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ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Jabrill Peppers may be on the field for up to 100 plays a game this season for Michigan.On defense, Peppers will move closer to the line at times as a linebacker and hell be a defensive back on some snaps. He will play in the slot, in the backfield and might even take some snaps on offense.And when the Wolverines need a boost on special teams, they will lean on Peppers to return punts and kickoffs.Peppers is game for all of it.Whatever we got to do to win, he said Sunday, a day before the teams first practice.If someone asks what position Peppers plays, what would he say?I just say, `Im an athlete, he said.Coach Jim Harbaugh said Peppers wont be the only three-way player on the team, expecting cornerback Jourdan Lewis to spend some time on offense along with his usual duties on special teams.I dont know why they havent been letting Jourdan play both plays, Peppers said. Jourdan is one of the craziest athletes Ive ever seen. ... I hope they give him a shot.With Peppers, the Wolverines will attempt to find the right balance between taking advantage of his versatile talent and not wearing him out.Somewhere in there, theres a sweet spot, Harbaugh said. In terms of load, 95, 100 (plays) is probably the max were looking for.On some snaps, Peppers will be on the field simply as a decoy to distract defenses.Thats the best part of everything, he said. Thats where I can work on my acting.Peppers said he was on the field for 96 plays last season at Minnesota. Against Ohio State, he had a career-high seven carries, caught two passes and threw one, along with making five tackles.He didnt play in Michigans win over Florida in the Citrus Bowl because of an injury to his right hand.How did he hurt his hand?Thats going to be forever undisclosed, Peppers said with a chuckle. Im good now, though.Peppers said he has added eight pounds -- and the extra weight appears to be all muscle -- and is probably faster than he was last year.Whats his fastest 40-yard dash?4.31, he said.Offensive coordinator Tim Drevno, who was a San Francisco 49ers assistant coach for Harbaugh, has been around a lot of great athletes and said Peppers ranks among the best of them.Hes one of the most explosive, dynamic players Ive ever been around, Drevno said. Hes in a league with the Frank Gores, Michael Crabtrees and Vernon Davises.Drevno wishes he could have Peppers on the field for every snap, but he knows his day job, so to speak, is on defense. On the roster, Peppers is listed as a linebacker and defensive back. Defensive coordinator Don Brown said it isnt fair to say his position is linebacker or a hybrid.Were going to give this guy a lot to do, Brown said.Based on Peppers upbringing in New Jersey, hes thankful to be where he is, playing football for a storied program and attending a famed university. Peppers father went to prison when Jabrill was 7 and didnt get out until his was 14, he wrote last year in The Players Tribune, and his older brother, Don, was shot and killed at the age of 14.People where Im from, they dont have this opportunity, he said, surrounded by a pack of reporters and cameras at Michigans media day. This alone, Ive made it from my circumstance. What I do here is show guys there are other ways to get where you want to be without following the usual statistical path that people where Im from follow.---Follow AP College Football coverage at http://collegefootball.ap.org/ and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25---Follow Larry Lage at http://www.twitter.com/larrylage and follow his work at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/larry-lage Authentic Custom Nationals Jersey .5 seconds to play in the game, Kevin Love never stopped believing that they would come out of there with a win. Custom Nationals T-shirts . Vaives lawyer Trevor Whiffen claims the former 50-goal man wasnt provided with a copy of the claim beforehand and that he would not have agreed to the allegations made against the NHL had he been asked to review its contents. http://www.customnationalsjersey.com/ . -- If this was Aaron Gordons final home game at Arizona, and it almost certainly was, then he went out in style. Custom Nationals Jerseys . What general manager Dave Nonis called "short and productive" negotiations ended with Kessel signing a US$64-million, eight-year contract on Tuesday. Custom Anthony Rendon Jersey . With their top three point guards and Kobe Bryant all sidelined by injury, the Lakers signed Marshall out of the D-League on Friday before their home game against Minnesota. INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Its right there, in bold type, on the College Football Playoff website.Every Game Counts. Well, and sorry if this seems a little weird, truth is that maybe not quite every game. Maybe the game that does not count is a conference championship game, like Saturday nights Big Ten matchup of Penn State and Wisconsin, and try to explain that one.Because, in the very next paragraph, the playoff websites criteria