Answer: Stuffed pizza. Italian beef sandwiches. Northwestern’s 2022 recruiting class.

Question: What are three things from Chicago?

Okay, maybe this wouldn’t qualify as a Jeopardy question, but you get the idea. So far, there are three commitments in the Wildcats’ class, and all three come from the Chicagoland area.

Reggie Fleurima, a four-star wide receiver from Naperville Central, got things started on March 17. Three-star tight end Chris Petrucci of Park Ridge Maine South came aboard on April 14. Then, on Monday, three-star offensive lineman Deuce McGuire of Chicago Marist made it a trio.

That’s one player from the Western suburbs, one from the near Northwest suburbs and one from the South suburbs (McGuire lives in Evergreen Park) for those of you scoring at home.

The distinct Chicago accent of this group is no accident. The Wildcats don’t bill themselves as Chicago’s Big Ten Team for nothing.

As head coach Pat Fitzgerald tweeted shortly after McGuire’s announcement, Northwestern recruiting always “starts and ends here at home in Chicagoland!”

Fitzgerald’s recruiting strategy makes sense. Northwestern’s message isn’t going to be received any better than when it’s heard by a Chicago kid.

The school is located in Evanston, just over the border on the North side of the city. Fitzgerald, a native of South suburban Orland Park, is selling the same experience he lived when he played at Northwestern. The school’s brand recognition is higher locally than it is anywhere else in the country, as players – and parents – fully understand Northwestern’s academic-athletic value proposition.

This year, they also have Fleurima, who has embraced the recruiter role as well as any Wildcat commit in recent memory and has a lot of connections with area recruits.

The numbers of metro Chicago kids who land at Northwestern in any one year ebbs and flows, according to how many have the grades to satisfy admissions while also possessing the “right fit” to satisfy Fitzgerald. The Wildcats signed two Chicago-area players in 2021, four in 2020, three in 2019 and five in 2018.

This 2022 class is off to a roaring start for Chicagoans, but that may be it – at least for a while. Northwestern has already landed three of the five prospects they’ve offered from the city and suburbs. Tyler Morris from Nazareth Academy committed to Michigan, while sources say Evanston’s Sebastian Cheeks, a Rivals150 outside linebacker, wants to go away to school and is a longshot to pick his hometown team.

The fact that all three of NU’s commits are from Chicago comes as no real surprise. They are in many ways the result of the COVID pandemic and the NCAA recruiting dead period that has been in effect since March of 2020.

Northwestern recruits from coast-to-coast, and the dead period, which eliminated hosted on-campus visits, severely limited the Wildcats’ reach to prospects further other regions of the country.

Typically, the program’s recruiting MO is to get a kid on campus as early as possible. They would have had a steady stream of visitors for the spring practice that just concluded on Saturday. Many would have stayed overnight in a dorm with a player. They would have met with coaches and players, sat in on position meetings and watched practice. Some of them would have committed. The four previous Northwestern classes had first commits from Massachusetts (twice), Ohio and Michigan.

But all of that recruiting activity was wiped out by the dead period in this cycle. A few prospects, such as OL Nick Herzog from Kansas City and DE Joe Strickland from Indianapolis, took self-guided, unescorted visits to Northwestern this spring, on their own. They couldn’t meet with any players or coaches, or go inside any facilities, so it was a pale imitation of what a “normal” visit would have been. But it was better than nothing.

Prospects like Herzog and Strickland were exceptions rather than the rule, however. Most recruits from other states stayed home or visited schools much closer to home.

Fleurima, Petrucci and McGuire, on the other hand, all got a chance to visit campus before and even during the recruiting dead period. It was a just a short car ride for all three of them (plus Cheeks and 2023 Chicago wide receiver Carnell Tate) to attend Northwestern’s open spring practice on Saturday, where they could at least see what a practice looks like, even if they couldn’t talk to players or coaches.

Recruits from Northwestern talent hotbeds like Ohio and Texas didn’t get that same opportunity.

That will all change in June, of course. That’s when the NCAA will lift its dead period and official visitors will begin descending on Northwestern’s campus like mosquitos every weekend. The Wildcats already have 17 visitors lined up for an all-expenses paid trip to Evanston. On the first weekend alone, Northwestern will welcome six players that come from Texas, California, Florida, Kansas, Maryland and yes, even Illinois (Fleurima).

So soon enough, Northwestern’s All-Chicago club will be expanding. Some of them might even want to put ketchup on a hot dog.