Michigan almost blew it for everyone.

The Wolverines nearly made the Big Ten a laughingstock for the rest of the nation, which revels in every opportunity to throw the entire conference into the dustbin of history.

Oh yeah, you guys mattered a lot — in the Woody vs. Bo days!

Michigan, at home in the Big House, was taken to overtime on Saturday against Army. Now, the Black Knights have risen dramatically as a program in the past few years and took Oklahoma to overtime in Norman last year before losing.

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Funny, nobody suggested the Sooners were dead and their entire conference was irrelevant after that game.

Anyway, Michigan — one of the favorites to take the B1G championship and perhaps snap the league’s painful two-season streak of being locked out of the College Football Playoff — survived 24-21 in double overtime.

Why was this game so critical to the entire league, not just the maize and blue? Because the B1G has so few opportunities to make a big impression in nonconference play in 2019. That is partly because the league plays a nine-game conference schedule, which obviously means there are only three games out of the league.

Except for Michigan’s meeting against Notre Dame on Oct. 26 in Ann Arbor, no B1G team faces an elite out-of-conference team which is considered a CFP contender this season.

If a B1G team runs the table and wins the conference title undefeated, it would be impossible to keep that team out.

But as for a margin of error? Well, that Oklahoma team which nearly lost to Army in 2018 went to the CFP even after losing to Texas in the regular season. But this year, if Michigan had lost to Army, it’s an open question whether any one-loss B1G team would have been granted that margin of error in the eyes of the CFP committee.

One team that did make a nice nonconference impression on Saturday was Maryland. If the Terrapins ever figure out how to play within the conference late in the season the way they do nonconference teams in September, they might contend in the B1G East. Maryland smoked 21st-ranked Syracuse 63-20, giving the Terrapins 142 points scored after two games.

That does not move the Terrapins up in our projected bowl pecking order quite yet because none of the teams in front of them have lost either. But it makes Maryland a team to watch.

Now, on to our B1G bowl projections, in the conference’s approximate bowl selection order:

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