The Weekly Word is GoldandBlack.com's weekly, obviously, column covering Purdue football, basketball and recruiting, as well as college sports issues, the true meaning of life, or whatever other topics might come to mind in a given week.

All the receipts haven't come in yet, all the 1s carried and all that, but at the end of the day today — Signing Day for college football — Purdue will be ranked somewhere in the double-digits in the Big Ten in recruiting, at least by Rivals.com.

Given the barely paralleled recruiting results Jeff Brohm and Co. have brought to Purdue in recent years, that's an eye-opener.

Will time prove this to be one of the worst recruiting class in the Big Ten down the line? I don't know, same as I wouldn't know how time would reflect on a top-ranked class. That's the fun and futility of following recruiting. The dog-and-pony show of signing day and glitz and glamour of recruiting's Internet Era are gone by Thursday afternoon, the only remnants being the standards that recruits and the coaches who signed them get held to thereafter.

Purdue's standard has been lofty under Brohm. The Boilermakers have signed top-25-caliber class and transformative stars under this coach and this recruiting staff. They've competed like hell against college football's Goliaths.