The Road Game Problem

The Perfect Curfew

Let's say everything goes right. Your team lands, buses to the hotel, has meetings, and gets to their rooms on time. Curfew is 11 PM. Room check happens. Everyone's accounted for.

Now what?

Player A and Player B are roommates. They're both in bed by curfew—following the rules. But they're also 20 years old in a hotel room with a TV and a bag of snacks from the gas station. So they watch SportsCenter. Then a movie. Then scroll their phones. Two hours later, they finally fall asleep.

The room is too warm. The TV was on until midnight. They ate M&Ms at 11:30. They got maybe 5 hours of actual quality sleep before the 6:30 AM wake-up call.

This isn't rule-breaking. This is just what happens.

The Roommate Problem

Now imagine Player A actually cares about sleep. He knows what good sleep feels like. He wants to turn off the TV at 10:30, drop the room temperature to 67 degrees, and get a real night's rest before the game.

Is he going to tell Player B to turn off the TV? Ask him to stop eating snacks? Lecture him about room temperature and sleep optimization?

Never happens. The social dynamics don't allow it. So Player A compromises, stays up with his roommate, and shows up to game day at 70% like everyone else.

When sleep is tracked and visible, the conversation shifts. Player A isn't being weird about turning off the TV—he's trying to win. Player B isn't being pressured by his roommate—he's competing with the whole team. The culture does the work that peer pressure never could.

The Hometown Game

Here's a scenario every coach knows but nobody talks about.

You're playing an away game in a city where one of your players grew up. His family is there. His high school friends are there. Maybe an old girlfriend. It's Friday night—the first time he's seen these people in months.

We can pretend this doesn't happen. We can set curfew and do room checks and trust the honor system. But we know what happens. A few beers. Catching up. Running into people. Before he knows it, it's 2 AM and he's sneaking back into the hotel.

The next morning at breakfast, the coaches have no idea. He looks tired, but so does everyone on a road trip. He makes it through warmups. He starts the game.

What If You Knew?

Imagine pulling up sleep scores on your phone at the hotel breakfast. You see your starting left tackle logged a 50.

Now you have options. Maybe you pull him aside for a conversation. Maybe you alert your offensive coordinator. Maybe you adjust the game plan to reduce the cognitive load on that position—fewer complex blocking schemes, simpler assignments, more chip help.

You're not punishing anyone. You're making informed decisions to protect your player, protect your team, and give yourself the best chance to win.

This is only possible if sleep is tracked.

The Travel Compounding Effect

Road games already work against you in ways that have nothing to do with player behavior:

• Disrupted routine. Athletes are creatures of habit. Different bed, different pillow, different sounds—all of it affects sleep quality.
• Time zone shifts. Even a one-hour change affects circadian rhythm. Two or three hours? Significant impact.
• Travel fatigue. Planes, buses, waiting—all of it accumulates. Players arrive already behind on recovery.
• Pre-game anxiety. Away environments are unfamiliar. Some players sleep poorly simply because they're not home.

Now layer player behavior on top of these unavoidable factors. The hotel room hangouts. The hometown visits. The roommate who won't turn off the TV. You're compounding problems on top of problems—and you can't see any of it.

The Early Kickoff Math

This gets worse with early kickoffs. An 11 AM game means players need to be at the facility by 8 AM. Which means waking up at 6:30 AM. Which means—if they're going to get 8 hours of sleep—being asleep by 10:30 PM.

How many college athletes are asleep by 10:30 PM the night before an away game?

If players are up until 1 AM and waking at 6:30 AM, they're operating on 5.5 hours of sleep. For an early road game. Against a team that slept in their own beds.

Culture Over Curfew

The goal isn't to police players. Curfews don't work because they only control when players are in their rooms—not whether they actually sleep. Room checks don't work because the problems happen after you leave.

What works is culture. When sleep is a team KPI, peer accountability emerges naturally. When there's a competition to post the best pre-game sleep scores, players start making different choices. When the data is visible, the conversations become easier.

Player A doesn't have to lecture Player B about sleep optimization. The scoreboard does it for him.

What Visibility Changes

When you can see sleep scores before a road game, you can:

• Make informed decisions about rotation and playing time
• Adjust schemes to reduce cognitive load on impaired players
• Have honest conversations with players before kickoff
• Identify patterns across the roster (did the O-line room stay up together?)
• Protect players from themselves—and from hurting teammates

You can't control the travel. You can't control the time zones. You can't control what happens in hotel rooms. But you can see the results—and that visibility changes everything.

This is all possible if sleep is tracked.