End of the beginning

OK, OK. So the Music City Bowl wasn't exactly a symphony for the Purdue Boilermakers.

No, if the Music City were set to music for these Purdues, it would be a country-and-western song,  with all the appropriate themes. Dogs would die, cheatin' hearts would run off, the goldurn pickup truck would break down. Whisky, that ruinous drink, would lead to Folsom Prison. Sainted mothers would clutch the good book, mournful train whistles would blow, and finally redemption would be found in the shelterin' arms of Jesus.

Or, you know, something like that.

Everything but Mom and Jesus happened to Purdue yesterday, as we all got a reminder that half-assed SEC teams are still way better than half-assed Big Ten teams. The final was 63-14, one of the  worst drubbings in Purdue history. Auburn led 56-7 at halftime. They scored 42 points in a virtual eyeblink. And the game ended with the Tigers on the Purdue 1-yard line, which means 70 points was just a measly step away.

And now, because we live in the knee-jerk biosphere of social media, the question will rise up from at least some segments of Boiler Land: "Why did we just drop that chunky new contract on Jeff Brohm?"

More perceptive segments will answer this way: "Because this is just a bump in the road. And we're just discovering how long that road is likely to be."

Here's the skinny: If yesterday illustrated anything, it wasn't that Brohm is just another counterfeit savior. It was an illustration, and a stark one, of the depths to which Purdue football has sunk in almost a decade of Danny Hope, Darrell Hazell and Morgan Burke's benign neglect. College football at the Power 5 level is so hyper-competitive that if you fall behind -- and Purdue fell not just behind but way behind -- catching up is the devil's own work. You need commitment, you need continuity, and mostly you need patience in bulk quantities.

The latter, of course, is the hardest to pull off in college football these days. It is as corporate an enterprise as exists anywhere, and that means there is money at stake, and that money is stake continually. Which in turn means the pressure to win now, and win always, is more relentless than it's ever been.

And so Auburn 63, Purdue 14, and a 6-7 season that followed a 7-6 season and a bowl win, is not the sort of performance arc that keeps the natives from getting restless. But it's still a step up, albeit an incremental one, for a program that was mostly spare parts and inch-thick dust when Brohm showed up. And there is reason to believe other upward steps are going to follow.

The biggest indicator is in recruiting, the life force of any program. Brohm delivered a top 25 recruiting class this year, and if that doesn't sound as sexy as, say, a top ten recruiting class, it's still yea better than what Purdue is used to. The last time Purdue had even a top 30 recruiting class, after all, was 13 years ago. That's an eternity when you're trying to keep up with the Auburns of the world.

As yesterday amply demonstrated, that process is still in the catch-up stage. And while it certainly didn't look like it, that process is underway.

It might have looked like the end of something. But maybe it was only the end of the beginning.