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.

This fall, Aidan O'Connell — a sixth-year coronasenior — will take Gus Hartwig's snap. Then he might either hand the ball off to Christopher Brooks — who played last season at Cal — or Sampson James — who began his career at Indiana — or he might throw the ball to Broc Thompson, Tyrone Tracy or Elijah Canion — transfers from Marshall, Iowa and Auburn, respectively. He might be relying on offensive guard Sione Finau to keep a pass-rusher off him, as he did at Florida International the past few seasons.

That's a hell of a paragraph, I know, but I typed it not to make you sick to death of suspensive hyphens, but to illustrate college football recruiting's new reality: Forget five years from now, the time is now, and the goal is not to build teams but to piece them together real-time.