OT: Last Chance U Season 4 Discussion Redux (Spoilers)
I realize we had one of these already, but it was so soon after the show was released I'm sure I'm not the only one who avoided it for fear of spoilers. Now it's been a little over two weeks so hopefully more people have caught up.
My thoughts:
The Good
Kailon Davis stole the show this season. He was hilarious and genuine. His relationship with Mydosh the Comp II prof was adorable. The scene in the last episode where she realizes he had been paying attention after all when reading his paper was really heartwarming.
Chance's dad was my favorite non-player character this season. So wholesome. They really captured how close he and Chance were, and as a dad of a (much younger) son, it honest made me a little misty eyed.
Coach Martin and his family were also great. I don't know how good he is as an X's and O's coach, but he seems like a good dude who knows how to communicate and motivate his players effectively at least.
The Bad
I came out of INDY season 1 disliking but respecting JB. Obviously, he had his issues with impulse control (like many of his players), but he also genuinely seemed to want to help his players succeed. Even his nemesis Sims gave him credit there. This season though, I don't know if it was the losing on the field or the fame from the show going to his head, but he was a lot less relatable and felt like just an asshole without a lot redeeming qualities to balance it out. Him firing his coaches and rehiring him kinda took the cake for me, what a shitty (not mention stupid) thing to do to people just because you're angry.
I also found myself really annoyed by Latonya Pinkard this season. She was adequate last season as a Miss Brittney replacement, but she played it up for the cameras way too much this season. I almost seemed like she was trying to be a talk show host at times. The other two teachers they focused on (Wheeler and Mydosh) were both much better IMO.
The Ugly
Holy fuck is Raechel Martin, the trainer, bad at her job. How the fuck do you let a guy who is knocked out cold on the field back into the game, let alone one who already had TWO concussions THAT SEASON?!?! Also, Jay Jones probably re-injured his hamstring on the first drive of the first game because she cleared him too early. I'm pretty sure a couple other guys talked about playing through undiagnosed injuries as well. Kerry from last season played with a badly separated shoulder too. She was, besides being incompetent, way too close to the players and coaches and lost all medical objectivity. I really hope they replace her or at least get someone else to help make the calls because she's going to get someone killed sooner or later.
In general, they seemed to really emphasize the toll these guys pay to chase what's for many an impossible pipedream. Mydosh's segment where she talks about how quickly they break the athletes between the braces and casts and dark sunglasses from concussions really hit hard. The Where Are They Now episode (it's in the trailers and more link) also really showed that most of the even the "good" stories end up falling short. And of course the "bad" stories are just truly awful.
I thought it was another well made season and hope they'll renew the show for another year. This has become one of my favorite Netflix shows and sports documentaries in general.
Was thinking of starting a new thread on this, so glad you did this.
I basically have the same feedback on every one of these seasons. How do these guys not read the writing on the wall and ship up and act straight? You know you're going to be on camera, and that future potential coaches see this. Why wouldn't you at least show up to class and make some effort in practice? It blows my mind that these guys can't make the field in this JUCO, but swear they are going to be starting at a D1 program the following season.
Also, on this season specifically, I feel like they focused on the smallest amount of players out of all the seasons. In previous years, they had a good mix of problem players, redemption stories, and different positions.
This year focused too much on Bobby Bruce, and then once he left, basically focused on 3 players, none of whom were very compelling, and the coach's troubles.
Hopefully next year they go back to following more players.
I think logistically, it's not possible to follow a ton of players. There's only so many camera crews to go around, and only so many kids that agree to it. They probably had the idea going in that Malik Henry and Bobby Brown were going to get them a lot of material and when both left early, they probably didn't have a ton of options left to fill the void.
I agree RE the focus on a very small subset of players. I get wanting to show the experience of non-blue-chip players, as well as wanting to give sufficient time to really flesh out the character of each player that you do follow. But I would have liked to "meet" more of the team. I was shocked for instance, to see in the 247 JuCo rankings that the 2nd most talented player on the team was their South Sudanese outside linebacker. Seems like an interesting guy to follow!
I'm not a great evaluator of talent, so it's possible that these kids just don't have what it takes athletically to cut it at the D1 or even D2 level.
OTOH, if several or most of them DO, then in my view, the reason nearly 99% of them are stuck at the JuCo level has everything to do with anxiety or shitty coping mechanisms. Specifically:
- They get surrounded by (or they CULTIVATE a surrounding for themselves) comprised of people who will not force the kid to grow personally in any way. i.e., total enablement. As a result, personal weaknesses and/or unhealthy coping mechanisms that were relatively easy to fix at age 6 or 8 or 10 become tremendously difficult to overcome by the time they hit age 17 or 19 or 20. Due to this enviornment, they become delicate hot house orchids rather than people of robust character who can overcome fear, anxiety, and setbacks and see things in a holistic "big picture" perspective.
