Today, GoldandBlack.com continues a new weekly feature. We're calling it the Weekly Word.

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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Return on Investment: I don’t know what Jeff Brohm’s going to do after this season.

But I will say this: Should the Louisville Vacancy Crisis conclude with Purdue retaining its football coach, it is perfectly reasonable to expect something to come along with it, most likely a fistful of dollars, several of them probably.

And if, or when, that day comes, it may see Purdue pushed to its outer limits, to a new frontier of commitment to sports and all the largesse associated with its collegiate version.

If, or when, that day comes, some teeth might grind, at a school where sports has never been the priority that tops all others and never will be, a university run by a man trying to write a legacy as a champion of cost-cutting in higher education.

It may jolt some folks if, or when, Purdue does whatever it can financially to keep its coach.

I don’t know what the number would be, but it wouldn’t be modest, not just by Purdue standards but by any standard.

It would be necessary, however.

This is the big one, Louisville is, the clearest and most present danger to Purdue’s ability to keep its coach. I say that because this is the one that could be seen coming. It’s just that it came sooner than anyone would have anticipated. My strong suspicion is that Brohm himself probably didn’t see the opening at his alma mater opening less than 23 months after his introduction in West Lafayette.

And while money may not matter most to the guy who drives the same car as your teenage daughter, there’s no one it doesn’t matter to, particularly among those with ultimate leverage and a family that matters profoundly to him.

This wouldn’t be a shakedown, just a negotiation, nothing personal, only business.

Purdue may have to pay.

And it should. Pragmatism demands it, should it come down to it.

Brohm’s record at Purdue does not jibe with the thinnest air of the salary strata.

Market realities, however, put him in that conversation, as does the context of his record. I don’t have to tell you that. You were awake in both October of 2016 and 2018. Your befores-and-afters are vivid.

You’d be paying Brohm not for what he’s done but for what you think he will do. No one can say for certain what that will be, but a strong foundation has been laid heading into a big year for any new coaching staff — Year 3.

You’d be paying not just for Brohm but for all that comes with him, for at least two more years of Rondale Moore as you know him, and for the currently unbound recruiting class that figures to be a load-bearing wall for Purdue’s future.

But you’d also be doing more of what you’ve been doing — spending money to make money. I don't know all the revenue numbers associated with Purdue football; I don't need to, because my befores-and-afters are also vivid. It's been a total reversal the sport that serves as most big-time athletic departments' ATM.

Purdue isn’t just relevant again. It’s honest-to-goodness captivating, led by a coach who’s made football in West Lafayette fun as hell, and connected with the university community in a meaningful way.

You’d be paying for certainty, insofar as such can be found. Certainty is the rarest of commodities when hiring coaches, valuable as gold and maybe just as pricey.

Purdue has it in Brohm, a really good coach who’s going to represent the school well and keep enhancing an athletic department brand that’s strengthened considerably largely because of him.

Some of the numbers being thrown around these days, not just in college sports but all sports, it has created a roving definition of worth.

We’re all just used iPads on eBay, worth whatever someone is willing to pay.

But some of us are worth both what someone is willing to pay, and what they're willing to pay you because of me.

Looking at it like that, Brohm may be worth an Accord’s weight in gold to Purdue.

On the opposite end of that coin, as Purdue works to keep in Brohm in West Lafayette, perhaps with a deal that could not only make it worth his while, but also serve as a scarecrow in the front yard to whoever it may next off-season coming after him, it must protect itself.

It's obviously time for Bobinski and his braintrust to have a list.

And it'll have to be crafted from scratch since the Les Miles window has shut.

I'm, of course, joking.

Purdue doesn't want to be in the market for a football coach again, obviously, but if that's its reality, then it will be well equipped to go find another good one.

Brohm gets a ton of credit and deservedly so, but Purdue's resurgence has been a joint venture of sorts, the other half of it being the massive commitment the school has made to football. Should Brohm leave, he'll do so with no complaints whatsoever about support, I'd imagine.

For that reason, Purdue's an exponentially better job than it was just a few short years ago.

Whether the marketplace knows it or not yet, we don't know, but if that time comes, it will.

Making a name: Purdue has an All-American, one of the best players in college basketball.

And Carsen Edwards is clearly the Boilermakers' most important player.

