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.

Wouldn't it be so great right now to be able to totally lose our minds following a defeat incurred by our favorite team? Or to foolhardily overestimate a bad win to the point it jacks up our expectations, only setting us up for an even harder fall down the line? Or some other such visceral reaction to sports.

The hell we sometimes put ourselves through over an affinity, right now, seems so, so sweet, because as they say, sometimes we value things more when we lose them, and at this precise moment, America's at risk of losing football, for a year anyway.