Buddy Stephens of ‘Last Chance U’ out as East Mississippi Community College football coach
Buddy Stephens, the five-time national championship coach who rose to national prominence through Netflix’s “Last Chance U” documentary series, is out as football coach at East Mississippi Community College after 18 seasons.
EMCC announced Monday night that associate head coach and offensive coordinator Preston Rice will fill in as interim head coach for the remainder of the season. The school did not mention Stephens or specify a reason for the change in its announcement.
The move came days after Stephens publicly criticized EMCC and Mississippi Association of Community Colleges Conference leadership over changes to the league’s football schedule and playoff format.
Stephens called the leadership responsible for the changes “idiots” in an interview with The Commercial Dispatch published Thursday, and he accused some conference presidents of structuring the postseason around avoiding the cost of traveling for the National Junior College Athletic Association playoffs.
“It was really ‘junkified,’ the way they decided they were going to do it and there wasn’t a lot of real thought,” Stephens told the newspaper, referring to the MACCC’s adding one game to the regular-season schedule to give each team five home and away games, and changing the playoff format to have only the top two seeds from each division play for the state championship rather than the top two teams from each division. “I was very surprised at how it came out because there were actual people who have doctorates that came up with this.”
EMCC president Scott Alsobrooks responded Monday with a statement, saying the college “strongly disavows the remarks published in a recent article.”
“These comments are 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,” Alsobrooks said on the school’s Facebook page. “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.”
The college apologized for concerns raised by the comments, and later Monday, EMCC announced Rice’s promotion.
The Dispatch reported that an EMCC Athletics representative would not confirm whether Stephens remains employed by the school in another capacity. Stephens did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.
His departure concludes one of the most successful coaching tenures in junior college football history. Stephens took over EMCC in December 2007 and compiled a 155-31 record, winning national championships in 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017 and 2018. He led the Lions to nine conference championships and was inducted into the NJCAA Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2024.
Stephens’ program became known well beyond the junior college ranks when EMCC was featured during the first two seasons of Netflix’s “Last Chance U.” The documentary followed a program that became a destination for talented players seeking another opportunity to reach major college football, and Stephens played a central role in the series.
Among the future NFL players who passed through EMCC during Stephens’ tenure were defensive linemen Jarran Reed and Za’Darius Smith, and linebacker Dakota Allen.
Rice now takes over a team that is 1-0 after its season opener. He is in his second season at EMCC, having coached the Lions’ quarterbacks in 2025 before briefly departing for Division II Shorter University in Rome, Ga., and returning this summer as associate head coach and offensive coordinator.