Last Chance U: A Football Show for People Who Hate Football
This summer, I told my friends that I would no longer be watching the NFL or playing fantasy football. Most sports fans have these friends, the ones that fall in the middle of the Venn diagram of “can take the worst trash talk” and “love football enough to play a make believe version of it.” Unfortunately, I can’t watch the NFL in good conscience anymore, due to reasons ranging from concerns over player safety to concerns over condoning player behavior. I can’t watch another Wes Welker. I can’t do the mental back flips it takes to support an organization that so grossly mishandled Ray Rice’s spousal abuse. I told them this before 110 of 111 NFL brains studies proved to have CTE.
Responses ranged from “How do we punish him?” to “Jose is dead to me.” While I’m committed to never watching an NFL game again, I’ll certainly be watching as many episodes of Last Chance U as Netflix produces, a show that leaves me asking if football is a viable path to redemption.
For the uninitiated, Last Chance U is a Netflix documentary series, currently in its second season, which follows members of the East Mississippi Community College football team. The team is made up in part of former D-I recruits who were cut from their elite college teams for everything from failed drug tests to committing crimes. Each player is there not just to win games for the EMCC Lions, but also to prove they atoned for past sins and deserve another shot at a D-I school. Many see success at this junior college in Scooba, Mississippi as their final chance at redemption.
One of the reasons I had to give up on the NFL is because whenever a pro football player is accused or found guilty of a crime, being in the NFL is an essential part of the story. These events are often politicized to bring attention to larger issues in society. Whether or not they are ultimately found guilty, their story doesn’t belong to them by the time it’s over. This is not the case for the players at Last Chance U. They’re not millionaires, they don’t have nice cars, they don’t have an entire city counting on them. Unless you were an avid college football fan when you began watching (which I never was), what you’re seeing are the stories of eighteen year old boys who made mistakes and are now having to overcome them if they want to fully realize their scholarly and athletic potential.
Episode two of the current season of Last Chance U begins with security camera footage. From a bird’s eye view, we watch a crowded bar in black and white. Nowadays, we know that if we’re seeing security footage on a show about sports, whatever happens next will be bad. After a moment we see a man and woman begin to argue as they jockey for position at the bar. The woman raises a hand and he grabs it, she punches him in the face, and he punches her back. The woman was Abby Husty, an FSU student. The man was De’andre Johnson, a top recruit at FSU, who was meant to play quarterback.
The episode that follows does not demonize De’andre, nor does it ask us to forgive him. It doesn’t include any claims of he said, she said. It doesn’t ask us to watch the tape again and check to see if Abby kneed him in the groin. Instead, it asks us to consider if football can bring him redemption. We hear from his parents, who are still disappointed in their son who was expelled and was facing potential criminal charges. We hear from the coach who recruited him who admits that in his eyes, De’Andre began to pay the price the day he was expelled from FSU and is continuing to pay the price simply by having to play at EMCC. Most importantly, coach Buddy Stevens admits that if he didn’t get recruited by EMCC someone else would’ve gotten him, so you might as well help De’Andre and help yourself. Therein lies what’s at the heart of Last Chance U, an unbiased look at the complications that come with making football someone’s road to absolution.
In that same episode, running back Isaiah Wright opens up about what it means to be playing starting running back. Isaiah didn’t make a mistake that brought him to EMCC, he just wasn’t good enough to make D-I after high school, and is hoping he can prove himself through junior college ball. To make it to D-I means overcoming a childhood in foster care. It means catching up to his brother, a D-I football player who came out of EMCC. It means his brother, who suffered a knee injury that ended his career and followed Wright to EMCC, can follow him to a top tier school. It means one day being able to give his fiancé the life he thinks she deserves. This makes it all the more heartbreaking when Isaiah is benched with a concussion early in the first quarter of his second game. Watching him stumble to the sidelines and hide his eyes from the lights, I felt myself wanting him to both never play another snap, and get out there as fast as possible. Isaiah can’t miss any games, this is his chance. But also, what about the very real threat chasing his last chance poses to his life? Who am I to deny someone who’s willing to potentially die on the field if it leaves a better life for their fiance and unborn child? Who am I to not be doing everything I can to end an organization that puts someone in the position where they feel like this is their only option? Can’t they focus on their free education?
Perhaps the most compelling character in the show isn’t a player, but Brittany Wagner, the academic adviser who is tasked with keeping the GPAs of all the student athletes high enough that they can compete. She’s their friend and disciplinarian. She gives them pencils before they go to class. She asks them to consider what they’ll do if football doesn’t work out. She doesn’t see the EMCC football team as their last chance, she sees a college education as their best chance. Some of the athletes attempt to rise to her challenge, others seek to evade it however possible. When pressed about life after football, some players acknowledge that they have to be prepared to do some day enter the workforce, others can’t see a life beyond the field.
All of this makes for a show that isn’t about football, it’s about what people are willing to do to achieve their dreams. After three episodes of the second season, I can’t tell you EMCC’s record, but I know that Isaiah texts his fiance during every class. I don’t know what De’Andre’s stat line was in his first college game after a two year hiatus — but I do hope being back in the pocket brings him some kind of peace, even if I haven’t forgiven him for what he’s done. And no, I won’t be watching any of the NFL games these players may potential play in, but I will be hoping that their lives have happy endings.
