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.

To me, success against Iowa is gold for Purdue.

While I've always thought that Northwestern ought to be the Boilermakers' model in the Big Ten West, beating Iowa has carried extra significance because it comes into Indiana to recruit so much, and because beating consistent, tough and mistake-free teams means more than beating terrible Illinois or the serial screw-up that is Modern Nebraska.

If you can beat Iowa and that steel trap Kirk Ferentz has been running out there every year seemingly since 1982, you can beat a lot of people. Purdue's downfield passing game matches up well with Iowa's defensive approach — which it inexplicably stuck with against David Bell as he went full Megatron, Anthony Mahoungo style — but that doesn't mean beating those guys is easy.

Iowa is one of the Big Ten West's standard-bearers, and Purdue's dominated that series. Last year, Purdue beat Iowa without its head coach; this weekend, it won a game 24-7 at Iowa and a more reflective score of what actually happened might well have been 35-10.

Iowa hasn't been much of a problem for Purdue under Brohm, but now comes the program that's been the Boilermakers' daddy for a generation.