A Bucket of Crabs

I learned what the title meant in my third week at Garrison State.

"You ever see crabs in a bucket?" my roommate Devon asked, sitting on his bed with an ice pack pressed against his knee. Someone had clipped him low during a non-contact drill. "They'll climb over each other, pull each other down, do anything to get out. But none of them ever make it. They just drag each other back to the bottom."

He gestured around our dorm room—at the two of us, freshman running backs competing for the same spot on the depth chart, living together because the coaching staff thought it would "build competitive fire."

"That's us," Devon said. "That's this whole program."

I didn't want to believe him. I am Jacob Torres, a four-star recruit from Texas, and I have dreamed of playing D1 football since I was eight years old. I have worked too hard, sacrificed too much, to accept that the reality would be anything less than what I imagined.

But Devon was right.

It started small.

My cleats went missing from my locker before our second practice. Not stolen—just relocated to the laundry bin, buried under wet towels. I was late to the field, running in slides until the equipment manager found them.

Coach Brennan made me run gassers after practice. "Lack of preparation is lack of respect," he said, ignoring my explanation that someone had moved them.

Two days later, Devon's practice jersey went missing. Soon after, my mouthguard vanished. Later, a fellow freshman's playbook also disappeared, leading to him being scolded in front of the whole team for being "unprofessional."

The older guys found it hilarious. We were just learning the first rule of Garrison State football: trust no one, protect everything, and understand that everyone around you would step on your throat for half an inch up the depth chart.

"It's always been like this," said Marcus, a junior linebacker who apparently decided I wasn't enough of a threat to be worth sabotaging. "Builds toughness. Coaches love it."

"They know it's happening?" I asked with concern.

Marcus laughed, "Know it? They encourage it. Coach Brennan calls it 'competitive spirit.' Says the team that battles hardest against itself will destroy everyone else."

I watched a senior cornerback "accidentally" spike another player's Gatorade with something that had him rushing to the bathroom during meetings. I saw position groups huddle together, whispering, planning, treating practice like espionage. I noticed that the training staff always seemed to look the other way when things became "accidentally" violent.

"This isn't normal," I told Devon after a particularly brutal practice where I had seen three separate incidents that looked more like assault than football.

"No," Devon agreed, examining a new bruise on his ribs. "But it's normal here."

The real education came during live drills.

I was a second-string running back, getting reps with the twos while trying to prove I deserved a shot with the ones. The starter was Trey Williams, a junior with NFL dreams and the morality of a cornered animal.

During a routine inside zone play, I took the handoff and hit the hole. Their linebacker—Trey's roommate, I noticed—came in high and late, launching himself at my knees with his helmet.

I fell hard, twisting my ankle underneath me.

"Walk it off," Coach Brennan yelled. "This is football, not ballet."

I limped to the sideline, where the trainer gave my ankle a cursory glance and taped it without much care. "You'll be fine," he said, already moving to the next injury.

I wasn't doing well. My ankle swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, and I could hardly put any weight on it. However, I couldn't complain or show weakness because three other freshmen running backs were ready to take my reps.

That night, Devon assisted me back to the room as we both hobbled—him with his injured knee and me with my rolled ankle.

"You think it was on purpose?" I asked.

"Does it matter? Trey needed you hurt. His boy delivered. That's how it works," he replied.

"But we're on the same team," I cried in frustration.

"No," Devon said firmly. "We wear the same uniform. That doesn't make us a team."

By October, I had learned to sleep with my wallet in my pillowcase and my phone in my hand.

Money often vanished from lockers, along with textbooks, laptops, and other valuables that weren't secured. Although the coaches and everyone else were aware of this, no one took action.

"Boys being boys," I heard Coach Brennan tell an assistant after a freshman reported that his iPad had been stolen. "They need to learn to be more careful with their belongings. The world's full of people looking to take advantage."

The irony was suffocating. We were being taught that taking advantage of each other was just preparation for the real world, that morality was weakness, that the only thing that mattered was getting yours before someone got theirs.

