The Sad Story of Bobby Bruce

The second episode of the latest season of Last Chance U opens in a Greyhound bus station. The saddest version imaginable: empty parking lot, glowing vending machines against the outer wall. There’s a dimly lit lone figure standing with his bags. The stringy dreads give away his identity quickly if you’ve been watching the show. It’s Bobby Bruce, the forlorn, confused, misguided Independence Community College football player. Finally, a bus pulls up and “Six Days Earlier” flashes up on the screen.

This is going to be a Tarantino episode. We know how it ends, now we learn how and why Bobby Bruce is at a Greyhound station with his bags packed after one week of the football season.

Watching Last Chance U always puts me in this strange headspace. I am a white male who grew up in New England and suburban San Francisco. I attended private schools growing up and then worked at a private school for 13 years, serving elite, competitive, driven, privileged families. This show provides endless windows for me to see into a world that I don’t understand but also frustrates me and breaks my heart at the same time.

In my opinion, Bobby Bruce is the most gut-wrenching character of the entire show. He’s a kid from Titusville, Florida, which is due east of Orlando on the Atlantic Coast. Judging by the anecdotes about the town, it was not an easy place to grow up. Gangs and violence were prevalent and for Bobby Bruce, football was his only chance to get out.

The culture shock of arriving in Independence, Kansas at the local Community College has to be sky-high for the majority of the recruits. Many of them are former Division 1 flame-outs looking for a chance to get some reps and film as they search for a new route to life in DI football. Some make it. Some don’t.

Over the course of the 2017 football season, Bobby Bruce experienced many ups and downs. His size put him at a disadvantage, as the coaches couldn’t find a real position for him (this bled into the issues on the field in 2018). Bruce’s self-worth was directly tied to his success on the football field. He needed snaps and he needed to make big plays. Nothing else mattered because nothing else ever matter. Once the going got tough, Bobby Bruce shut down.

He missed home. He missed succeeding on the football field. And, in my unprofessional opinion, it made him depressed.

The title of the show drives home the point that this is the last chance for a lot of these players to make it to the next level. They still have a slim chance at getting to the NFL, they just need the right Division 1 program to come calling.

However, (and this isn’t ground breaking) it’s also just their last chance at any sort of education and a place where people give a shit about them as they try to instill a sense of self-worth and self-esteem into these young men that most likely are not going to make it to the NFL.

During this particular episode, we spend a lot of time with Bobby Bruce. He is struggling with his lack of playing time and practice participation. We watch him bonding with teammate, Kailon Davis. Davis took on a role of big brother for Bruce, introducing him to the Bible and helping him remain upbeat when things become tough. Bruce was arrested over the summer for armed robbery, which put his attendance at Independence CC in jeopardy, but he was allowed back for is Really Really Last Chance. Kailon Davis was trying to be a guiding light for Bruce and keep him on the straight and narrow.

Sadly, Bruce, and two teammates, are caught on security video enter another student’s dorm room empty-handed and leave with a plastic bag. The video surfaced because the student who lived in the room complained that $250 was taken from his room. Bobby was blamed for the theft, as he was the only one that left the room with something in his hands. He claimed it was food, but he also didn’t put up much of a fight when he was accused.

Here’s where we get a really interesting look into the machine that is Independence CC and how players are used up and disposed of when their chance is over. Coach Brown, a lump of a man who drinks on screen, swears and yells at his players, and generally gives zero fucks about anybody, called a meeting and told the team that Bobby Bruce was cut for what he did (Bruce took the fall for his two teammates, too). Bruce had no idea he was cut; he was just told by Coach Brown to skip the meeting.

Before Brown delivers the news face-to-face to Bobby Bruce, word gets back to him, as he’s haphazardly playing pool alone, that he’s cut. Coach Brown loves to say how much he loves his players and how much he loves Bobby Bruce. Sadly, we never get to see that final moment between coach and player. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn’t.

What we did get to see was his teammates and a teacher come to say goodbye. His English teacher, Latonya Pinkard, a star of the show, came to Bruce’s dorm room as he was packing up. She put a lot of time and energy building up Bobby Bruce when he was in one of his funks. They exchanged a teary good-bye, which was capped off with the teacher asking to read Psalm 23 with him. Bruce opens his newfound Bible and begins reading. He can barely get through the first two sentences before the teacher offers to read. It’s heartbreaking, this 20 year-old kid that can barely read is losing his last chance at some sort of education. At some sort of normalcy. At some stability.

It feels like it’s already slipped through his fingertips. And it sucks.

Before we return to the Greyhound bus station, an assistant coach walks into Coach Brown’s office with Bobby Bruce’s bus tickets to get home. It’s a four leg trip. First he gets to St. Louis. Then St. Louis to Atlanta. Then Atlanta to Orlando. Then Orlando to Titusville. It’s a horribly callus moment. One where I was stewing to myself, they couldn’t even just spring for a GD plane ticket for this poor kid.

If Coach Brown really loved Bobby Bruce, we would have seen some human moment between the two, or he would have tried to help get the kid home more easily.

We return to the Greyhound bus station, knowing that Bruce is taking a very long trip home. He’s going to be with his pregnant girlfriend back in his hometown. Bruce is an incredibly sympathetic figure. He grew up as a football star in Florida, who couldn’t quite find his way to the next level. His happiness and future depended on something that ultimately wasn’t going to shake out in his favor.

At the end of the episode, I was left saddened for Bruce. He’s got a good heart with a bent for self-destruction. I sure hope everything turns out okay for him.