But it's actually been surprisingly close through five games, because of Nojel Eastern, who's been Purdue's defensive tone-setter and a key piece to a dominant rebounding start for the Boilermakers this season.

Again, his value has been shown in his play, but also in his absence. Virginia Tech flipped the game right after he left it with his third foul. That probably wasn't a coincidence.

Eastern's proven to be indispensable, and it validates something I wrote last season — or at least I think I wrote it — and that's this: Why can't Nojel Eastern be Rapheal Davis?

Defensively, he may already be, and Davis was great, a former Defensive Player-of-the-Year in the Big Ten.

What you've seen through five games is a player who looks like he may be, in time, the best Matt Painter has ever had as a perimeter defender. I've not seen a perimeter defender affect games the way Eastern has the past five games since Chris Kramer, and that says nothing of the fact he may be the best rebounding guard Purdue — not Painter, Purdue — has ever had.

But back to Davis, who left a legacy in West Lafayette with his leadership.

Time will tell on Eastern, but he figures to be a key player in that area, too, for the balance of his Purdue career.

Just So Stupid: Purdue lost a game Saturday because of the dumbest rule in football.

Now, before Internet Grandstander Guy gets all riled up and fires back with, "Purdue didn't lose because of that one play," I'll counter with, "Yes, yes, it did."

Had Isaac Zico's fumble into the end zone not found its way out of bounds, there's no guarantee Purdue would have scored points there, but I'm comfortable in making the assumption it could have managed a field goal at least.

But it did, triggering football's version of the random swinging blade in a Super Mario Bros. video game, the random catastrophe that's just baked into the landscape. It's the Bankrupt tile on the Wheel of Fortune, the land mine just sitting there waiting for its next victim, the majority of which will fall prey due to no egregious failing of their own, just the unpredictable breaks of an unpredictable game.

On one hand, on Saturday, there was something appropriate about the defense being reward for making a tremendous football play, and effort should be rewarded by the rules, not penalized. But like with every other portion of the field, when the defense knocks the ball loose, it has its chance, that window closing as soon as the ball goes out of bounds. And that's the way it should be. They call them "live" balls for a reason.

Make no mistake: Purdue lost possession of that ball Saturday not because of a bad call or a good play by the defense, but because of a stupid rule, the worst rule in football, and one that, worst of all, is so easy to fix.

The rule is in place, I can only assume, to keep people from intentionally fumbling into the end zone as a last resort. Because that would happen so often if there wasn't a potentially game-changing penalty associated with it.

Referees are asked to make subjective rulings on the fly almost every play, whether they relate pass interference, late hits, whatever it may be. That's the power that's been bestowed upon them. Would it be too much to issue a ruling once every five years or so on whether a fumble was intentional?

If so, how's a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty sound? Even if it's unintentional, that sounds a lot better than the nuclear option, one than can decide the eventual outcome of a game, as it did Saturday. No other penalty on the books, that I can think of, wields such power by itself.

Let me take you back many years to when Purdue last lost a game because of this stupidity, and yes, Purdue did win a game in part because of it, against Indiana, one year, and it was stupid then, too. Purdue was hosting Northwestern, and wide receiver Andre Chattams dove for the pylon, trying to score. But after extensive review using what I can only assume to have been space-age satellite imaging equipment, it was determined that Chattams had actually fumbled over the pylon before contacting said pylon.

Never mind the fact that there are rules on the book penalizing players for trying really hard, theoretically making the game less exciting — effort should be rewarded by the rules, not penalized — and focus on how messed up it is that Purdue also lost that game — yep, a one-score game — over literally millimeters.

Al Pacino said football is about the "six inches in front of your face." In reality it can be eight centimeters over the orange.

I know times have changed — I get that — but consider this too:

Take the worst possible player-safety-related infraction you can think of.

Let's say a DB targets a receiver — and it's egregious — and knocks him cold, then dives on the ground next to him and revels in counting him out, pro-wrestling style. That's 15 yards plus ejection, plus 15 yards for the taunting/unsportsmanlike conduct call, and probably a suspension meted out at a later date for him having been a horrible human.

You ever see a game decided by penalty yardage?

Now, you ever see a game decided by a turnover?

Here's hoping that one of these days, the college football community, starting with its coaches, commits to really taking a look at the worst rule in the game and all its absurdities. In the meantime, Purdue's down a win because of it.

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