College football says it’s about competition.
The truth is, it’s about choreography.
Every weekend we’re sold the image of young men stepping into battle. But behind the ads, the walk-outs, and the rankings graphics, there’s a quieter reality unfolding:
The sport increasingly rewards avoidance over courage.
Not in speeches.
In incentives.
And incentives shape behavior more reliably than any locker-room talk ever could.
The lie we tell ourselves
We tell players:
- “Play hard.”
- “Compete every snap.”
- “Earn it.”
And at the same time, the system teaches them:
- Sit out meaningless games.
- Protect your draft stock.
- Avoid unnecessary risk.
- Schedule soft.
- Build a clean record.
- Manage perception.
None of this is cowardice.
It’s rational behavior inside a broken environment.
But here’s the uncomfortable part:
If the system rewards caution more than courage, you don’t get champions.
You train hesitation.
You train optimization against danger.
And it only looks like discipline… until it matters.
What competition is supposed to do
Real competition is not about preserving advantage.
It’s about exposure.
It is supposed to:
- force adaptation
- punish weakness
- reward resilience
- break illusions
- build strength through opposition
The whole point of playing the game is not to look good.
It is to become dangerous.
You don’t become dangerous by avoiding danger.
The mistake modern sports is making
We’ve turned competition into:
- asset management
- narrative protection
- reputational optimization
- economic hedging
- scheduling gamesmanship
Teams avoid real tests.
Players avoid real risk.
Brands avoid real exposure.
What gets called “strategy” is increasingly:
The art of staying untested.
So when elimination games arrive, half the field looks shocked by violence.
They’ve never been in it.
What my model started revealing by accident
I built a system that tracks something I now call trust:
Not hype.
Not brand.
Not story.
Trust is what you gain when:
- you beat good teams
- you rise under pressure
- you win when you shouldn’t
- you show up when it hurts
- you improve when everything is against you
Over time, patterns emerge.
Some teams rise because they are forged in pressure.
Other teams rise because the system protected them from it.
The difference is not small.
It is the difference between steel and paint.
The uncomfortable discovery
There are games that exist only for money.
They don’t test anyone.
They don’t transform anyone.
They do not build greatness.
They generate:
- inventory for networks
- padding for records
- protection for brands
- illusion for fans
They look like competition.
They are not.
They are performative violence with no consequence.
And they clog the sport with noise.
Why players sit out games now
People ask:
“Why don’t players care about bowls anymore?”
They do.
They just understand the incentives better than we do.
If:
- risk is real
- reward is abstract
- loyalty is punished
- injury is permanent
- promises are soft
Then sitting out isn’t a character flaw.
It’s a market signal.
The sport told them:
“Your body is not worth this game.”
So they listened.
The question nobody wants to ask
If the best business strategy is to avoid the hardest battles…
What exactly are we training?
Men who run toward danger?
Or men who learn to game systems?
The alternative future
Imagine a sport that did the opposite.
A sport that paid teams and players for:
- seeking difficulty
- playing elite opponents
- surviving brutal schedules
- refusing easy wins
- walking into pressure voluntarily
- staying in the arena when it hurt
Where:
A hard loss
meant more than an easy win.
Where:
Bravery had a measurable value.
Where:
Cowardice—in the form of safe scheduling and protected records—was exposed, not rewarded.
Where:
Champions weren’t just crowned.
They were proven.
That’s the sport we should be building
Not one that trains risk avoidance.
One that trains hardness.
Not one that optimizes fear.
One that glorifies confrontation.
Not one that protects reputation.
One that earns it.
Final question
Before we argue about playoff spots, rankings, or schedules…
We should answer something simpler:
Are we building men who seek the fight —
or men who learn to minimize it?
Because the game will always tell you what it values.
And right now…
It’s not courage.