Last Chance U

Hard to believe a thread hasn't started on this. If so, I couldn't find it.

Anyway, a few takes I had ...

1. Great TV. Riveting.

2. Coach Buddy Stephens: a nut job. Don't preach keeping composure to your kids when you've got none.

3. John Franklin III: wonder if Auburn's coaches would have gone a different direction had they seen his pouty, whiny act for most of the season until the final game. Essentially, this kid got signed for one half of football. My prediction is that even if he wins the job at Auburn, he won't last. No heart. Auburn fans should be nervous: The troubling trend of Auburn's JUCO pipeline might not be over

3. Ronald Ollie, D.J. Law, etc.: Go to fucking class. It's called Last Chance U for a reason and I have a hard time believing the classes are all that taxing. You guys fucked up in high school or the first college you attended, and now it's time to get real. But no, we're going to piss and moan about it and drive the academic adviser and your coaches nuts because you're in Scooba, Miss. Guess what? There's no plan B after Scooba.

4. Academic adviser Brittany Wagner: the class act in the series. The whole issue of academics at a junior college football factory may be a sham but at least she seems to try.

5. Potty mouths: Jeez, guys, I cuss. I know football players and coaches cuss in the heat of battle in games and practice. But every third word? Even the academic adviser can't clean it up.

6. Clint Trickett: in addition to having one of the worst vocabularies, he provides comic relief in the first episode, on the first day of classes. Wagner is sticking her head in the doors making sure the football players are there. Can't find DeAndre Johnson (the former QB at Florida State who got kicked out for cold-cocking the blonde in a bar). Turns out Trickett has the kid in his office watching film ON THE FIRST BLEEPING DAY OF CLASS!

7. Mississippi Delta College: Punks, from the coach on down. Who punches a student trainer (six stitches) before a game? East Mississippi got kicked out of the playoffs but on video it's the Mississippi Delta kids beating guys with helmets, kicking them when they're down, and their coaches are standing around like wooden Indians. Did any sanctions hit MDC?

Anyone else have opinions. Again, it was great TV.

 

Opinions on what? First I've heard of it. Details?

 

Where have you been? Siberia? The Net Flix reality series on East Mississippi Community College, where Chad Kelly rehabbed after Dabo threw him out of Clemson.

 

It's on Netflix.

 

How does teh google work?

 

Getting ready to watch the final episode in a few, and would have opened a thread on this afterward, if nobody else had.

Totally agree with you on Coach Stevens. He's had a lot of success there, but I don't see him as much of a leader: Short fuse, doesn't practice what he preaches to his players.

And don't forget the shoving match with the ref in the homecoming game and in the Mississippi Delta game, it was a really bad idea to call the timeouts right before half so he could get the ball back and score again. It was obvious things were about to boil over and after telling everyone on his team to keep their cool and don't escalate things, he does just that with his shenanigans.

But yeah, as far as the series goes, pretty compelling viewing.

 

I ran track at a JUCO in Kansas and of the people I'd consider my closest friends several are former JUCO athletes, including a few who played football.

So it was simultaneously just about what I expected, but also riveting. Probably the biggest shock to me was just how poorly Stevens came across as a coach and a leader.

My buddy who coaches at one of the Kansas JUCOs says the thing that's not in there is they have a mini-Boone Pickens type who gets them all these recruits, because man, these guys aren't in Tallahassee or Blacksburg for whatever reasons, but there are much nicer places they could put in their time than Scooba.

 

I heard about this on public radio a few weeks back, but forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder and glad to hear it is good.

I had a question about the system though. How do JUCOs support athletics at this level? Bryce Harper played in a JUCO wooden bat league. Who is paying for that?

 

Most JUCO programs don't have huge budgets. When I was in school about 15 years ago the budget for the entire athletic department was a couple million at most. Apparently EMCC has a booster who hooks up the football team.

But most JUCOs play in high school level stadiums and most travel is in state by bus. We rode a bus 11 hours to the national championship meet when I was in school. Oh, and the coaches are making closer to $40,000 a year than $400,000.

 

Don't have Netflix and therefore haven't seen any of this. But speaking as someone who drives through Scooba a couple of times a year or more, I can testify that EMCC has the Taj Mahal of juco stadiums. Any Division II school and a handful of FCS programs would be proud to call it their own.

 

Harper was also a strange case. The fastest way to the pros for him was to get a GED early and play one year of JUCO ball to become draft eligible.

In Kansas, the JUCO athletes mostly fall into a few categories. Division I talents who either didn't qualify academically or screwed up in some other manner or in-state, often small town, kids who didn't get recruited highly and might get a better look by going to a JUCO.

That was me, I had no Division I scholarship offers. My choice came down to going to an NCAA Division II school on a partial scholarship worth less than $1,000 a semester or getting books and tuition paid for two years at a JUCO. I wasn't sure I really wanted to spend four years running at a small school, so I got two years of school for free and then transferred to KU to finish up as normal student.

 

We had a local guy play for East Mississippi last season. Great player, great kid, hard worker, and the type that if he'd been about two inches taller he would've had SEC scouts drooling over him but for whatever reason couldn't get a sniff coming out of high school. He was all-state at EMCC.
He spent one year there and transferred to an FCS school just to get away from the craziness.

That said, Mississippi has screwed up a lot of things when it comes to public education, but it got the junior college system right. It's a viable path to at least some sort of higher education for a lot of people in the state.
When it comes to athletics, and football in particular, it's no joke, either. There's about five states that put a legitimate emphasis on junior college football, and Mississippi is one of them. The schools get a lot of Division I talent that didn't make the grade; players who are just below that level looking to spend two years at a JUCO and get a better offer; and overlooked players from talent-rich southern states. East Mississippi is one of two or three Mississippi teams, in any given year, that could probably beat some lesser FBS teams. There's that kind of talent there. God only knows how many NFL players have spent time at one of these schools.