A season goes over the brink

Oscoda High, a 530-student school in Michigan, decided to stop the bleeding, so to speak, and has canceled the rest of its football season after suffering four lopsided losses.

The move has attracted national attention, drawing mixed reaction. The statistical support in favor of the drastic measure: In four games, opponents 164, Oscoda 0. The closest game was a 30-0 loss to Whittemore-Prescott on Aug. 31.

“I have 28 years of coaching experience in high school and college, and I know the difference between a team playing bad and a team that’s unsafe,” Coach Kyle Tobin was quoted as saying in an Associated Press report.

Oscoda had been making progress before this season. In 2004, the Owls went 1-8 and failed to score in three games. Last season, they doubled the win total, going 2-7, and Oscoda was shut out only once, in the final game.

Now, sadly, it will be Friday night lights out in Oscoda.

More ‘Friday

Night Lights’

The book, which was turned into a movie, is coming to your TV screen as a weekly series. Kyle Chandler stars as Coach Eric Taylor, and admits to limited football-playing ability as a youth in small-town Georgia.

“I was short and fat the first year and got the hell beat out of me,” he told the Austin American-Statesman in an interview earlier this year. “Then I was tall and skinny and got the hell beat out of me again.”

You say ‘rasslin,’

we say ‘wrestling’

Briefing aims to be positive, unless, of course, the line is too good to pass up.

In that spirit, it would hate to create the impression that Oscoda’s athletes are not worthy of praise.

So let’s talk about the Owls’ wrestling program.

Retired wrestling coach Judd Wainwright was inducted into the Michigan State High School Coaches Assn. Hall of Fame earlier this month. Wainwright, who retired from coaching in 1997, recorded 431 victories in 34 seasons.

“I was looking for a basketball job, but all those jobs were filled,” he told the Bay City Times, explaining how he’d been chosen to coach wrestling.

Good thing he wasn’t looking for a football job.

Trivia time

In the spirit of struggling football teams though the years: How many games did Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Chuck Noll win in his first season, 1969?

Steelers, Part II

Who can imagine Joe Paterno anywhere but at Penn State? Still, at least three NFL teams have tried to lure Joe Pa out of State College, starting with the Steelers in 1969.

Steelers owner Dan Rooney talked about what might have happened for both sides had Paterno accepted his offer, in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2004.

“I can tell you, Penn State would have been the loser in that situation,” Rooney said. “I wrote him a letter once and told him he was ideal for college football. This was coming from a guy who tried to take him away from that. He is the perfect coach for college football. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think he could have done it in the pros because I think he could have.”

Trivia answer

One. The Steelers beat the Detroit Lions, 16-13, in the season opener, then lost their next 13 games.

And finally

Golfer Nick Faldo on his early strategy as European Ryder Cup captain in 2008:

“Can I just give this [2006] team a bit of deodorant, a quick clean, a fresh shirt and take them over to America with me now?”

lisa.dillman@latimes.com