- Usually these kids adopt an unhealthy "all or nothing" attitude towards football & towards life in general. For most of the players they featured, their ability to deal with dissapointment, anxiety, etc. was almost zero. Essentially no emotional or spiritual reserve to deal with setbacks in a productive (or at least not DESTRUCTIVE) way.
- As a result of the anxiety & disappointment (usually based on unrealistic expectations of themselves), they engage in self-destructive coping mechanisms that deepen their problems. Anger management issues, theft, attitudinal lashing out/pouting/destructive gossip or insubordination, substance abuse, or simply avoidance (skipping class, procrastination, using humor or shock valu in an effort to distract teachers/authority figures from setting/enforcing expectations & boundaries).
Most of these behaviors were useful survival mechanisms when the kids were young, but they are not sustainable in the real world. The problem is, they are now SO engrained in them, they are incredibly hard to break, EVEN when there are potentially massive rewards and/or consequences in being able (or unable) to change them.
"Here kid....here is a D1 scholarship, a college education, and a multi-million dollar payday.....IF you can........stop doing drugs/just show up to class & do a bit of homework/not physically assault anybody/not steal anything/not eat 4,000 calories of junk food per day/not be disrepsectful to your coaches."
And yet, these kids can't do it.
To me, this is proof positive that what's driving these kids is uncontrollable fear/anxiety/muscle memory at this point. So even if a kid WANTS to change the behavior, self-knowledge & willpower alone often isn't enough to do it. It's a compulsion that they don't know how to reign in. It requires a total psychological/mental overhaul of how they perceive the world, how they cope with stressors, etc. Most humans don't have an ability to do it easily or consistently, which is why you see people with major (100lb) weight problems, constantly in massive debt, people being unable to stop smoking, etc.
That's the root cause of the problems most of these are kids are facing.
To me, one of the things I'd be teaching as a coach or mentor to these kids is to abandon the "all or nothing" mentality & to make them realize there are several ways to scale the mountain.
First, as a practical matter, getting them to reduce their anxieties will help them succeed in their goal--D1/NFL careers. When the kid messes up at practice or in the classroom, they'll be less likely to get a case of the "fuck-its" and walk away entirely--thus they'll stop compounding their own problems. Half the time in life, it isn't even getting huge lucky breaks or striving harder---it's simply NOT doing the self-destructive stuff that pisses away the opportunities you already have. Simply stopping the bleeding will compound over time into a life far better than what they would have had otherwise.
Second, even if they don't succeed at the D1/NFL career, there's no reason some of these kids can't have fullfilling lives earning a decent income & a football related career. Especially for the kids who were on public assistance and lived in the ghetto, being a local football legend, making $50K or $70K per year & becoming the local high school/JuCo football coach, or maybe even a coach at the DII or FCS level isn't a terrible life. If a kid marries a woman (requirement--need to be reliable & not an anger-management/dramatic head case) who becomes a nurse or teacher, now you're making $100K+ per year which is LIGHT YEARS ahead of where that kid grew up in a broken home in public housing in the rural south. Yes, it isn't the multi-million dollar NFL career. So what?
Yet somehow, I don't see any of these coaches or counselors pointing any of this out. Or if they do, the kids simply tune them out & they're focused on this "all or nothing"/"I am going to be an NFL millionaire or spending life in prison" fatalistic attitude.
August 7th, 2019 at 12:43 AM ^
Don't know why you got negged for this. In my (limited) experience coaching high school guys like them, I found exactly what you describe. We could flesh out and analyze some of your assertions in detail, and perhaps qualify them somewhat as a result. But overall, and as a blog post, it strikes me as pretty damned accurate. There is in this TV series a huge tragedy playing out. It begins early in life for these kids--and as a society we aren't doing enough at any stage of their development to turn their lives around.
It's been streaming for a month. Do we need to worry about spoilering?
JB makes Buddy Stephens look like Tom Landry. I didn't see any real coaching ability come through the final edit.
I haven't seen it yet, but I'm thinking that I'm going to skip season 4 and watch season 5 when it comes out.
Don't, it's a good season.
There was one episode towards the end where they were talking to an opposing coach about how JB's entire playbook had been uploaded online and that was why teams were beating up on them so bad.
