Good Guy, Why does this happen?

By "trouble makers" do you mean assholes or jocks. (whats the difference? )
Hehe, I can totally agree with one of the guys who said something about age. Me personally, I like the nice guy, "trouble makers" are a waste of time. Think about the kind of girls that attract you, are they cheerleaders or bookworms? < Not to stereotype or anything.

Be nice, but be confidant as well. Take a risk and ask a girl out, its flattering and makes you more noticeable.

I am pretty sure that nothing about this has changed since your mother -- and I -- were young. The "bad boys" in school happened to be the boys who tended to party more, and ask girls out more. The "nice boys" happened to be, by and large, the shy boys who rarely asked girls out, and were not exactly, umm, party animals. Girls love nice boys -- and especially boys who treat them nicely. But, as Cindy Lauper so aptly put it, girls just want to have fun. Be fun AND nice, and you will do great with girls. Oh, but you also have to be brave and confident enough to ask girls to go out with you. So go for it. And good luck!

I don't think it is that they are trouble-makers but it is their supposed confidence in themselves. Girls like confident men. I personally would LOVE to meet and ADORE confident sweet caring men not confident bad men.

Guys who cause trouble usually tend to get noticed a lot and they are funny, so they tend to get a lot of girls. Also, a guy who is brave enough to cause trouble must be brave enough to look after his girlfriend and stand up for her, if needs be. Its a bit of a security thing for the girls.
But your mum is right. Girls will only go with guys who are nice to them. No girl will date a guy who is a total pig towards her.
I think its a bit of both really.

Here's your problem you listened to your mom, don't, we all do at one point, but not for relationships, trust me on this one, she will say you need to treat girls nice, so you do and guess what you get no where with women. Now that doesn't mean to be mean to girls well, in a playful way you can, but they want a challenge and if your not a challenge and a pushover then your in trouble.

Being a good guy only works if the guy is a woman's type: tall, young handsome, rich, race-specific and so on. I can name at least 10,000 "good guys" in my state alone who are alone and miserable because they lack such requirements for most women to even look at sideways. But by the time a woman notices such men are standing right next to them, the damage of dating bad men have been done.

Why does this happen? When men and women are at the pinnacle of society, they are too used to getting everything they want and act as though people can be replaced too easily. Everyone wants the super hot blond busty woman and the tall athletic tough guy. Such people are fully aware of this and treats the other as they wish.

What can nice guys do? I have no answer. My 38 years of effort have shown no positive results and thus cannot provide you with a shiny role model for success. The good news is that there are lucky men out there who may be of better help and must voice out more often what it takes.

You are still very young, don't give up

A good guy at heart will do anything for his girl. He'll do so much to please her, that she in fact becomes bored with you. We see those boys that are so egotistical and makes our insides want to crawl out and beat them. The answer is confidence. They don't see egotisticalness, or cruelness. . . They see a certain level of confidence that is attractive. They don't care for the guys that will drop anything for them, because their self-esteem is so low. They want someone that they can latch onto for strength. Sometimes that means you have to be mean, and sometimes you can be sweet. Avoid high maintain ace people like the plague, and just be yourself despite the way others look at you. Just be you.

I think that your mom is right. The only problem with this is that girls do like the bad boys but this is something they will grow out of. Right now you are too young to really take advantage of this. The older girls get, the better you will be looking.