As summer winds down and the calendar inches toward September, two very different yet oddly similar American institutions begin to ramp up for their respective seasons. In the NFL, teams are grinding through training camp, evaluating rosters and trying to avoid devastating injuries. In the U.S. military, units are wrapping up summer rotations, prepping for fall exercises and hoping no one gets a DUI before Labor Day.

The NFL preseason and military pre-deployment training might appear unrelated on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and you will find a shared set of challenges: questionable leadership decisions, hazing masked as tradition and a culture of forced optimism that pretends readiness is always one motivational speech away.

Let’s break down the parallels between America’s two

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