Oakland’s Laney College chosen for ‘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 differencemaking 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.