CHICAGO – A brand new episode of Big Ten Icons, presented by Discover and hosted by Keith Jackson, airs at 8pm ET Tuesday with a profile of legendary Nebraska football coach Tom Osborne. The show will be followed at 8:30 PM ET by Osborne’s final game as head coach at Nebraska, the 1998 Orange Bowl. In that game, Scott Frost, Ahman Green and the Blackshirts defeated Peyton Manning and Tennessee, 42-17. Nebraska finished the season ranked number one in the coaches’ poll to earn a share of the national championship.

It’s always fun trying to predict the next breakout players, the Trevor Mbakwes and Darius Morrises of last season. To me, those are the true breakout players, the guys who didn’t do much of anything the previous season(s) before figuring things out and making a name for themselves. How about possible 2011-12 Big Ten breakout players? See my five candidates in this post.

Penn State is the lone Big Ten squad that is unbeaten in league play. But it has a tough stretch run—Nebraska, at Ohio State, at Wisconsin–giving the Badgers a shot to still win the Leaders Division and advance to the conference title game.

Prior to the 2011 college football season, the Big Ten announced the creation of 18 new trophies, including two for the new Big Ten Championship Game and two for postgraduate awards. Each trophy honors the Big Ten’s rich history, with two Big Ten legends’ last names on it (i.e. Nagurski-Woodson Defensive Player of the Year).

Expectations were already sky high for Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger and Wisconsin’s Jordan Taylor entering the 2011-12 men’s basketball season. The pressure is on even more now that they will have AP preseason All-America attached to their names all season long. Both players made the annual publication’s first team, released Monday, with Sullinger being a unanimous pick. Yes, the Buckeye sophomore was listed on all 65 ballots from a national media panel.