I don't think playbooks are that big of a deal. Don Brown's BC playbook was widely circulated for example. You get basically the same thing watching a lot of film. Now, if they had the play calls and he never changes them, then that's a totally different thing.
The season was a total trainwreck that I could not stop watching.
Last Chance U has worn out it’s welcome for me. The total insubordination from the players, derogatory terms from the HC, and the terrible screen time from background characters just is not appealing to me anymore. The total disrespect the players show towards the coaches, professors and peers is what gets to me. Bobby Bruce is a total idiot who I’m glad got sent home. My favorite part was when the QB Jones transferred out of Georgia Tech because “they only threw the ball like 2 or 3 times a game”. You visited the school, watched their games and had conversations with the coaches for years to be totally surprised by that? What a fucking buffoon. Any college football fan or tuned in high school kid knows GT ran the triple option. The whole show drove me insane, won’t be tuning in again next year.
In fairness to Jones, "GT doesn't pass" could just be a convenient explanation for a transfer if he'd rather not dwell on camera about the actual cause(s) -- burried on depth chart, grades, behavior issues, etc. I have no idea what the actual circumstances of his departure were, but I wouldn't be surprised if "I didn't know the option team was an option team" is just a way out of the conversation.
Well in a possible attempt to cover up his reasoning he made himself just sound ridiculous.
Kid, in front of an audience of millions, doesn't want to delve into why he washed out of his school of choice, gives an implausible excuse: "what a fucking buffoon". Cool.
The crazy part is Paul Johnson retired and they're running a more conventional offense now. If he just stayed, he could be in the mix. That's a common theme for a lot of those guys. They need instant gratification and a lot of them don't make a good transition from being the guy in HS to fighting to get any PT as a Fr.
When he said that I did a double take and rewound it. It's like wait everyone who's even peripherally aware of GT football knows they are famous for running the triple option, how did that never come up in all your interactions with them? It was a bizarre thing to say.
I was just glad Henry came back giving us four straight years of FSU QBs.
Might give it a try. Couldn't get through the first half of season three because the cast was so unlikable and had so few redeeming qualities, especially the head coach.
It gets worse...
Going into the season, I already knew:
1. The team goes 2-8 and plays a bunch of quarterbacks
2. Coach Brown was fired for texting a German player "I am your new Hitler"
3. Coach Brown was later arrested for impersonating a law firm to harass reporters who were talking about him negatively
All that being said, I had a more positive view of him by the end than I thought I would? Which is weird, and I don't exactly know why. I kind of want them to go back to Indy next season to see what it's like with a mostly even keeled head coach in Kyoshi.
This season made me especially glad Michigan doesn't recruit JuCo kids. Bobby Bruce is a dumbass. Basically every player on the team was insubordinate and hardly tried. I get that the coaches are totally incompetent but all you have to do is work hard to get your career back on track and instead you don't care. Markise King was an asshole when he was talking to that other younger WR. Was maybe the best player and wasn't a leader at all.
I find all the teacher interactions to be completely fake. I think they all want their 15 min of fame.
The only kid that you could maybe sympathize with is Malik Henry. Season 3 made him a national joke and it's clear he came back to try to change the perception about him. You could tell in the interviews he didn't want to talk shit about anyone. So seems like he learned something at least.
I found the old people constantly bitching about the football program to be kind of funny. No one would have ever heard of your town without the football program. It just seemed like they were looking for something to bitch about.
It's not fair to judge all JuCo players/programs based on the Independence team, especially considering who the head coach was at the time. There are plenty of success stories, including from this series. Dakota Allen was in season two and was drafted this past spring. There are other guys who had successful D-I careers or are currently coaches/grad assistants.
Yeah you are correct. I enjoyed the first 3 seasons, which all had better people to root for. I guess it's just a product of having watched this one most recently, that I didn't care for any of the characters stories (players, coaches, teachers, announcers, administration, etc).
It's true that there are JuCo success stories. But I still think it's not a good environment for most D1 transfers. Look at the Michigan players who have transferred down, they've had a real hard time coming back to D1. I think you're better off sitting a year at a G5 program. The step down in facilities and especially coaching leads to a IDGAF attitude.
I watched all of the series so far.
It is full of tragedy and some hope, showing real people going though things that are of major importance in their lives.
It shows a slice of life that Michigan alums typically have no exposure to.
Overall for me, it makes me sad to watch it. But it is a show with meat to it. It is not "Dr. Lawyer Cop, MD".
I thought the receiver Markiece King was a beast and hoped he would get to D1. Garden City’s head coach was crazier than JB.
Best season yet, by far