In the midst of Northwestern basketball transfer news this weekend, the school's football team made a little noise in the 2028 recruiting class.
According to a post to X from the player himself, defensive end Hendrix Dawson received an offer from David Braun and the Wildcats yesterday. Dawson is a 6-foot-4, 255 lbs pass rusher from the Wisconsin Dells, and he has received a three-star ranking on both Rivals and 247Sports.
Those rankings actually don't tell the full story, though. Dawson's "Industry Ranking" on Rivals is actually a four-star, which would seem impossible given that he's a three-star according to both sites.
But it's important to remember that the star system is simplified for readers, and these sites actually do have numerical scores tied to each player. The star system just puts them into buckets, of sorts.
Understanding the system, we can parse out that Dawson is in the upper echelon of three-stars. Rivals uses a weighted average to calculate its Industry scores, so we can safely assume that Dawson is closer to a three-star than an unranked player.
We can also predict that his recruitment will be hard fought. A myriad of Big Ten teams are already in the mix -- Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota and Wisconsin have also already submitted offers per 247.
The Badgers, obviously, seem like the leaders in the clubhouse. 247's crystal ball feature projects Dawson to Madison, and it would make sense given that he's from the state. Wisconsin's flagship school tends to recruit well inside the state, so the 'Cats are fighting an uphill battle to get Dawson to Evanston.
But Wisconsin is a program that's clearly been negatively impacted by the expanded conference and the extinction of the Big Ten West. While its prestige is probably still higher than Northwestern's, the discrepancy feels different than it did in the past.
The Wildcats could certainly use an infusion of youth along the defensive line. In recent seasons it's had guys like Anto Saka, Najee Story and Aidan Hubbard, but those guys are on their way out and it's now time for a changing of the guard.
The EDGE position is crucial in modern football, and Braun is surely acutely aware of that fact. His defenses tend to create a fair amount of pressure, and Northwestern also tends to only go as far as its defense can take it.
Braun brought in new offensive coordinator Chip Kelly to right the ship on the other side of the ball, but make no mistake, the 'Cats don't want to lose that defensive identity in the process.