Weekly Word: Signs of the times, centers and more

Wednesday, Purdue announced an initiative that reflects the current pivot point of college athletics ground perfectly, a joint effort with the Krannert School and other partners to lay in place a comprehensive infrastructure for the Name-Image-Likeness Era, a new world order that can benefit those who are proactive and welcoming or damage those who aren't.

I'm not going to rehash all the nuts and bolts — read about them here — but such things represent both the new conditions on the ground and the new battleground as NIL gets jammed down the NCAA's throat.

Name-Image-Likness — which I'm choosing to write with hyphens because I think hyphens are cool — is student-athletes' ability to profit off their names, images and, uh, likeness. Commercials, camps, autograph signings, sponsored tweets and IG stuff, such things.