CHICAGO-It’s the same old story this year for Northwestern. Despite winning the Big Ten West last season, the Wildcats aren’t getting a whole lot of love from the media.

A Big Ten writers poll by Cleveland.com picked Northwestern to finish fourth in the West division. An ESPN preview said fifth. The Las Vegas over/under line for wins is about 6.5, while S&P+ and FPI projections peg them for between five and six wins.

That is a low bar for a program that has won 20 of 27 Big Ten games, three bowls and the first division title in program history over the last three years.

None of it is surprising to head coach Pat Fitzgerald, who addressed the assembled the media on Friday morning at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago. He is entering his 14th year as head coach in Evanston and has seen the lack of media respect year-after-year. It’s as if the Wildcats can’t erase the stigma of the Dark Ages, when they set the record for consecutive losses (34) and went 24 years between winning seasons, from 1971 to 1995, the year Fitzgerald helped take the Cats to the Rose Bowl as a middle inebacker.

When Fitzgerald was asked if he uses the media snubs as motivation, he ripped off a one-liner worth of the main stage at Zanie’s.

“Absolutely, I’m going to have Matt Foley come in and talk about that in the first team meeting. We’re going to get the guys stoked up.”

(Matt Foley, for those that don’t know, was the motivational speaker character made famous by Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s. You know the guy…he lives in a van, down by the river.)

Fitzgerald doesn’t mind it. He even understands it, to a degree. It doesn’t matter that the Wildcats have won 15 of their last 16 Big Ten regular-season games and haven’t lost to a West division opponent in nearly two years. To some, they will always be “just Northwestern.”

“It is what it is,” said Fitzgerald. “We’re not great click bait, I guess. Picking us first isn’t sexy.

“We’ll just earn it. That’s what’s so great about football. The (Big Ten) West gets knocked. Enjoy it. That’s what I tell our players, enjoy it. You’ve got to go out and earn it on the field. That’s what makes our game so great.”

If you look purely at the numbers from last season, the low expectations are rational. The Wildcats finished 12th in the Big Ten in scoring and total offense, and dead-last in rushing. Defensively, they were solid but not outstanding, ranking eighth in total defense. They won with “smoke and mirrors,” said ESPN’s Bill Connelly.

But games are played on a field, not on paper. Northwestern stacked victories by getting stops defensively when they had to, scoring just enough offensively, and not making mistakes. The only category in which the Wildcats led the Big Ten was fewest penalties. They also were second in turnover margin at plus-seven.

That’s how the West was won. It didn’t make for great theater, perhaps, but the bottom line is that it was effective.

“We’ll just continue to do that, control what we can control,” continued Fitzgerald. “It’s always fun to read this time of the year how much we stink. I should get better at golf because I don’t know why I coach.”

He closed his soliloquy with one of his traditional mantras that has almost become his motto.

“You know how I feel,” he said. “Stats are for losers.”

Wrestling with a new OL coach: Fitzgerald talked about the transition from longtime offensive line coach Adam Cushing to Kurt Anderson, who enters his first season guiding the guys up front.

He said that there is quite a contrast between Cushing, who is a University of Chicago grad, with Anderson, who the coach said is more of a pro wrestling kind of guy.

“Kurt is kind of more of a Rowdy Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, you go on and on, Triple H. Am I getting all the (WWE names)?” he said. “Fox is going to love me, WWE on Fridays and Fox Big Ten kickoff on Saturdays with us.”

His point was that Anderson brings a new, more boisterous voice to the locker room.

“But he's an awesome personality,” said Fitzgerald. “The guys gravitated to him right away, and I just look forward to watching him continue to build that group with his stamp.”

Filling Thorson’s extra-large shoes: You know that Fitzgerald is too smart to talk on Friday about who will succeed four-year starter Clayton Thorson as Northwestern’s quarterback. Everyone assumes that Clemson transfer Hunter Johnson will be trot out with the first offense on Aug. 31 at Stanford, but Fitzgerald didn’t name Johnson the starter after spring practice, and the battle between him and senior TJ Green will presumably spill into fall camp.

Fitzgerald said on Friday that whomever is behind the center, the key to success is being his own man. He can’t worry about living up to the standard set to NU’s all-time leading passer.

“You can't compare yourself to the last guy,” said Fitzgerald. “That's not fair to the new quarterback and it's not attainable. Just be the best they can be, lead the squad, take care of the football, and when he steps on the field, everybody that touches our program has to believe that we're going to win because of him.”

Defending the crown: Northwestern is in a new position this year as the reigning West division champions. They are the hunted this year, as teams will try to knock them off the top of the standings.

Fitzgerald says the key to keeping that title will be focusing on the future, not the past. The Wildcats can’t spend any time patting themselves on the back.

“There's a great kind of a great coachism out there, and you guys in Evanston have heard me say this, that the rearview mirror is small and the windshield is big for a reason,” he said. “If you get caught looking back as you're moving forward, you're going to be on a collision course with failure.”

He will lean on his veterans this season because they know how to win in the Big Ten. The youngsters have a lot to learn before they can contribute, says Fitzgerald.

“You just go back to your process, how you build your team,” he said. “As always with everybody across the country, 25 percent graduate – your most experienced, probably most successful players – and then 25 percent are new guys that have no idea what they're doing. We get way too much hype about those new guys. I get it, I understand it, but they have no idea what they're doing.”