could win the race.

That doesn't necessarily bode well at all for the weaker half of the two-division league.

Nebraska and Kansas came into the season as the presumed favorites to represent the North, but after two weeks of inconsistent play neither seems as powerful. The same can be said for two-time North champion Missouri, which started the season a surprising 4-0, but has dropped its first two games of the Big 12 season.

So much for the Big 12 North being taken seriously this season.

On a day when division leaders Kansas and Nebraska had a chance to make a statement, both teams were upset, and stunningly so.

No.15 Nebraska was exposed offensively in a 31-10 loss to unranked Texas Tech in Lincoln, Neb. And the 17th-ranked Jayhawks, which hadn't played a quality opponent until Saturday, was stunned, 34-30, by a one-win Colorado team for their first loss of the season.

Both defeats have left the door open for supremacy in the North with darkhorses Colorado and Kansas State perhaps having a shot at the division title. The Wildcats exploded on Texas A&M Saturday for after struggling offensively most of the season.