Expectations were high that Northwestern's 2020 class would be the best of head coach Pat Fitzgerald's career. With a stunning new practice facility to sell and a shiny new Big Ten West championship trophy to show off, many figured that the Wildcats would experience a recruiting bump.

Now, thanks to a Northwestern fan on Twitter, we have some empirical evidence that shows us just how big that bump has been.

@pandafitzjersey's tweet on Monday compared all of Fitzgerald's classes in terms of offers from other Big Ten programs. He found that this 2020 class, which now has 15 commitments, has already collected 55 offers from other conference schools. That's 31% more than the next-highest class, just last year, which had 38.

And remember, it's only July, and the Wildcats will add more commits before the class is wrapped up next February. Assuming that those additions will have Big Ten offers, that number should still climb.

The bottom line is that Northwestern is beating conference foes more than it ever has in recruiting.

Measuring the number of other offers a recruit has is perhaps the best way to determine the value of a player and, eventually, a class. Fans can argue about Rivals star ratings and team rankings endlessly (and often do on our message boards). An offer from a Big Ten school, however, carries a lot more weight in many people's minds than an evaluation from a recruiting expert.

Coaches' jobs depend on how well they identify and evaluate talent, and the number of other major offers is as good an indicator as any of just how good that player is in other coaches' eyes.

Let's take a look at the graphics @pandafitzjersey put together in his tweet.

The table above displays all of the offers collected by Northwestern commits in each class. The lowest-ranked class is Fitzgerald's second group, in 2008, which had just seven other Big Ten offers spread among its 20 commitments. That's a long way from this year's 55. Just two other classes, 2014 and 2019, had more than 30 other Big Ten offers.

We also learn that the Wildcats stole more recruits from Indiana (57) than any other conference program over the last 14 classes. Purdue and Illinois are next, with 45. Not surprisingly, Ohio State lost the lowest number to NU, just seven.

The second bar graph colorfully illustrates the other offers in each NU class. The 2020 class is notable for how wide the bands of light blue (Penn State), blue (Michigan) and scarlet (Ohio State) are.

The offers numbers are probably a bit skewed, however. The number of offers are on the rise, in general, across college football, which no doubt inflates the numbers in recent classes.

In the 2019 recruiting cycle, for example, seven programs offered more than 400 prospects (Nebraska, from the Big Ten, was No. 3 with 413). There were a total of five Big Ten schools (Nebraska, Indiana, Rutgers, Minnesota, Michigan) among the top 13, with each offering more than 300 players. Those are big numbers. The conference has also seen the addition of several coaches in recent years who like to send out enough offers to wallpaper their offices, including Scott Frost of Nebraska, PJ Fleck of Minnesota and Jim Harbaugh of Michigan.

Those recent trends have certainly caused some number inflation, so it makes sense that NU's last two classes would have the most offers from other schools. However, the fact that this is just July and Northwestern still has some players (and offers) to add offsets the impact of those numbers.

@fitzpandajersey's data also displays some built-in validity. In terms of Big Ten offers per recruit, the 2020 class tops the list with 3.67, by far the highest average. In second place is the 2014 class, with 2.47 Big Ten offers per recruit, the only other year that topped 2.0.

That 2014 Northwestern class was one of the best ever for the Wildcats. It featured the program's all-time leading passer (Clayton Thorson) and rusher (Justin Jackson), as well as multiple-year starters like Garrett Dickerson, Jared McGee, Blake Hance and Tommy Doles. That class also claims four four-star commits (Dickerson, Jackson, Thorson and Parrker Westphal), still the most of the Fitzgerald era.

If this 2020 class outperforms the 2014 group over the next five years, the Wildcats will be more than happy with the results.