Weekly Word: Boilermaker Breakthroughs, playing fields and more

Why? Because it has words, it's posted weekly and we're just that unimaginative. (Actual feedback from Week 1: Definitely like the content, but a new name would be useful.)

Anyway, here are some random thoughts for the week, most of which will be Purdue-related.

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Signature Moments: Couple years back when Mike Bobinski was hired as Purdue's athletic director, taking over a cratering football program and all within its blast radius, he didn't pretend things were in tip-top shape competitively around these parts, but didn't signal a lost cause, either. (Because that probably would have been a poor approach to take on Day 1 of a new job anyway.)

He suggested Purdue just needed its day in the sun, or as he called it, "program-defining breakthrough moments, where you win on the national level when the lights are really bright."

Until recently, it hadn't happened in some time.

Since Bobinski spoke those words, it just so happens that basketball has separately won a Big Ten title and a school-record 30 games; football has won a bowl game; Caleb Swanigan, Carsen Edwards and Rondale Moore have brought in a king's ransom worth of individual honors, national in scope; and the improbably suddenly successful football coach has twice turned down other jobs to remain at Purdue, subject of wide-scale national attention.

But no bigger day would come than that Ohio State game, the Boilermaker win that sent tremors through the college football season that didn't stop rippling until the Playoff butt-kickings had all played out.

And now basketball just took down No. 6 Michigan State on CBS, improbably planting its flag in the thick of the Big Ten championship race, in what was supposed to be either a rebuilding or retooling year, depending on your worldview toward such things.

You realize that Michigan State went a whole calendar year without losing a regular season Big Ten game? That's not easy.

Look, Purdue football and Purdue basketball are two different animals. Football has weaved in and out of relevance for generations, but when it most recently fell, it fell hard.

Basketball has always been relevant, but to a point, some will tell you, again depending on your worldview regarding such things.

All that being said, Purdue's athletic program, driven by those two flagship sports, has claimed its share of the limelight since Bobinski uttered those words.

Purdue's administration has gone a long way toward fixing football and has done so in a very short period of time. Basketball, it's just doing what it's been doing for most of a decade-and-a-half under Matt Painter and for decades prior, really.

No matter the path or the context, both sports have earned those moments their then-new A.D. spoke of a few years ago, and because of it, Purdue across the board is more relevant than it's been in years, probably since the Drew Brees-and-Gene Keady days of the late '90s.

Playing fields: You know, my opinion on steroid users or suspected steroid users making the Baseball Hall of Fame is changing.

I'm sorry, evolving. It's evolving. That's a much nicer way to describe flip-flopping.

Anyway, here's the thing: Yeah, guys were juicing, and thus, cheating.

But you mean to tell me that the pitchers in that same clubhouse knew the deal and just accepted it, when their livelihoods depended on getting cheaters out?

Hell no, those guys were sticking it in their arms, too.

Hey, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire struck out 326 times between them during that artificially magical 1998 season, you know. The guys throwing the ball were doing something right, or, we should say, effective.

The hitters might have been cheating, but if the pitchers were cheating too, that's an even playing field, best I can tell. Does that make it right? Of course not. But at least it's fair, or something close to fair.

What's this have to do with Purdue? Not a damn thing.

But I do think that the thought of considering the playing field is important. Context matters, and I think context should matter more and more nowadays when it comes to the perception of college basketball coaches' worth.

You know the game now. If you have a search engine, the cognitive ability to connect dots and a functional nose for reasonable suspicion, the FBI investigation into college basketball has outed every nook and cranny of the game for you. The playbook for winning big is right there at your fingertips, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not in the heat of the moment next time your team loses to a couple lottery picks in the NCAA Tournament.

The reality is that Purdue is now winning with a team for which the pieces, one by one, don't make a lot of sense together on their surface. But now that they've been together, when you take a step back, the whole thing is starting to make sense, a credit to everyone involved, the players more than anyone, but certainly the coach included.

That Purdue even has to go through such processes speaks to the fact it's playing a different game, I'm 99-percent certain in saying.

I know this is becoming a tired topic, but it's a topic that shouldn't be forced into the background by time. It should remain top of peoples' minds, not just at places doing things differently, but at all the schools where either the coaches are cheating or people are cheating for them.

Those who aren't, who are willfully competing on a playing field titled against them, by choice, that should matter, and people should know.

I know by drawing the steroids-and-basketball comparison, I just made a hell of a case for putting cheating coaches in the Hall of Fame — a bunch of them already are, by the way — but I hope you see what I'm getting at here.

Context matters.

Role-ing Along: Sunday in Mackey Arena, a game was played between one of the best teams in college basketball and a team suddenly playing like one, as well.

Michigan State has its stars, per usual, but what it also has is a collection of players who are elite in their roles, Matt McQuaid as a 3-and-D guy and Kenny Goins and Xavier Tillman as bouncers around the rim.

We'll see what happens for the Spartans in March, when they run into the first-round draft picks they normally have but don't this year, but in large part due to McQuaid and Goins in particular, that's an elite college basketball team this season.

Purdue's playing as well as anyone in the Big Ten, reversing its fortunes considerably in the past month, and it's done so thanks in large part to those very sorts of players.

It's becoming apparent that Grady Eifert may be one of the best role players Matt Painter's had at Purdue, which came to mind during his all-out onslaught on Keady Court Sunday.

Literally, on Keady Court, as in the actually floor.

Four possessions. That was his second-half accounting, off sheer hustle and an utter disregard for one's body.

He didn't score a point in 24-and-a-half minutes, but he helped Purdue win that game by doing something as simple as throwing his body at the basketball. And his body of work prior at Wisconsin and Ohio State stands.

That's a role player, a term that has to stop being used with derision or condescension. It's actually a hell of a compliment. The world, after all, needs ditch-diggers, too.

And Purdue has a bunch of guys with shovels in hand all of a sudden.

Matt Painter suggested a while back that it's been a key to Purdue's turnaround that his team's young players began to understand they can help the Boilermakers win without getting theirs, as they say.

Lately, you've seen Eric Hunter play an important role for Purdue and Aaron Wheeler stand arguably as the singular difference in a big Big Ten win for the second time this season. It's his role right now to make open threes and use his athleticism. In time, that role will expand. But for now, on Sunday, he did both.

Buy-in.

That's why Purdue's winning right now.

From the Boilermakers' biggest star to those with the most narrowly defined job description, this is now a team more than it is five individuals trying to get along with the cameras rolling, like some sort of basketball "Real World."

It's all coming together for Purdue, suddenly and surprisingly, just like it had come together for Michigan State long before. And it's happening for a lot of the same reasons.

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