It used to be a favorite pastime for Northwestern media and fans every fall: tracking the true freshman Wildcats who saw action on the field.

They were few and far between for most of head coach Pat Fitzgerald’s tenure in Evanston, and their appearance on a Saturday signaled a potential star in the making. Justin Jackson, Venric Mark and Dan Vitale are three Wildcats who played as true freshmen in recent years.

This year, though, the freshman watch will be a little different. Due to an offseason rule change by the NCAA, Fitzgerald can now play a true freshman in four games without burning his redshirt. So fans will likely see several, if not all of the true freshmen seeing playing time this season.

The game now will be tracking who plays in that fifth game, thus using that first year of eligibility.

“It will be a week-by-week thing and I think it will be fun to watch,” said Fitzgerald at Northwestern’s Media Day last week. “You’ll probably have your game count and once it goes to game five it will be, ‘Oh, I guess they’re playing him.’”

Fitzgerald is a vocal proponent of the rule change that figures to drastically increase the number of freshmen who play across the country. He’s seen the number of games swell from a maximum of 12 for bowl teams when he was playing to 15 for national championship participants today. And in all that time, he points out, not a single scholarship was added.

“So this, for a health, safety and well-being standpoint, is, in my 13 years, the best rule change that I can think of,” said Fitzgerald.

He went on to commend Todd Berry, the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, for spearheading the effort that led to the change. “Todd came up with this concept about a decade ago and it’s taken us that long as coaches to finally have the rest of the association figure out that this is good for student athletes,” he said.

Fitzgerald has been notorious for playing as few true freshman as possible during most of his career. Typically, just a handful would see action. That was by design, he said, as he set out to build depth and experience on his roster.

“When I first started off as a head coach, I took a pretty strong philosophical approach and emulated some programs that were similar to us that I researched pretty hard to build the program,” he said. “I really felt like we enacted that plan pretty well, where we didn’t play a lot of guys, we redshirted the overwhelming majority of the class and classes, back to back years, so we could become an older team.

“Once we were able to become an older team, then I was able to begin to play more freshman based on their ability to contribute and what we anticipated, to where last year, we played double-digit guys because they earned roles.”

Several first-years played critical roles for the Wildcats last season. Samdup Miller started all 13 games at defensive end and finished with 5.5 sacks, while Rashawn Slater started 12 contests at right tackle. Safety J.R. Pace had two interceptions and wide receivers Kyric McGowan caught five passes and Jace James three.

When asked last week which newcomers he expects to contribute this year, Fitzgerald replied with his tongue in his cheek.

“The short answer is all of them because I get to play them all now in four games,” he said. “Play them all and let God sort them out, isn’t that the way we’re all going to approach it?”

Expect freshmen to pop up in several spots throughout the season, whether it’s on offense, defense or special teams. Fitzgerald will play as many freshmen as he reasonably can and would like to see them all get reps, if possible. There’s no substitute for game experience in a player’s development.

However, the coach isn’t sure when those freshmen will play quite yet. He foresees different groups who play at different points in the season.

“I think what we’ll have is a group of guys who come out of camp who are ready to play and they’ll be in the mix right away,” he explained. Northwestern’s record five early enrollees this year – running back Isaiah Bowser, linebacker Khalid Jones, defensive end Andrew Leota, safety Jeremiah McDonald and cornerback Greg Newsome – will likely be in that group, having gotten a five-month head start on their peers who reported to Evanston in June.

“Then after the first game, you’ll say, ‘Is your plan to play him in four games or the whole year?’ and I’ll say, 'I don’t know.' I’ve got flexibility until each one of those guys cross over that threshold.

“I think we’ll come out with a group of guys that are really close to playing in the opener but may not be ready. And then we’ll have a couple of guys that probably need a couple of months to learn the system, get stronger, get in better shape, whatever it may be or maybe just have a role become available for them and then maybe those guys will play in November.”

So get out your rosters now and start tracking who plays where, and in how many games. It sounds like it’s going to be as much fun for Fitzgerald and his staff as it will be for the fans.

“Were just gonna go rock,” he said. “I’m a huge fan of the rule.”