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.

The last time Matt Painter had sat behind the microphone in Illinois' quaint media room, he did so next to Carsen Edwards, explaining his star's 40-point game.

This time, he sat behind that mic to explain his whole team's 37-point game, in an eyesore of a loss, the bottoming-out of a season of ups and downs.

Then, Painter stood up to walk out, quipped to the three people there covering his team that he enjoyed his last post-Illinois press conference in that room better, then headed back to the locker room.

Outside said locker room, while Matt Haarms spoke to us, flaying himself with his own words following a profoundly disappointing showing for both player and team, teammates Eric Hunter and Nojel Eastern sat separately waiting for their turns to explain the 26-point loss to an Illinois team that's good, but not 26-points-better-than-Purdue good.

While Hunter and Eastern bided their team, Painter occupied it, first engaging Hunter privately, to resume teaching, quietly, calmly, trying to make something of that open wound of a game before it had even scabbed over. Then, Eastern.

In college sports, as with life, things are usually not as good as they seem, nor as bad as they seem. Such is the reality in competition involving the most volatile commodity on the planet: Young males.

That Illinois loss was awful, suggestive of a team that was simply broken playing away from its home floor, but again, college basketball is a funny game, one where things can turn on a dime, and in Purdue's darkest hour this season, they did.

Purdue didn't win at top-20 Michigan the next time out, but it could have, maybe even should have, and you had to start somewhere. Suddenly, Illinois looked not like your reality, but your fluke.

Sunday, Purdue did to Michigan State everything it had done to it in Champaign. With that win came a crucial win, some red meat on its NCAA Tournament résumé's bone and hope renewed regarding all that may be possible from here on out.

It was a total reversal from where the Boilermakers' stood almost exactly seven days prior, and as Purdue beamed after bludgeoning the Spartans, I couldn't help but think back to the calmness of its coach a week prior when his team stepped off the State Farm Center floor in flames.

Watching the national title game the other night — yes, all of it — and a few thoughts registered. Here they are.

• There are a lot of ways to win games at quarterback in college football — or football at any level, for that matter — but what you saw Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence do with their legs in that game really underscored how important it can be to have quarterbacks who can run. Burrow ran for 58 yards for the champs and Lawrence 49 for the runners-up. They both scored.

In today's football, a game won by defensive ends and cornerbacks as much as anyone, the importance of extending plays can't be overstated. Third-down conversions are gold no matter what, and there aren't many more Impactful plays sometimes than when a defense does everything right on third-and-eight, only for the quarterback to steal nine yards with his feet.

The ability to go 11-on-11 instead of 10-of-11 In the red zone matters, and so does the fact that when the ball never leaves the quarterback's hand, the defense can't intercept it. Obviously no one wants to get their quarterback hurt, but a lot more can go wrong throwing the ball than not.

• That odd-stack defense that Iowa State defensive coordinator and former Purdue assistant coach Jon Heacock cooked up and subsequently imparted to Clemson — this story from The Athletic is excellent — punctuated the importance of unpredictability on defense In an age where offenses are as unpredictable as ever as the boundaries of creativity In football get pushed more and more.

I'd say that unpredictability is most important for those who don't have all the best players, but Clemson does, and they went that rout, and to start the title game, LSU had few answers.

How this relates to Purdue. It doesn't necessarily, but I think it does reflect the importance of being open-minded and flexible and multiple and unpredictable and sometimes just different, at all levels.

Look, I know new coordinator Bob Diaco has coached the 3-4 in the past, but considering Purdue's dearth of linebackers and the fact that the last thing Purdue should want to do is cut into Derrick Barnes' and George Karlaftis' collective comfort level at their positions or take either Lorenzo Neal or Anthony Watts off the field, then Purdue has to be wary of playing to its personnel strengths above all else, generally speaking.

That doesn't mean there aren't dramatically different things that can be done here and there to try to gain advantages wherever possible, as Clemson did. Clemson has the best players in America and arguably the best defensive coordinator in the game, and it's mind was wide open to new ideas.

That's a good lesson for everyone in college football, if you ask me.

• I've said it before and I'll say it again: There is too much nickname-sharing in college sports and something must be done about It. The Tigers should never play the Tigers for a football title and the Wildcats should never meet the Wildcats in the Final Four.

There are too many vague "Wildcats" and not nearly enough Ocelets, Servals and on down the line. There are too many Lions and too many Tigers.

We can do better than this.

Kudos to the Big Ten. Your average Joe on the street likely has little idea what a Boilermaker, Buckeye or Hoosier is, and that's cool, because your banner should reflect the originality and identity of your school.

And if you must associate yourself with a ferocious mammal, give Wisconsin and Michigan credit for being repped by cool and original ones — however sparse their populations may actually be in their respective states — while not only sacrificing ferociousness, but taking it to its highest levels. Do not mess with the weasel family, man. There are no other Badgers and no other Wolverines in major college sports, I don't think, and that's how it should be.

And Penn State has taken the clichéd "Lions" moniker and turned it into one of the most original, customized nicknames in the country, by it being a specific sub-population of probably-no-longer-existent lion.

This is something the Big Ten should be proud of, that it's the only conference with Cornhuskers, and the only one without a single raptor. No Eagles, no Falcons, no Hawks none of that mindless drivel, all due respect to all you large predatory birds reading this. It doesn't just have Knights; it has Scarlet Knights, and that's way more awesome. And, Spartans over Trojans all day long. I mean, you think of Spartans and you think of Leonides. You think of Trojans and you think of, well, never mind.

Look, it was stupid that Clemson and LSU met in the title game the other night and you couldn't call them by their nickname without specifying. And the day college basketball dies will not be the day that Cassius Winston gets a thousand bucks to sign autographs or Zion Williamson gets above-board money from Nike while playing for one of its schools, but rather the day that Kentucky, Arizona, Villanova and, uh, Davidson meet in the Final Four.

No such worries In the Big Ten, where Northwestern are the lone wildcats and the actual wild cats are identified with a particular level of specifics. The Big Ten even has burrowing rodents, and they're Golden, damn it.

Long way to go still for those teams vying on spots in the NCAA Tournament and not merely counting on them.

For Purdue, this season is about the former, not the latter, and that's different from the past few years.

At the moment, Bracketology, for all that it's worth, paints a picture of Purdue perhaps having to board a bus to Dayton to play its way into the Big Dance.

A week ago, I think you take that in a heartbeat if offered; now, the events of the past week suggests a different reality, but the Boilermakers need some road wins and a little help from Virginia would be a welcomed sight, too.

The last two games, Purdue has played like an NCAA Tournament team, and done so consistently, in two different settings, against two good teams. It showed intangibles, glimpses of the sorts of things that make a collection of good players into a good team not all that far behind the schedule it worked on last season in that regard. Purdue should keep getting better.

The question is whether it can win big road games, or any road games beside Northwestern, for that matter. It just hasn't done it yet, but it will have chances, in a league where you can alternately wonder whether everyone's good or whether no one's good.

Michigan State, the class of the league, just got beat by four touchdowns at Purdue. Ohio State has rolled up in the fetal position and now has suspensions. If you trusted Maryland before Brad Davison tied the Terps' shoelaces together last night, then shame on you. Michigan outlasted Purdue, then lost to Minnesota, and seems to give up 30 to every big guy it faces, and plays in a league full of good big guys.

I don't know who's good and who's not, and that raises opportunity for Purdue, because there may not be a road game the rest of the year that's not winnable, and all of them will look good on the résumé if you can get 'em.

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