The problem is that universities have a strong incentive to optimize for juicy press releases. A theorem -- unless it's 100 years old or otherwise somehow easy

The problem is that universities have a strong incentive to optimize for juicy press releases. A theorem -- unless it's 100 years old or otherwise somehow easy to relate to the general public -- does not have this effect. Winning a competition or "outperforming humans" does. Aside from bumping up the quality of K-12 science education by at least an order of magnitude or two, I'm not sure there's a good solution to this problem. It's the human condition to be impressed by some things and not others, regardless of their relative actual importance.