The average star rating of the players in Northwestern’s 2014 class so far is impressive. But maybe even more impressive is the schools those players have turned down to attend NU. Those names include heavyweights like Texas, Michigan and Stanford, and by our count, 56 schools have lost out on recruits to the Wildcats so far. It’d probably be overkill to list every school — it’s not all that relevant that NU took Solomon Vault from East Carolina — but it’s interesting to see which schools NU got multiple recruits from, and which schools were the biggest victims. Here they are, numerically.

Five recruits — Illinois, Minnesota

Four recruits — Purdue

Three recruits — Iowa, Nebraska, NC State, Western Michigan, Vanderbilt

Two recruits — Boston College, Northern Illinois, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Bowling Green, Louisville, Toledo, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri

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Covering college sports in the offseason tends to turn into an exercise in creative frustration. When there’s nothing going on in the real world – on the field or court, where real people engage in real interscholastic competition – we like to talk about conceptual or speculative things, things grounded in analytical thought or reaction. We’re opening up our window of our collective offseason stream of consciousness with a new little feature called “offseason musings.” Original, right? You probably don’t need further explanation, but the crux of the idea is for yours truly to relay a random Northwestern-related thought, question or conversation tidbit in extended form.

Any particularly compelling NU-sports related subject is fair game here, and want to hear from you, too: if you have anything you’d like addressed, feel free to tip us on Twitter (@Insidenu) or head on over to the contact page and shoot us (or your writer of choice) an email. This is a purely fun and spontaneous endeavor, and the topics could get wacky from time to time, but hey, what else is year-round Northwestern sports coverage if not diffusely entertaining? Consider this an official invitation into our offseason thought box.

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The excitement of a double-digit victories and a bowl win stoked the preseason hype machine. A quick review of roster departures, depth chart solidity and Big Ten competition made everyone wonder. An offseason of rapid recruiting success like none other under Pat Fitzgerald pushed the noise to deafening levels. Northwestern has a lot of momentum entering the 2013 season. I ran off some of the obvious reasons, and any of those developments would have any fan base excited about their favorite team. I just have one concern: is the vision being skewed? Are we looking too much at the outside noise, and less at the signal?

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The Big Ten released its 2014 football schedule today, and Northwestern found out which divisional crossover games it will have in the 2014 and 2015 seasons. Check out the schedule — including the non-conference games we know — and our analysis below:

The Schedule

Aug. 30 — vs. Cal
Sep. 6 — Empty
Sep. 13 — Empty
Sep. 20 — vs. Western Illinois
Sep. 27 — at Penn State
Oct. 4 — vs. Wisconsin
Oct. 11 — at Minnesota
Oct. 18 — vs. Nebraska
Oct. 25 — Bye
Nov. 1 — at Iowa
Nov. 8 — vs. Michigan
Nov. 15 — at Notre Dame
Nov. 22 — at Purdue
Nov. 29 — vs. Illinois

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No matter how many billboards Northwestern places on I-294, the Wildcats are never going to be Chicago’s Big Ten Team in terms of alumni base. But in recruiting, NU is certainly starting to live up to the billing.

Pat Fitzgerald’s team built on its already stellar 2014 recruiting class yesterday with the addition of four-star running back Justin Jackson. Jackson, a Glenbard North product, is the third four-star to commit to NU this year, but maybe more importantly, he joins Wheaton North quarterback Clayton Thorson as the second four-star commit from the Chicago area. That gives NU more four-stars from Chicago than any other school, which is quite the change from the decades prior. And the importance of such a dramatic shift can’t be understated.

On the InsideNU podcast last week, Chicago native Gordon Voit — an Illinois grad pursuing his masters in journalism at Northwestern — explained the importance of what he calls “The Glenbard Belt.” All of Chicago and its suburbs have great talent, but the “Glenbard Belt” — concentrated in Lombard, Glen Ellyn, Carol Stream and Wheaton, but also extended out to Naperville and Downers Grove — is especially rich in talent. Both Jackson and Thorson are from that area.

The Glenbard Belt, roughly, shaded in purple.

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When the ball rocketed off Hunter Niswander’s right leg, he knew it felt clean. The rain pouring all around him was no deterrent – not before he received, dropped, reared back and pummeled that famous hemi-spherical pigskin object more than 80 net yards, and certainly not after. The ball sailed deep, kicking team personnel chased and the return man watched it sail safely over his head and out of play.

In sum, Niswander – the highest-rated punting prospect in 2011 according to Kicking.Com and one of the most coveted kickers/punters in his class and, if it wasn’t already abundantly clear, one of Northwestern’s 19 commitments in 2013 – punted the ball a really long way, so long, in fact, that his own conservative projection put it somewhere in the vicinity of 100 yards.

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As bowl games start changing hands again, the Big Ten appears to have its first changes for the new cycle. ESPN’s Brett McMurphy reported that the Big Ten will share the Gator Bowl and Music City Bowl between 2014 and 2019 — each conference will appear in each game three times during that span — and play against the SEC. This comes as a bit of a surprise, as popular belief was that the Big Ten would be dropping the Gator Bowl altogether.

Overall, this looks like a good move for the Big Ten. It means the conference will keep up its rivalry with the SEC — say what you want, those leagues have more animosity between them than any others do — and it also adds a favorable location in Nashville. A number of fans told us they hoped the Big Ten would add the Music City Bowl because it would provide for a new, fun location, but also work well for travel

As far as the Gator Bowl goes, it’s not a top game, but it still gets pretty good matchups and is a good game for the Big Ten to have on its slate. McMurphy was told by a source (in the article linked above) that it’s a “huge blow” for the ACC to not exclusively hold the Gator Bowl slot against the SEC. The more mid-to-upper-tier bowls for the Big Ten to have some sort of relationship with, the better for the conference.

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For Northwestern, next year’s matchup against Ohio State will be the showcase of all showcase games. It’s a possible top-15 matchup, a nationally televised night game and may even end up being the location for ESPN’s College Gameday. These kinds of games don’t come around often for Northwestern — maybe once a decade if they’re lucky. Crowd shots from this game will be plastered all around the football complex, and it will be featured in just about every NU athletic department promotional video from October 6 to, well, a long time from then.

This has just about all the makings of the perfect national showcase of NU football, but one glaring obstacle remains in the way — the crowd. At most schools this wouldn’t be a problem for a primetime “showcase” game, but NU fans have yet to show they can sell out a stadium on their own, and with a large fan base coming to town, there’s the potential for there to be a lot of red in the stadium. Just look at what happened last year against Nebraska.

Photo credit: Sylvan Lane

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