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Sept. 29, 2011

Austin -- Texas senior LB Emmanuel Acho has been selected as a National Football Foundation 2011 National Scholar-Athlete Candidate and a semifinalist for the William V. Campbell Trophy, the foundation has announced today.

Acho joins 126 other nominees as Scholar-Athlete Candidates. The NFF Awards Committee will select up to 16 recipients, and the results will be announced via a national press release on Wednesday, October 26. Each recipient will receive an $18,000 postgraduate scholarship, and they will vie as finalists for the 2011 William V. Campbell Trophy. Each member of the 2011 National Scholar-Athlete Class will also travel to New York City to be honored December 6 during the 54th NFF Annual Awards Dinner at the Waldorf=Astoria where their accomplishments will be highlighted in front of one of the most powerful audiences in all of sports. One member of the class will also be announced live at the event as the winner of the Campbell Trophy.

Acho is the 12th Longhorn overall and the fourth in the last five years to be selected as a National Scholar-Athlete Candidate. Acho’s brother DE Sam Acho was named the 2010 winner of the William V. Campbell Trophy and C Dallas Griffin in 2007 was UT's first winner of the Campbell Trophy, which at that time was named the Draddy Trophy. In 2009, QB Colt McCoy was a Campbell Trophy Finalist.

This season, Acho has already been named to the 2011 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team® and a candidate for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award. Acho also was named to the 2011 Lott Trophy watch list, which honors college football's Defensive IMPACT Player of the Year, and he was named to the Butkus Award watch list honoring the nation's most outstanding linebacker.

Acho is a five-time member of UT's Athletics Director's Honor Roll, a two-time first-team Academic All-Big 12 selection, and a two-time Arthur Ashe Award recipient which is a national award for minority student-athletes. He is also active in UT's community service program and is part of a group of Longhorns that regularly visits patients at the Dell Children's Medical Center. He was a member of the Honor Roll all four years of high school and served as Class Secretary as a junior. Each summer he joins his brother, Sam, his parents and a group of volunteers on a medical mission trip to Nigeria to bring medical treatment to Nigerians who may only have access to a doctor once a year. The family hopes to build a permanent clinic in the area soon. Emmanuel has also served as a counselor at summer basketball camps.

A fourth-year linebacker, Acho has played in 38 career games, posting 180 tackles (106 solo), 26 TFL, six sacks, six forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, two INTs, nine PBU and 13 pressures. He was a second-team All-Big 12 selection in 2010 when he started 11 games at linebacker and registered 87 tackles (49 solo), three sacks, 12 TFL, two forced fumbles, one fumble recovery, one INT for a TD, six PBU and five pressures. In 2009, Acho was an honorable mention All-Big 12 selection and appeared in 14 games at linebacker, including two starts, and he tallied 49 tackles (36 solo), 10 TFL, two sacks, three forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries, an INT, a PBU and three pressures. He saw action in 10 games as a true freshman in 2008, recording 11 tackles and a forced fumble. Acho was ranked as one of ESPNU's top 150 national prospects.

Nominated by their schools, which are limited to one nominee each, candidates for the awards must be a senior or graduate student in their final year of eligibility, have a GPA of at least 3.2 on a 4.0 scale, have outstanding football ability as a first team player or significant contributor, and have demonstrated strong leadership and citizenship. The class is selected each year by the NFF Awards Committee, which is comprised of a nationally recognized group of media, College Football Hall of Famers and athletics administrators.

Named in honor of Bill Campbell, the chairman of Intuit, former player and head coach at Columbia University and the 2004 recipient of the NFF's Gold Medal, the award comes with a 25-pound bronze trophy and increases the amount of the recipient's grant by $7,000 for a total post-graduate scholarship of $25,000. A total distribution of $300,000 in scholarships will be awarded at the NFF Annual Awards Dinner, pushing the program's all-time distributions to more than $9.8 million. Launched in 1959, the NFF scholar-athlete program became the first initiative in history to award post-graduate scholarships based on both a player's academic and athletic accomplishments. The Campbell Trophy, first awarded in 1990, adds to the program's mystique, having previously honored two Rhodes Scholars, a Rhodes Scholar finalist, two Heisman Trophy winners and five first-round NFL draft picks. Learn more at www.footballfoundation.org.