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 Big Ten is stuck, season-less unless it can pull off this second-semester deal it's been working on since the moment it postponed the fall season.

To that end, there's no easy answer, no right way or wrong way to make the best of a bad situation, an unprecedented predicament. Again, there's not necessarily a right option here for these circumstances, and with that in mind, any move the Big Ten — and other leagues trying to kick off after the holidays — makes will come with as many cons as pros, and all of this of course remains dependent on football being dubbed viable when the time comes. It remains to be seen how the seasons will play out for those leagues pressing on this fall, but none are guaranteed anything, and none have suggested they've been.

Still, as testing hopefully becomes better and more plentiful and America gets a few more months to hopefully get COVID-19 under better wraps, the outlook for second-semester football could be favorable, the logistics being the bigger issue.

Jeff Brohm proposed a spring model. Spring has been the timeframe most discussed since the Big Ten's intent to postpone fall sports came out.

Now, it seems like internal discussions focus on the winter.

When's best?

Again, with it understood that there is no perfect option for the most imperfect of positions here, the Big Ten may be more likely to lean toward winter.

The reality of it is that the league is beholden to Its biggest brands, for a variety of reasons, and Ohio State — already denied a credible shot for both a national title and a Heisman Trophy — Michigan, Penn State, etc., aren't going to want to play a spring season stripped of the NFL talent that would most likely be watching from hotel rooms in whatever city they've chosen for their pre-draft training.

Can't blame 'em.

Additionally, the sooner a winter season ends, the better chance for normalcy in 2021, and that's a cause everyone can get behind. The sooner COVID-19's most acute impact on college football passes, the better. Everyone should want a full 2021 season.

But here's my case for the spring.

For one thing, I want college football played on college campuses, not in (presumably mostly) empty domes. That's not college football as we know it, and if it's me, and I have to choose the best worst option, I want something the best resembles normalcy. If that means the following September is affected, so be it. I'd rather see Big Ten football this April than bad football next September.

The Big Ten is going to play during the second semester for one reason above all others: Money. To recoup what it can from its media partners.

But the possibility exists, too, that while domeball — Detroit, Indy, Minneapolis — would be played solely for a TV audience — I assume — a spring season could mean game-day revenue, too, not to mention some healing taking place for local economies. Those elements shouldn't be overlooked here. Had there been a fall season, Purdue maybe could have had 20-percent capacity in Ross-Ade Stadium, I don't know. Maybe by May, 50-percent is attainable. Who knows? That's a big deal.

Additionally, regarding the local economies. Look, the collateral damage was always going to be there, because fall season or not, football Saturdays weren't going to be remotely normal, with capacity restrictions being what they'd have been.

An on-campus season months from now, as the weather begins to turn following winter, is the much better alternative for campus communities, a secondary concern from the Big Ten's bottom line, but a concern worth carrying nonetheless.

Chances are, your winter-vs.-spring perspective may be shaped by your loyalties.

If you're a Purdue fan, you've already lost the one guy (probably) you might lose to NFL considerations, and it may not bother you all that much competitively to see Ohio State's and Michigan's rosters stripped down to their studs, or better put, stripped of their studs. And playing on campus should be preferred.

If you're a Big Ten blueblood, you want football ASAP, played with your roster as is, even if you have to play on the moon, or something like it anyway. The guess here: The Big Ten leans toward winter. Spring, to me, would be better.

But there is no easy answer, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be until all this is over.

I'm not sure any have taken it directly, but Big Ten presidents (and their peers in other idled football leagues) do have a question they may want to have an answer prepared for: Why is it not OK for Big Ten football to be played during a pandemic, but it is OK for the general student population to re-occupy campus by the tens of thousands?

Are gen-pop students not prone to myocarditis? Or is it just even less likely they'd feel its theoretical wrath walking to class or stumbling home from an apartment party than a football player would covering a kickoff?

There are many layers to the answer to this question, not the least of which is the reality that universities need your tuition revenue and distinctly do not need you critically weighing the pros and cons of more modestly priced online schooling options. Many, many people and many, many families have paid a lot of money for the "college experience," and in so doing, made higher education the billion-dollar complex that it is.

And that's fine. The conferences that are continuing on with their intent to play football, they're doing it for money, first and foremost, but also politics. If you're the SEC, you really want to tell the governor of Georgia or the people of Louisiana that there will be no football this year? You want to draw the ire of 1600 Pennsylvania? Hell no, you don't. That pressure is very real. Those who believe Big Ten football or Pac-12 football or whatever canceled their seasons for political reasons probably have it backwards.

But I digress.

That's also the nature of leadership, keeping stakeholders engaged and, well, happy, including the players who by and large would want to play. That's politics, too. Maybe not in a traditional governmental sense, but politics nonetheless. And I'm not saying it's not important. It is.

The conferences trying to play are doing so for money and for the sake of their stakeholders. The university presidents who played a role in postponing fall sports in the Big Ten did so to the dismay of their athletic directors, coaches, players and fans. That speaks to their belief in the validity of the concern, or the liability toward the concern, however you want to view it.

But they also did it against the backdrop of their schools resuming this bastardized version of normal. Normal is important, and I'm sure all the necessary safeguards are being implemented, to the extent to which this can be controlled, an extent that reaches only so far.

But that backdrop is distinct, that question of why one but not the other, a question that again comes to the forefront as North Carolina shut down in-person school, but continues on with football as part of an ACC that doesn't seem to be winning its fight to play. That's just one school, but won't be the only school.

Many months ago, it was stated rather definitively by a variety of college football types — including the president of the NCAA, not that he's any more than a bystander in all this — that if schools couldn't be open, football couldn't happen. I never agreed with it, for whatever that's worth, but that's what was said. Now, ACC member North Carolina, and ACC-member-when-convenient Notre Dame have shut down classes due to COVID-19 outbreaks.

Well ...

Academia and athletics seem to be at odds here.

If you've read these columns before, you know I'm nothing if not a ray of sunshine here to try to brighten your day any way I can. With that in mind, with football off for the time being, we present our weekly Reason For Optimism. Enjoy!

Purdue's two freshman guards, Jaden Ivey and Ethan Morton, are really good, as you well know.

I've said since last spring that Ivey has the makings of a star and from everything I've gathered this weird summer, he's lived up. Morton has all the makings of a Matt Painter teacher's pet and a Mackey Arena favorite.

How quickly they can apply their skills in full, I don't know, but there are reasonable scenarios here where two of Painter's best guard recruits to this point leave one day as two of Painter's best guards, period. They could profoundly impact this season for a Boilermaker team that needs much improved guard play to turn around its offensive difficulties from a year ago. To that end, this could be precisely what the figurative doctor ordered.

Purdue also needs to be more competitive across the board, and what Ivey and Morton could represent as players themselves might only be part of the story. The fire they could light under everyone else could be the other part of that story, as just as significant a part.

Purdue's got a lot of questions to answer this season if it wants to reverse its fortunes, but Ivey and Morton are two of the reasons the journey will be so interesting.

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