I watched a sophomore plant ‘goods’ in a teammate's locker before a room check, getting him suspended for three games and opening up a starting spot. I saw offensive linemen deliberately miss blocks on running backs competing for carries, allowing them to get blown up by linebackers. I witnessed position coaches pitting players against each other in increasingly destructive ways, then acting shocked when someone got hurt.

The worst part? It was working.

We were 7-1, destroying opponents with a viciousness other teams couldn't match. Because we'd been hardened by attacking each other every single day. We'd learned to see everyone as an enemy, every play as life or death, every opportunity as something to be seized at any cost.

"Winning fixes everything," Coach Brennan would say, and apparently, he was right. The local media praised our "intensity" and "competitive culture." Alumni donors loved our "old-school" approach. And every Saturday, we took the field like soldiers who'd survived war with each other, ready to take it out on whoever was unlucky enough to face us.

But the cost was invisible to everyone who wasn't living it. The breaking point came in November.

Devon and I were both listed on the travel roster for our game against Wyoming State, both hoping for garbage time carries. We had survived the season together, forming an unlikely alliance in a world designed to make us enemies.

The night before the game, I woke up at 2 a.m. to find Devon's bed empty. I found him in the bathroom, bent over the toilet, shaking.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," he said, but his voice was wrong—slurred, weak.

"Devon—" I said.

"Someone put something in my water bottle. I saw Trey watching me drink it, smiling," he replied weakly.

My stomach dropped. "We need to tell someone. The trainers, Coach,” I urged.

"And say what? I can't prove anything, but I think someone poisoned me. You know what they'll say," Devon responded, laughing bitterly. "That I'm making excuses. That I'm soft. That I can't handle the competition."

He was correct. I have seen it before—players who spoke out about the culture or tried to highlight the sabotage were often labeled as problems, malcontents, or not team players.

"You need a doctor," I said.

"I need to play tomorrow. If I miss this game, I'm done. There are four guys behind me ready to take my spot," he fired back.

"Devon, this is insane," I stated.

"Yeah," he agreed. "But it's where we are."

I assisted him back to bed, observed him fall into restless sleep, and clearly realized that we were prisoners. Prisoners of a system that forces us to harm one another to survive, rewarding cruelty while punishing kindness, turning allies into enemies and labeling it as "building character."

Coach Brennan loved to quote Vince Lombardi: "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

But he never finished the thought: what happens when winning requires you to lose yourself?

We won the game. Devon played through whatever had been done to him, running for sixty yards and a touchdown. Trey started ahead of both of us, like always.

In the locker room, Coach Brennan gave a post-game speech about brotherhood, family, and how this team was special because we pushed each other to be better.

“Iron sharpening iron,” he shouted proudly.

I looked around at my teammates—some nursing injuries inflicted by other teammates, some counting the cash they'd stolen, and others already plotting the next sabotage, the next way to drag someone down so they could climb higher.

A bucket of crabs. None of us is escaping. All of us pulling each other back down.

And the coaches on the sideline, watching it unfold, encouraging it, believing that the toxicity made us stronger when really it was just making us cruel.

I transferred after that season to another mid-major D1 school in Texas, where players genuinely supported each other, coaches focused on building culture instead of weaponizing competition, and winning was important but not at the expense of basic human decency.

Devon stayed. He said he'd invested too much to walk away, that he could handle it, that next year would be different.

I heard he made it to second-string by his sophomore year. Then someone cut his brake lines before a road trip—he was okay, but the car was totaled. He never could prove who did it. The coaches called it a "tragic accident" and moved on.

He transferred to junior year. Last I heard, he'd quit football entirely, saying he couldn't enjoy something that had been poisoned so thoroughly.

Sometimes I wonder how many guys like us cycle through programs like Garrison State. How many learn that success means stepping on others, that teammates are just obstacles, that morality is something you can't afford if you want to win.

And I wonder what happens to them after their football career ends. After they've spent their formative years in an environment that rewards the darkest parts of human nature. After they've learned that those in charge won't protect them, won't stop the toxicity, and will even promote it if they believe it yields results.

Coach Brennan is still there, still winning, still building his program on the backs of kids tearing each other apart.

Still filling his bucket with crabs. Still watching them drag each other down. Still calling it excellence.