Develiker terrible... so disappointed.

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

gwnsystems This was on my watch later literally forever, before I decided to jump in. The first two seasons follow the East Mississippi Community College Lions, a junior college football team in the less than 1,000 person town of Scooba, MS, not far from the Alabama state line. The team is a veritable powerhouse, with core players recruited from Division 1 programs, after being dismissed, or leaving of their own accord. The players are predominantly black, poor, from places you've not heard of and struggling badly with college life, particularly academics. A fair number are in Scooba because there is literally nothing to do but play Madden, go to Subway, or meet girls, which for most of them, is far less trouble than they knew before. The viewer, if paying attention, will literally want to throttle at least two players an episode.Besides the players, two people feature prominently in each episode. Buddy Stephens, the head coach, is a "large and in charge" type, who suffers nothing and is all about two interrelated things, winning, and getting players NCAA offers, to ensure new recruits for next season, to keep winning. In the 2nd season, Stephens is somewhat upset with the way he acted during the first and resolves to better himself, although it's not clear how successful he is. Brittany Wagner, the academic advisor, is probably the most easily liked person on the show, as she basically pushes a boulder uphill in trying to get the players to maintain the GPA they need to be NCAA eligible. It's hard work, players skip classes, don't submit assignments, argue with teachers and so on. It is literally all she can do to get some of them to take a pencil and notebook to class.....in college.....really! By the end of season 2, Wagner clearly is becoming frustrated, but never stops genuinely caring about the players she's paid to help. The film itself is a well shot documentary, where the crew is able to keep a good handle on the drama within the team week to week. You see a team that wins, making no friends along the way, then that animus boil over, then the team pay for it for the next year and a half. By the end of season two, Wagner is planning to leave EMCC, as are both co-ordinators and a few other coaches, as Stephens' attempts at personal development don't progress very considerably and he begins to openly resent the presence of the film crew. The players mostly get their offers, some don't and one of the main players in Season 2 now stands accused of a murder. I more or less binged 2 seasons(6 and 8 episodes of around an hour each) in a week and a half. Season 3 just wrapped up shooting.....at a JC in Kansas. I'd highly recommend this and eagerly await next season.

trelerke-politics Head coach in first season muses on taking his daughter out to kill a deer - he's a very white guy, big, is a total pussycat to his family. Most of the players come from truly awful home conditions, almost all are African American, some will make it to the "show" most won't, virtually none of the students have any real school skills and from what the documentary shows in season 1, for the most part , there is very little practical training for school given at the college, there could be for all I know, but it wasn't shown. The large elephant in the room is the plain fact that this is a business for the local junior college, where most of the people in charge are white and most of the athlete/students/gladiators are black. We feel for the kids, as we should, but most of the time, hard questions aren't really asked. Why do we have this infernal mix of education and athletics with so much of a schools resources going to athletics. It seems like the college has become a half way house/purgatory for wayward athletes rather than an actual college, a microcosm of the general question of how pro football and basketball essentially uses college as a mostly free farm system for the pros and the colleges make bank off major athletic programs that rarely, if ever, filter back into academic needs. The one true moment, which pretty much made the first season, was the fight in the last game where the head coach called the players thugs, the players revolted, as they should have, they got very eloquent very fast in articulating their rage at this unjust outburst and the betrayal it betokens. This was very hard to walk back, and the second season starts with the pall of this acting out hanging over everything. Situating the main room of the movie in the academic coordinator's office is an interesting choice, although it seems like she is there to get these kids educated, she's really there to make sure, to the extent that it's possible, that the kids stay eligible to graduate and get recruited, ( for those lucky enough to have the skills). Most of the kids realize this, most are anything but stupid, no matter their school skills. It's a strange setting, we're kind of witness to something truly gut wrenching, a slow motion train wreck that excruciatingly examines, perhaps without meaning to, the hollowness of the "American Dream." This may be one of the most subversive documentaries produced in years.

oneeyedrat I've only watched the first episode so far, and I'll watch the rest. But I am so dismayed about your frustration with the community college culture. My husband was a music teacher in a CC, and realized that these kids just need a little more discipline, a bit more maturity and maybe a different leader than the parents could provide. He also knew that if you go to a CC, and then are more mature to handle the stresses of a full University, he may have changed the trajectory of an entire family. When my daughter was graduating from high school, my state was in a huge recession and my income dropped by over 50%. She had to go to a local CC while all her friends went to University. I told her that she was a little too social, and had not gotten good enough grades, nor had any athletic or musical talent to get a scholarship. But, not to worry, most of her friends would be back and going to CC after their first year.And they were. She is a very successful news journalist now. Many kids just need to mature and catch up a bit, before they tackle the strain of discipline without parents. I feel so bad for these kids! They have bad parents, a bleak life, bad education....BUT, athletic talent. This is the ONLY way for them to not repeat the sins of their fathers.

shadowxassassin A decent documentary, but the content upsets me to no end. Pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with college in the US. Having been a college student at one point. Its upsetting to see the amount of resourced devoted to people who have to business being in school. the fact that there are peoples jobs who are entirely devoted to keeping the athletes in school by basically babysitting them every moment of the day makes me as an educator doubt that any of my students deserve to be in school, or that a college degree means anything at all. And that the coach can do an say things that would get any of my professor colleagues fired 50 times over further illustrates the difference between athletes and students, and why schools should not put a huge portion of their funding to athletics in areas where they will never see that kind of profit. so 6/10 for film-making and 1/10 for subject matter