After a long day of covering recruiting, this is how the story I wrote for today's newspaper starts:

AUBURN, Ala. — Scoffed at for its limousine tour of the state and penalized for secondary violations committed during the overzealous “Big Cat Weekend” last spring, Auburn got the last laugh on national signing day Wednesday, securing a consensus top-five recruiting class.

The Tigers got high marks from all three major scouting services, ranked fourth nationally by Rivals, fourth by ESPN and fifth by Scout in what was head coach Gene Chizik’s first full recruiting class.

“This is a great day for the Auburn family,” Chizik said. “I want the people to be excited, but I want people to also understand that this is the first building block on the foundation that is going to take us some time to build this, not only the right way, but to get it where we need to be.”

Auburn signed 27 players to national letters of intent Wednesday, adding to the five January enrollees it could count against last year’s class.

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Also, read this additional capsule breaking down Auburn's class a little further.