Besides a boost in money..
Why do you fight for 6 or 7th place at best every year when basically going forward you only gotta go thru Boise and maybe Washington St for a playoff bid
He's probably going to get a $2.5M+/year boost. That's enough to disregard the lack of prestige and difficulties. No one at Purdue expects them to win the conference or anything, they want 7-8 wins with a random win vs. the top tier teams in the conference every few years and the ability to have random years of 9-10 wins.
And they want to beat IU. It had to burn Purdue to see a program that is historically the worst in original B1G (yes, much worse than NW), win 11 games with a first year HC.