From the Department of Things That Provoke Me to Rant, I offer the following: Is there any contemporary catchphrase more cliched, more tired, more dumb and more just plain fraudulent than "failure is not an option?"

Note: rhetorical question.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a new crew chief at Hendrick Motorsports. He says failure is not an option.

AP Photo/NASASaying "failure isn't an option" was an option for the Apollo 13 flight crew directors, but they actually chose not to accept it.

Prior to a March 4 UFC bout, MMA fighter Diego Sanchez announced that failure was not an option, any more than it was an option in a previous victory. A Nevada school superintendent working to improve student achievement recently cites the inspiration of Brett Favre -- Brett Favre! -- in declaring that failure is, well, you guessed it.

This way lies madness. OK, maybe not madness. Definitely stupidity.

Here's the thing: Failure truly isn't an option. Not now. Not ever. Not in any circumstance. Because tough-sounding talk aside, failure is an outcome. There's a difference. A world of it. Options involve choice. Outcomes involve what happens because of -- or despite -- choices.

Look, nobody save sports point-shavers and stock market short-sellers ever draws up a what-to-do-next list and includes failure in the action plan. No one intends to fail. No one sets course for the center of the sun. Not everyone can win like Charlie Sheen, but everyone wants to. If success was exclusively a matter of choice -- as Rick Pitino suggests -- we'd all be rich, famous and publishing Pitino-like victory manuals from the helipad of a yacht docked off the coast of Southern France.

Only we're not. Because success and failure in a complex world occur for complex reasons that go beyond individual will. Self-help as veiled self-blame. Easy-bake sportswriting narratives aside, does anyone really think the Boston Celtics didn't covet last season's NBA title just as much as the Los Angeles Lakers?

Have we learned nothing from Linus and his Godot-shaming wait for the Great Pumpkin?

Keep in mind: Contrary to popular myth, failure is not an option did not originate with Apollo 13's Mission Control. It came from the screenwriters of the "Apollo 13" movie. Which is fitting. Screenwriting means controlling every word on the page; in the real, non-scripted world, sometimes [expletive] just happens. Add that to your options list.