That show follows the 2015 season of East Mississippi Community College, a school that considers itself a last resort for troubled or forgotten athletes who are trying to win games — the Lions have won three national junior college titles in the past five years — and get a quick ticket out of the Scooba, Miss., school and into a prominent Division I program.
Along with football, the series is about matters of race, poverty, ruin and redemption.
At first blush, the football story at CSU — which opens its season Saturday night against the Dayton Flyers in the Dayton Classic at Welcome Stadium — might seem similar.
The Marauders have 16 transfers, including the aforementioned trio who have NCAA Division I pedigrees.
DeMichael Jackson, a standout running back at Southeast Missouri State, and Clim Robbins, a defensive back at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, got into trouble at their D-I schools and were dismissed.
Deonate Gary, who had been a sought-after Division I prospect out of Lakeland, Florida, committed to Louisville, then found himself in a free fall. The coach who recruited him was fired, tragedy struck his family and his grades sank.
He ended up at East Arizona Community College for a year and then sat out of football for two years.
All three players now wear the maroon and gold of CSU.
Gary and Robbins played for the Marauders last season and won all-conference honors in the SIAC (Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference).
And Jackson, after leading Southeast Missouri in rushing for two straight seasons, is expected to make an impact in a CSU offense that struggled last year.
Yet, while this may seem to mirror the Last Chance plot, each of the three disagreed when we sat and talked in a McPherson Stadium meeting room after practice.
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“I wouldn’t compare this school and Last Chance U. because they had everybody from everywhere else and here there are more in-staters and guys right out of high school,” Robbins said. “Everybody there was highly recruited and had big egos that clashed. That’s not the case here.”
Gary said: “Central State is a good place if you need a second chance, but it’s not Last Chance U. Those guys play football and go to class, but they don’t really enjoy it. They all want to leave as soon as they can.
“When you come to Central, you fall in love with it and kinda want to stay.
“Here you learn to enjoy the band and enjoy the coaching. You meet the alumni and listen to their stories. You learn the history of football here in the ’90s (three NAIA national titles) and you learn what it takes to be a Marauder.
“Watching Last Chance U., I don’t even know their mascot, but here a Marauder is not just some pirate. It’s something special. And the more you learn, the more you realize you want to leave your own legacy here.”
A promise to Mom
Gary said his situation changed when his father died and his mother was in a serious auto accident.
“We ended up losing our home, everything,” he said. “The last words my dad said to me was ‘take care of your mom’ and that’s what I had to do.”
He grabbed hold of the offer to East Arizona, but after a season found it too far removed from what he knew growing up in Florida.
He and three teammates ended up coming to Central State together, but he said many of his credits didn’t transfer and he said he spent two years just going to classes, working and being the team’s “biggest cheerleader.”
While many others guys would probably have given up after two years in mothballs, Gary shook his head at such talk:
“I love my momma to death. I made a promise to her and I was gonna stick to it.”
Last season he finally got to play for the Marauders and had a breakout year. With 21.5 tackles for loss, he was recognized as one of the top linebackers in NCAA Division II.
He said he now feels at home at CSU:
“When I got to Arizona I saw a cactus for the first time ever. It was the weirdest thing I ever saw. So when I got back here and saw the cornfields (near campus,) it was kinda like I was back to what I know.”
Standout recruits
DeMichael Jackson’s voice dropped and so did his eyes.
“The last words my coach said to me really struck my heart: ‘You’re a disgrace to this program!’ ”
Recounting that moment from last March seemed to wound him again.
After a stellar prep career in Louisville, he had led Southeast Missouri State in rushing in 2013 and 2014 and was doing the same in 2015 when he tore his ACL in the third game.
This past spring — while on the mend for this, his final medical redshirt season — he was kicked off the team for “violation of departmental policies.” According to a local newspaper report, he was not charged with anything, but was linked to another jettisoned teammate who was charged with a burglary attempt and marijuana possession.
Jackson said his transgression just involved marijuana.
“I made a mistake and take responsibility,” he said. “But I’m not going to let that define me. I’m a better person than that.”
As for Robbins, he was a standout recruit from Orlando who redshirted his first season at UT-Chattanooga. He and another teammate were then charged with burglary and theft in an apartment complex where they lived.
“To be honest there were a lot of people mad at me,” he admitted. “My coach told me they wished I could stay, but the community didn’t want me there.”
He said other people did stand up for him, including his high school principal, a rival high school coach and an AAU coach who graduated from CSU. That got him an audience with CSU coach Cedric Pearl.
“I sat down with him and his parents and we went through it all,” Pearl said. “I let him know what was expected.”
Robbins sat out one season to beef up his academics and when he took the field last year, he led the team in with six interceptions, three of which he returned for scores.
Turning it around
Pearl, who was a longtime assistant coach at Alabama A&M, took over the floundering CSU program in 2014.
In the nine previous years since the school had reinstated football, the Marauders had won 19 games.
His task wasn’t so much to get it back to those national championships days but to give the Marauders a respectable NCAA Division II program.
At CSU, that’s easier said than done. The low-budget program offers 12 scholarships, fewest in the SIAC and far below the 36 allowed in Division II.
Even so, Pearl guided the team to a 4-6 record in 2014 and then 5-5 last year.
He’s turning the program around by heavily recruiting Ohio high school players — “we added 17 between Cleveland and Cincinnati this year,” he said Thursday — and by adding transfers who fit his requirements.
“Transfers are part of college football,” he said. “Alabama won a national championship with a transfer at quarterback. Randy Moss transferred into Marshall and took the program to the next level. The story goes on and on and on.
“And in America, people get second chances.”
That said, Pearl said he reviews each case — “I guess you can say I see if I can stomach what happened” — and a lot of times he said he won’t take a guy.
To Division I athletes, he said he explains “that’s the world you used to live in — you were in the bright lights and big time — but now you’re in a different world. You have to adjust.”
Jackson is the latest to go through that transition:
“At Division I everything is pretty much provided for you. You’re more or less babied. Here you learn how to function on your own. You gotta grow up. You really gotta man up.”
And on Mondays you have to dress up, too.
“Coach Pearl has us wear a shirt and tie every Monday to class,” he said.
As Pearl explained: “It’s something I’ve done since I began coaching. You’re a college student aspiring to be a professional one day, so look the part. We try to help these guys develop in other ways than just football.
“At first they complain, ‘Coach, I don’t have a tie.’ And I tell ‘em, ‘Look, I’m not asking you to buy the most expensive tie in the world. Go to Walmart or Goodwill. I don’t care where it’s from, but on Mondays all players and coaches will dress up.’
“And once guys do, they love it. They’ve presented a different side of themselves and they feel good about it. They get complimented.”
Instead of a last chance, they’ve just made a good first impression.
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