The season creeps ever so slowly toward us. To escape the summer doldrums, we thought we'd add a burst of excitement from the Big Ten football front.

We're taking a look at the most exciting player on each of the league's teams, a guy who is either so talented or productive (or both) that it's hard to take your eyes off of him during a game.

The Michigan Wolverines are next up in the tour of the Big Ten.

Most exciting player: SAF Jabrill Peppers

The touted recruit provided only the briefest of glimpses at his talent last fall before injury robbed him of his true freshman season. But that was enough to tell the defensive back was capable of living up to the hype.

Peppers physically looks the part of an imposing threat in the secondary with the speed to match up against the pass and the size to deliver a hit when necessary. And even with just one chance to return a punt, his atleticism provided the Wolverines with a jolt of energy that was basically nonexistent for the nine games he missed. That special teams play covered only 6 yards, but before it was over he made three guys miss before ultimately being pinned in and taken down -- and since it was just his first quarter of action in his season opener as a true freshman, it was a promising sign of things to come.

It obviously didn't work out for Peppers, who was injured earlier in that same game on a defensive snap and was never able to get healthy enough to contribute to a team that clearly could have used him. But he's ready to go now, embracing a position shift to safety and drawing rave reviews from new coach Jim Harbaugh. That might be the surest indication that Peppers is about to explode on the scene given how little the new Michigan coach has had to offer publicly about most players on his roster.

So assuming the Wolverines are able to get something far closer to a full season out of the potential star, Peppers could easily become appointment viewing in the fall and should be right in the middle of the program's rebuilding effort moving forward.