First off, many of you are forgetting this doc is called "Last Chance U" not "JUCO U". Dude these kids who are even at these schools are on there last leg! This is it for them. If they don't make it there, they might as well go home and bag groceries.
Carlos Thompson was 22 still trying to live the dream!
Even Bobby bruces own position coach said in so many words he didn't have a chance in **** to make it D1. Maybe he could catch on D2. Sounds like he didn't and because of a lack of mental toughness got into trouble and now is facing charges.
Nobody wanted to touch Malik Henry and that school was probably the ONLY school that would take him. Got posters on here making it seem like he had all these options. His own dad said he should have just sat out the season. He didn't say he should have went to another school..why? Because Independence was the only school that would even give him a shot. And remember JB said he took him as a favor to Henrys mentor. So even he really didn't want him.
That said, Boyd and Bowman were clearly D1 talents so not surprised they caught on to big time programs. Good season overall.
Malik Henry is broken. He really didn't have a ton of options. Radio Willie (@Oregon and @FSU) and HERM were the only two really on him. I think Ole Miss had recruiters visit him at Indy a few times as well.
He's got arm talent and clearly has a great mind for the game...but he's BROKEN mentally. In one of the latter episodes, when they get a real glimpse of Brown going through tape, he's breaking down how he sees Malik...one fragment of what wasn't touched upon enough in the series...that the team was a bad mix of kids, Brown knew it (said it very early in the season), and as a result, he looks like a much worse coach than he really is. If he had anyone else at QB, Malik Henry would have never sniffed the field after the on-field altercation with him.
Maybe because I've been around Coach Brown types while coaching, I see through presentation and get him a little better. He's not a bad coach...I think early on he realized this was going to be a disaster due to personnel and tried a lot of weird **** and put up with bull**** that he otherwise never would have. He tosses Kingston Davis when he realizes he has two other backs and Davis ran out of rope to hang himself. He couldn't quite do that at other positions.
These Last Chance U stories are great. You see a lot of former five stars and get a glimpse of what happens to them and why many of them fail. Its not for a lack of talent, but because they are broken in some way. Mentally, most of the time. Terrible students that can't hack the other half of their life (school). They can't handle the social aspect of their lives either. If its not football, they wipe their *** with it.
While I do agree, the NCAA and College Football in general milk these guys for everything they got (Ms. Pinkard killed it with that monologue with Bobby Bruce late in the season about academics), they do offer - perhaps - the last avenue of these men have at being something other than whatever it was they were to be at home (drugs, gangs, unemployed, lower class, etc)...5% of High School Seniors go on to play NCAA football...two percent of those get a shot to play in the league...after they graduate high school, its less than .1% odds they even sniff a single paycheck playing ball, nevermind being able to make a career out of it. However, every single man on that Indy roster has that dream still. And even though they have the dream, while they strive for it, they can still get that safety net of a college degree, but they just wipe their *** with it. Its a shame, really. They put all of their eggs in one basket and for all but a select few (the highest percentage of hard workers and the top .1% of elite athletes ) coming out this process with nothing is a shame and a system they failed (the system did not fail them...it gives countless chances).
The contrast between how Coach Brown sees college and academics versus Ms. Pinkard is the entire heart of college athletics. Maybe the defining segment of this entire series. This is a show that really looks at a macro look at poverty in America and the current state of education.