The real Friday Night Lights: Last Chance U documentary

Thumbs up for the Netflix documentary series Last Chance U., about the premier junior-colloge (Juco) football program in the U.S., at Eastern Mississppi Junior College, where they essentially take kids who washed out of a D-1 school because of grades or arrests or bad attitude and kids from high schools with the talent but not the grades to even start D-! - so it's a team w/ a lot of ability and where each kid carries a huge burden. The series clearly shows the incredible poverty in which these kids lived, and for almost all football is the ladder up and out, if possible - but it's also clear to us that very few of these kids will be able to go pro, and those who don't will have few or no prospects. The school itself is really strange with a lot of resources pouring in because of the success of the football team, but the team itself is a world apart. The players for the most part completely blow off their academics' they're poorly prepared, barely literate, and uninterested. Perhaps the most appealing person in the show is the stalwart young woman called the Athletic Academic Adviser, who works really hard to make sure the guys show up for class, hand in assignments, and show at least a vestige of understanding - she's truly devoted to a very difficult cause. The coach is an ambiguous figure - really tough and brutal to the players, but that's also obviously what they need if they have any hope of moving on in their athletic careers. We also see how football dominates the whole culture of the school and the region - the way pro sports do in many regions. As I'm sure many have commented, this is the real Friday Night Lights, or at least the other side of FNL - much more poverty, despair, and even callousness toward the players and exploitation of them: they're worth only what they can bring to the school, and you get the sense that everything else in the life of the school, for the players and for the students, is ancillary.