The show follows a national champion junior college football time from East Mississippi Community College as they try to win back to back titles and their fourth championship in six years. Most juco players are Division I washouts or kids unable to land scholarships at a more prestigious school or kids whose grades or encounters with the justice system have kept them out of football's upper echelons. They come to EMCC in tiny Scooba, Mississippi for one last chance at making "the league" and thus fulfilling all of their hopes and dreams.
This show is unbelievably sad. One thing that becomes quickly apparent is that the players give absolutely zero shits about being students. The governing body stipulates that the players must maintain a 2.5 GPA. While it never outright reveals that these numbers are massaged by the athletic department and willing instructors, the implication is clear. One of the main characters of the show is the academic compliance officer for the school. She is frequently seen in the show rushing through the halls of the academic buildings escorting players to class, making sure they have pencils and notebooks, making sure they at least appear to pay attention.
Meanwhile the players are entirely uninterested in their scholarly pursuits. They often congregate in the compliance officer's office and sit, faces glued to the glowing screens of their smartphones, while she drones on (from their perspective) about the importance of attending class and receiving an education. They glance up from time to time and grumble a reply. School is clearly an annoyance to them, an obstacle to be overcome. They are football mercenaries, not students.
Race, too, is an undeniable feature of the show. Most of the prominent players on the team are black. Most are from bad backgrounds. Most don't have a fallback plan. Most are at the end of their line. And football seems to offer salvation. What's the point in going to class? They're not going to go on to run a bank or teach high school after they leave here. They repeatedly worry about having to return home and into a way of life they know is futureless. But football seems to them, despite the long odds, their only way out.
The coach is a petty tyrant, lording his small world and authority over a group of desperate man-children. One scene juxtaposes his daughters calling him a sweetheart and a teddy bear with him cursing vociferously at an 18 year-old for a minor infraction on the practice field. In another scene he is swearing at and arguing with an official to an embarrassing extent over a forward progress call in a game his team wins 69-20. In a later game he so provokes an official that the official responds to a shove from the coach by punching the coach (by this time in the show I expect most viewers are likewise lining up for their chance to take a swing). It is embarrassing to watch. This man's entire world is juco football. One of the culminating events of the show is a bench-clearing brawl in the final regular season game of the year. In response the coach lectures his players--in language dripping with racism--for being thugs and responding as if they were on the street (this as they are mostly defending one of their teammates who is literally being beat with helmets).
After the brawl the team is disqualified from participation in the postseason and therefore unable to defend their national title. The last clip of the show is the coach recruiting next year's batch of hopeful athletes, promising the chance to attract D-I eyes and stressing the school's firm commitment to academics. While there is something slightly admirable in the coach's pluck, it made me want to throw up.
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The whole show made me sick to my stomach. I have felt estranged from sports lately. In our culture we don't let sports be sport. Everything is zealously managed and supervised and utilitarian. The goal is a college scholarship or acceptance to a good club team or the long shot professional hope. No one plays just because it's fun anymore. I've heard people complain about trophies for every player and the refusal of municipal leagues to keep score as hearkening some sort of death of competition in our culture. That's bullcrap, though. Competition is alive and well. Too alive and too well. What we need is a bit more relaxation and joy in our sports. They are games after all.
Watching a grown man yell and curse at another grown man over the placement of a football in a game is a good reminder of how ephemeral sports actually are. And, to me, ephemerality is what makes sports glorious. They don't last. Every game is different. But our culture tempts us into thinking--with the myth making machine of ESPN and other sports media as zealous accomplices--that the glory of the football field (and the soccer pitch and the basketball court and the baseball diamond) is eternal. After my beloved Royals won the World Series last year, I realized that it wasn't actually that big of a deal. I woke up the next morning and went to work, much the same man as I was the previous day. In talking with my son about sports I have tried to communicate this to him. He learned the word ephemeral in The Wind and the Willows and has since been trying to think of things that are ephemeral compared with things that are more lasting. One night at dinner I told him sports fit into the ephemeral category. They are great and beautiful but very temporary. I told him that something sad in our world is how many people forget this. The cursing and the angst and the elation that fill my Facebook feed on a Sunday afternoon are inordinate to the importance of the event. They put more weight on sport than sport can possible hold. They blind us to the things that matter and last.
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One of the repeated lines from the school's compliance officer in Last Chance U--often used when a student can't bear the thought of attending class--is, "What's 'plan B'?" And no one has an answer for her. There's only Plan A: the League. But that is patently unrealistic for most of the athletes documented. There just are not enough roster spots in the NFL to accommodate the vast amount of athletic talent pumped through our system. But these kids are all trapped in this dream, thinking that it's just around the corner. This might be the saddest part of this series for me. There is actually very little hope for these kids.
The biggest hope, and sorry to sound all square and teacherly here, is the education they are spurning. But the program, as much as the coach might sweet talk parents with the idea of academics, ultimately doesn't care about anything academically apart from the players' GPAs. They are not being crafted into men--the goal of any sport worth its salt--but being used as tools in the quest for more banners in the stadium and gaudy rings on the fat fingers of a conceited man-child coach. And, like even the best tools, their utility at some point expires. Then they are thrown away.
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