My parents raised me to erase the words “can’t” from my vocabulary. My siblings and I were scolded anytime the word found its way into our minds and matriculated by way of audible expression from our mouth. “Can’t” is synonymous for ignoring potential, stifling greatness, and walking away from purpose. “Can’t” is a cancer that spreads quickly and destroys the very essence of dreams. Yet, there are educational systems that are teaching “can’t” to impressionable young people. A school district located in Oscoda, Michigan basically painted a yellow stripe on the backs of all their football team through one move, cancelling the season because they went four games without scoring a point. Welcome to “wuss-ville” Michigan!

According to USA Today.com, “Despite pleas from players and parents, the board in the small northern Michigan district recently upheld the school’s earlier decision to end the season, saying players risked injury in trying to take on much stronger opponents.” Basically, they were saying, “Our football team doesn’t have the ability to turn it around.” How do you know if you don’t give them the chance? I have a message for these elected idiots…competition is the way of the world and losing creates better winners! There is a new paradigm of ignorance spreading throughout education that discourages competition. The reality is the high school football players were forced to quit against their wishes. The “yellow belly” loser of a coach, Kyle Tobin, said,”When you go to a game on Friday night and see a team physically dominated, those are the indisputable facts.” The “indisputable fact” is Coach Tobin needs to lead a Girl Scout troupe since he is so scared of competition. This is High School football, a game where heart drives men to success in spite of the odds against them.

Grades are competitive, college is competitive, business is competitive, and life is competitive. Competition is what would make those students successful. It is appalling that a school board would cancel a season when the players wanted to keep going. It sounds to me like the school board was trying to defend their enormous egos, instead of look out for the best interests of the players. What do you do when you start a season 0-4? You keep playing… ask Prairie View A&M University! They suited up for nearly ten years straight without winning a game, but they didn’t quit. Ask the Dallas Cowboys “America’s Team!” Troy Aikman and the Cowboys endured seasons of heartache before they went on to win several Super Bowls.

What do you do when you begin the season 0-4? You keep playing Coach Tobin and Oscoda “Wuss-ville”, Michigan! According to USA Today, Coach Tobin claimed the team was not “physically competitive,” despite the team quarterback’s assertion that,”All I ever wanted to do was play football…My teammates never felt so unsafe that we didn’t want to be out there.” You do not cancel a season because you are losing! Sir. Winston Churchill said, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” Mickey Rooney said,” You always pass failure on the way to success.” Robert Browning said, “a minute’s success pays the failure of years.” Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Dr. King said,”The measure of a man is not how he reacts in times of comfort and convenience, but how he reacts in times of conflict and controversy.”

Failure is the gateway to success. Losing teaches you how to win. Competition compels you to greatness. Quiting, on the other hand, makes you a void waste of space and breath because life is based on how well we recover and achieve despite the odds. It is not based on us living it being bound by the odds that are stacked against us. Cornell West once stated that,”everyone is born into circumstances…the question is what are you going to do with them?” A coach, a school district and a community had a chance to take negative circumstances and create positive energy and motivation that would last a lifetime. When people learn the power of overcoming failures, they unlock the mystery to greatness! Unfortunately, they all chose to leave the unwarranted stench of “can’t” on young impressionable minds. 0-4 simply means you have at least 8 more games that you can win! 0-4 is not a losing season, it is motivation to create a winning season. We are creating a society of mediocrity when we teach our children that failure is a period instead of a colon and gateway to success!”Can’t” is not an option in life, it is a pathway to premature death…the death of dreams, the suicide of potential and the abyss of hopelessness. If at first you don’t succeed, stand on the shoulders of failure and reach for the sky!

“Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwords carefully avoid.” -John Keats