MANHATTAN, Kan. – A day after returning from New York where he was recognized as a National Scholar-Athlete, Kansas State record-setting senior wide receiver Tyler Lockett was named the 2014 Big 12 Football Scholar Athlete of the Year by the league’s head coaches on Thursday.

Lockett, who has accumulated a 3.24 cumulative GPA in business management which was buoyed by a 3.43 GPA in the 2013-14 academic year, is an Academic All-Big 12 and Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll scholar. He is scheduled to graduate on Saturday.

He is a member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) through which he has visited retirement centers, participated in Cats in the Classroom reading to students or helping teachers with classroom activities, Adopt-a-Family during the holiday season and assisted with elementary school carnivals. He was also named to the AFCA Good Works team in 2013 and a 2014 candidate for the Senior CLASS Award.

On the field, Lockett will go down in the record book as arguably the best wide receiver in school history. The 2014 All-American candidate currently holds K-State career records for receptions, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns and 100-yard receiving games. He is already a three-time All-American and four-time All-Big 12 performer who was also named the 2013 and 2014 Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Year.

The Big 12 Conference established the Big 12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year Awards in 2012-13. A Scholar-Athlete of the Year is named in each of the conference’s sponsored sports. Each Big 12 institution nominates one individual per sport, and the winners are selected by a vote of the league’s head coaches for each sport.

Scholar-Athlete of the Year recipients must be a junior or senior (athletic and academic standing), maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.20 or higher, participate in at least 60 percent of the team’s scheduled contests and have a minimum of one year in residence at the institution.

Kansas State will participate in the 18^th bowl in school history, including the 16^th under head coach Bill Snyder, on January 2, as the 11^th-ranked Wildcats face No. 14 UCLA in the 2015 Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. The game, which takes place in the Alamodome, will kick off at 5:45 p.m., and be televised nationally on ESPN.