go on to proclaim, The selection committee ranks the teams based on conference championships won . . .In other words, a conference championship is the key factor.Except when it isnt.Critics used to mock the people who run the college football bowl games because they paraded around looking like peacocks in all those brightly colored blazers with their oversize logos, spending fall weekends wining and dining athletic directors.Well, those guys look like Einstein compared to the clowns now in charge of the college playoff.They played the Big Ten championship game Saturday night at the dome in Indianapolis, and as game time approached, tickets could be had for less than $10, which should give you some idea of what the public thought of it.And about a dozen hours after the end of the game, Ohio State, which failed even to qualify for the conference title game, is expected to be chosen one of the four teams for the college playoff.The Big Ten champion will finish the season with a high place in the national rankings and a boost in its recruiting. It just will not be given a chance to play for the national championship, not be allowed a Cinderella champion like Texas Western in 1966 or a Villanova in 1985 in the NCAA basketball tournament.The consolation prize will be a trip to the Rose Bowl.Thats not bad.And, an argument can be made that Ohio State was the best team in the Big Ten this year, anyway, and maybe it was, although it lost to Penn State and beat Michigan only because of a few dunderhead plays by the Wolverines in critical spots. But the point is the Buckeyes did not even win their conference championship and they are going to get a chance to play for the national championship and the team(s) that finished ahead of them in the conference are not.You have to wonder what the geniuses who dreamed up the college playoff were thinking when, by design, they guaranteed a degree of controversy by setting up a four-team playoff among five power conferences. In other words, you know you are starting out by leaving out one of the conference champions. Period.Its a small step from there to leaving out another.The playoff, of course, was supposedly designed to eliminate the controversy that occurred in the past when the national champion was decided by a vote instead of, oh, say, an actual game. Which is how an undefeated Nebraska was selected over an undefeated Penn State in 1994 or several years when two groups of voters seleected different teams as national champions, giving a little for everybody.ddddddddddddA word, supposedly, appears in the previous paragraph because it would never pass a lie detector test. Lets face it, the playoff was set up to give a small group power and a bigger group money, because nothing much happens in college sports that does not really involve power and money.The five major conferences brought six bowls into their playoff orbit and only under pressure allowed one of the dozen spots to go to a school not a member of their cartel. But they certainly did not want one of the outliers getting super rich on the playoff, which is why they limited the playoff field to four teams and put the rest into a so-called Group of 6 bowl lineup which they controlled -- and, of course, sold for a huge sum to television.One interesting sidelight is that the people who run this sham championship arrangement, try as they might, could not fool everybody. Youd think, ordinarily, the championship game of the richest conference would be a huge magnet for fans, but since the fans realized it had so little to do with the national championship they smelled it for what it is.On Stubhub earlier in the week, there were more than 15,000 tickets available for the Penn State-Wisconsin matchup. As late as Saturday morning, more than 5,000 were still available, with sideline seats going for as little as, get this, $9.71.You can be sure that would not have been the case were the winner assured of going on to play for a bigger prize, but as it was, even Penn State and Wisconsin fans kept their wallets in their pockets because, since the meaning of the game was diminished, theyd prefer to save for, say, a trip to Pasadena instead of Indianapolis.Going into the game, the coaches, of course, tried to downplay the bigger picture by simply talking about the import of a conference championship -- huge, said Penn States James Franklin -- and deferring any questions about the playoff possibilities.But it didnt take a deep reading of Franklins comments to know how he felt.You could make a really good argument that the Big Ten, specifically the Big Ten East, may be the best conference in all of college football right now, Franklin said.He is probably right. The Big Ten is probably the best conference in college football right now, just a couple years after people were writing obituaries about the leagues weakness. Its just not a good enough conference, apparently, to allow its champion to play for the national title.--Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than five decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange. ' ' '