“I’m Brittany Wagner, man,” Independence Community College head coach Jason Brown tells a reporter midway through the first episode of Last Chance U’s third season. In that casual self-appointment, Brown gives the show’s longtime fans a friendly warning: Wagner, the beloved academic advisor who was the breakout star of the Netflix docuseries’s first two seasons at East Mississippi Community College, isn’t anywhere to be found around this fledgling southeastern Kansas Juco football power.
In her place, it’s on the Independence coaches to keep their players from falling behind in class and staying on track to transfer back to a higher level of college football. But they get plenty of help in season 3 from associate English professor LaTonya Pinkard, who holds down Wagner’s roles of academic compass, voice of reason and ad hoc therapist within a formal classroom setting, producing some of the season’s more memorable connections and quotes.
