Oakland’s Laney College chosen for Netflix’s ‘Last Chance U’ football series

The Raiders won’t be the only football team in Oakland to have cameras following them around for a documentary series this season. Laney College was just chosen to be the featured school for the new season of Netflix’s popular “Last Chance U” documentary series.

The series has examined the struggles and triumphs of junior college football teams the past four seasons as their players try to rejuvenate their collegiate careers. The Raiders, in fact, just cut defensive lineman Ronald Ollie from East Mississippi Community College, which was the featured school on the first two seasons of “Last Chance U.”

While a crew will be focusing on Laney and its players this fall, unlike “Hard Knocks”, the turnaround time for the shows on Netflix won’t be so quick. Viewers won’t see Laney’s season documented until next summer.

“Last Chance U” is currently running its Season 4 docuseries, which features Independence Community College in Kansas. “Last Chance U” has spent two seasons on each of its first two schools, so it’s likely the cameras will be following Laney’s squad for the next two seasons.

Laney was chosen by “Last Chance U” for its fifth season from among thousands of junior college football programs around the country for a couple of good reasons. For one, the Eagles are the defending mythical national champions after going 11-2 and winning the state championship last year. Secondly, their program is run by a gregarious and difference-making coach.

With all due respect to anyone associated with the Raiders, the godfather of football in Oakland is John Beam, the head football coach and athletic director at Laney. For nearly 40 years — 22 years at Skyline High, 16 at Laney — Beam has probably been the biggest football booster the city has known. In many cases, those efforts were probably unknown.

For years, Beam worked behind the scenes to make sure Oakland high school kids got their just due. He’d call newspaper reporters to push for players to be considered for postseason honors, figuring the added exposure may just help them earn a scholarship. In almost every case, those Oakland kids didn’t even play for him.

In all, Beam has coached more than 100 players who went on to play Division I football, and more than 20 who wound up playing in the NFL, including former Broncos and Raiders running back C.J. Anderson and ex-Steelers Pro Bowl tackle Marvel Smith.

As you might expect, his teams have won a lot. Beginning with his first season as head coach at Skyline in 1987, Beam’s teams went 160-33-3 and won 15 Oakland Athletic League titles, 11 North Coast Section titles and had four unbeaten seasons. The Titans went through the entire decade of the 90’s without losing a league game.

However, Beam won’t ever point to those numbers to illustrate success, which just might be a constant theme when his team is on “Last Chance U.” He’s mostly proud that more than 90 percent of the players at Laney wind up graduating or transferring to Division I schools.

Beam is also preoccupied with creating leaders among his players, which he notes can be more of a challenge than just winning games.

“Building leadership in today’s community is really hard,” he once said in an interview. “A lot of young people don’t want to be leaders. They don’t want to put themselves out in front. They want to hide within their peer group. No one wants to stand out and actually tell people that they are doing the wrong thing.

“Positive peer pressure works,” he added, “Showing up on time, finishing your work when the coach is not looking. How do we make that happen? Or, more importantly, letting the coach know if someone didn’t go to class or was late to class. This is not snitching, you are actually helping them to help themselves.”