‘Last Chance U’ coach Buddy Stephens out at EMCC after ripping changes

East Mississippi Community College coach Buddy Stephens, who won five national titles with the Lions and was featured in the first two seasons of Netflix’s “Last Chance U” series, is out after making critical comments about changes to the season and playoff format.

EMCC announced Monday night that offensive coordinator and associate head coach Preston Rice will serve as interim head coach for the Lions, who began their season Thursday with a win at Southwest Mississippi Community College. Stephens was not mentioned in EMCC’s news release, but a statement posted to the college’s Facebook page and attributed to university president Scott Alsobrooks apologized for comments in a recent media report.

Stephens, who had helmed EMCC’s program since 2008, told The Commercial Dispatch newspaper that the Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference leaders who changed the season format are “idiots.” The MACCC added one game to its regular season to allow for an equal number of home and road contests, and it changed the playoff format to include only the two division champions rather than the top two teams from each division. Stephens told the Dispatch that some school presidents did not want to spend money on travel for the national junior college playoffs and crafted a format in which they would be more likely to host national playoff games.

“We wouldn’t have won two national championships because we were the second-place team in the North [division]. It’s not a very well thought-out process,” said Stephens, who led EMCC to national titles in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2018. “It was really junkified, the way they decided they were going to do it, and there wasn’t a lot of real thought. I was very surprised at how it came out because there were actual people who have doctorates that came up with this.”

Alsobrooks’ statement called the recent comments “inconsistent with the college’s core values and standards of professionalism, respect, and civility and do not reflect the views, mission, or expectations of EMCC. While the college supports open and constructive dialogue, personal attacks have no place in that discourse and are contrary to the standards we uphold within our college community.”

Netflix profiled EMCC during the 2015 and 2016 seasons before taking the “Last Chance U” series to other junior college programs. Stephens coached NFL players such as Jarran Reed and Dakota Allen at EMCC.