Terrific Netflix doc that's about much more than football

Just as Friday Night Lights was not exactly about high-school football - football was the device through which that great series told about the lives of American teens and their families at the dawn of the 21st century - the Netflix 6-part documentary Last Chance U is only nominally about football: It's also about race, poverty, American education, competition, and ambiguity. We follow for football players at Easter Miss Junior College, the national champion, each hoping for a football scholarship to a d-1 school and each carrying a burden of his own. These kids are from the direst poverty in the Deep South, troubled families, troubles of their own (2 had washed out of d-1 programs for some kind of malfeasance, not closely examined), and some with significant learning disabilities. EMJC is their potential ticket to or back to serious college football and, they hope, the NFL - that slight possibility of wealth and fame. But it's such a long shot, such an illusion, no matter what their talent. What to think about the school and its coaches, who push the men diabolically to play and win and run up the scores (perversely, the score spread is a factor in the all-important national rankings). The football program in Scoobie, Miss., is the point of pride for the school and for the entire town - so maybe it's great that they have focused so much time and $ on this program, in a town that otherwise is deeply impoverished and school that otherwise would, it seems, be, let's just say a long way from Princeton. The football team lifts the school and the community into national prominence - but it also raises some concerning questions. On the positive side, it's made clear that the players need to go to class and maintain a decent gpa to stay in school and on the team - and the tireless and extremely devoted "academic athletic advisor," Brittany Wagner, is completely devoted to keeping the players going academically - she's truly the hero of this series. But it's also clear that, even with all her counseling, some of the guys just can't do academics at a j.c. level - and the profs must be pressured to cut them a lot of slack. And then what? They go off to a college where football will be their full-time occupation; maybe that's good - a few will earn degrees that may help them even if they don't get a pro career - but others, it seems, are being exploited by the system: playing for big-time, big-money college programs and then spit out with no knowledge or skills except knowing the game (which for some may be enough) and often without a degree. Makes you think we ought to just make college teams part of the pro system and put aside the hypocrisy.