‘Last Chance U’ Season 3 Shifts Focus To ICC Coach Jason Brown, The “Suge Knight Of Football”

“He’s the Suge Knight of football.”

It’s a hell of a way for a football coach to be described, but Jason Brown, the head coach at Independence Community College, seems to wear that moniker with a biting pride. That on its own makes the just-released third season of the Netflix series Last Chance U as fascinating a watch as it is frustrating.

When it was announced that the series would focus on a new junior college (JuCo) program after two seasons with East Mississippi Community College, there was reason to wonder if going to this Kansas school would provide the same compelling highs and lows as we experienced with the EMCC Lions.

In this third installment, the producers largely keep to the same format for each episode as the previous seasons as EMCC. Each episode has a theme that’s based on the adversity presented within game preparations or the games themselves. Often, the themes surround which player seems to agitate Brown the most.

Jason Brown isn’t EMCC head coach Buddy Stephens, but he is. Stephens’ intense style with his charges may have been rooted in winning football games, but the infamous brawl at the end of Season 1 (the 2015 season) caused him to be viewed as an out-of-touch white man whose anger towards the players had racial overtones. In Season 3, you’re supposed to see Brown as the antithesis of Stephens in terms of relating to his players – a white dude who grew up in Compton and ran with similar unsavory elements that many of his mostly African-American recruits came up around. But throughout the season, those street life bonafides only go so far as he bumps heads with his recruits and coaches that come from similar upbringings. Curse-laden outbursts are what both coaches have in common – they demanded composure while often losing theirs. While that could be the nature of the business, it also makes the viewer wonder if Brown can connect with his players without always being ‘on 10.’ You may ask yourself if Brown can even coach.

However, Season 3 isn’t just about a change in schools, but it’s an attempt to change the overarching narrative. The docuseries went to EMCC because it was already an established power in the junior college football world, with national championships to validate the investment and progress made into the program. On the flipside, at Independence, Coach Brown uses the appropriate adage that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” when it comes to building a team that has seen twenty years of losing in a town on its own decades-long economic losing streak.

And changing that story may not be all that hard at Independence because despite brimming with Division I talent that fell into its lap, everyone seems to be at odds with one another.

Where the players at EMCC mostly were supportive of one another – at times, in spite of Coach Stephens – it takes the majority of the 2017 season (when Season 3 is filmed) for the team to have some cohesion. The largest tension play exists under center as Florida State transfer Malik Henry clashes with just about everyone, most especially the coaches, over play-calling and organization. And it’s not that Henry is wrong – Episode 1 gives him enough ammunition to let Brown have it all year long – but his own abrasive and occasionally standoffish personality can make him a difficult kid to get behind. In fact, if you’re watching this show because you’re looking for “characters” to root for, you may not find Ronald Ollie or John Franklin III. You may not even find Isaiah Wright.

Yes, about those guys, especially Wright. There’s a gripping follow-up to the EMCC journey that was filmed towards the end of the 2017 football season that updates viewers on the whereabouts of a few central figures in the first two seasons, including Stephens – whose team finally wins its fourth national championship – and Brittany Wagner, the beloved former academic advisor who keeps in touch with many of the players as she builds the consultancy she started after leaving EMCC.

But while we get positive updates on some players, the “Life After” episode features the harrowing tale of Wright, who is currently awaiting trial on murder charges levied from an incident in Tennessee last summer. (His brother and teammate Camion Patrick was also charged, but those charges were dismissed.) The producers made their best attempts to objectively tell the story of the incident by speaking with both Wright’s family as well as the family of Caleb Radford, who was fatally stabbed in an attempted robbery. If viewers were stunned by the initial reports, they’ll be heartbroken by the interviews with Radford’s parents. This episode deserves its own essay as an examination of the fairness of the criminal justice system and the debate of if media should build empathy for the accused to the same level of the victimized.

Criticism around Last Chance U never strays too far from the praise, though some of the critics are queuing up the show to find out how problematic the show may be. The belief that the show exploits the plight of these young “student-athletes” is fair in that it’s another platform that displays their talents without fair compensation; a charge that has been levied to just about any media outlet or sponsor that shells out money that pays everyone but the labor. Yet, when Coach Brown openly boasts about owning a couple of Cadillacs and a beach house back home in California, it certainly makes you roll you eyeballs as much as the players who hear him while starving for fleeting football dreams.

The other preeminent criticism isn’t as cut and dry. Just as the “Life After” episode demonstrates, telling the stories of these players means exploring the social, emotional and financial hardships of their families. Is that to give an honest look at how families of aspiring athletes with big dreams truly live? Or is this about the producers and Netflix itself, trying to play with real-life stories for acclaim and viewership? That may depend largely on your personal politics and demographic profile, but there’s something to be said for understanding what motivates these young men to keep shooting for the moon after they’ve needed a second chance in a complex college football world.

It’s probably unfair to decide if Season 3 is better or worse than its predecessors. As a docuseries, making such judgments is pretty much saying that the folks involved at EMCC are worth caring about more than those at Independence, though the trials and tribulations in their lives aren’t all that different from one another. But what Season 3 of Last Chance U does tell us is that winning doesn’t cure all, but it can exasperate problems that are not addressed properly. After all, loveable losers and envied winners aren’t always the most interesting stories in sports.

Jason Clinkscales is the managing editor for The Sports Fan Journal, editor at Yardbarker and contributing writer for Awful Announcing. A New York City native, he is also a former media research analyst in both television networks and advertising agencies.

Watch Last Chance U on Netflix