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.
EVERY MAN AND WOMAN FOR THEMSELVES
The state of Indiana hasn't passed a Name-Image-Likeness law to this point and given the nature of its relationship with the NCAA — which brought jobs and considerable economic impact to Downtown Indy years back — here's guessing that it won't.
And so come tomorrow – when a dozen-plus states' laws take effect — Purdue won't be covered legally while countless peers will be. Neither will Indiana or Notre Dame or whoever else. In the middle of recruiting season, no less.
Maybe I'm being naive to all this, but I don't think this is all that big a deal for Purdue, because the NCAA has already formalized a policy of having no policy.
If anything that may be a competitive advantage for those with enough ingenuity to game a merely broadly regulated system, because for those without laws in place, the NCAA has already provided a get-out-of-jail-free card in its most recent example of egregious dereliction of its leadership role. Similar to its famed "Up for Anything" stance on the fate of the football season mid-pandemic, the NCAA's latest word-salad statement indicated that it won't come after anyone who doesn't have a state law in place for keeping up with the Jones, or better said, Sabans and Mullens and Smarts.
