KCK schools hire official who backed ‘I’m your new Hitler’ coach on Netflix show
For the last two seasons, viewers of the Netflix series “Last Chance U” watched as Jason Brown — portrayed as the strutting, abrasive and profanity-spewing head football coach of Independence Community College in Kansas — attempted, with mixed success, to whip his team into a junior college powerhouse.
In February, Brown resigned soon after it was revealed that he had texted a German-born team member that “I’m your new Hitler.” The story went viral, drawing broad condemnation.
What will become of Jason Brown is unclear.
But what has become of his boss and general supporter, Tammie Romstad, the community college’s longtime athletic director, is certain.
Romstad, who is identified on the show by the name Tammie Geldenhuys, has taken a job as the new athletic director for the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools, according to the school district’s website.
She will be paid $102,000 a year.
Romstad worked for Independence Community College for 12 years. She had played basketball for Kansas State University before graduating in 1982. In 2013 she was inducted into the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame, ranking seventh in career scoring with 1,548 points. Her jersey was retired.
Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful. A spokeswoman for KCK schools was not familiar with “Last Chance U” nor Romstad’s connection to the show.
The series, which debuted its fourth season on Netflix last week, follows the drama of young football players who attempt to make it to Division 1 or other four-year football programs by proving themselves at the junior college level.
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Romstad makes several appearances on the program. But this season and last have largely followed Brown, who — raised on what he describes as the rough streets of Compton, California — swaggers, chomps his cigars, walks his pet pit bull and curses his way through the football season.
Brown was hired just over three years ago to turn around what was a languishing program that relied mostly on area students as athletes and had not had a winning season in years.
In 2016, the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference voted unanimously to open its rosters to out-of-state recruits. Brown built a team around talented out-of-state players, a number of whom had washed out of Division 1 programs because of rules or academic violations, but who hoped to work their way back through junior college play.
In Season 3, Brown led the ICC Pirates to a 9-2 winning season, capturing the team’s first conference championship.
In Season 4, Romstad appears mostly supportive of Brown and his methods, as does the school’s then-president, Dan Barwick. To support the football program, other sports programs are abandoned or gutted at ICC, sparking criticism and resentment from some in the community.
But the team’s single season of success, and Netflix exposure, also appears to attract out-of-state athletes who aren’t on scholarship and helps garner enough community support for the college to build a new $600,000 turf practice field.
As Season 4 starts, boosters boast that the school is a team of destiny bound for a national junior college championship.
Nothing of the sort happens, as the Pirates win only their first and last game, ending the season at a miserable 2-8. A brawl all but erupts in a game against Garden City Community College. Brown is ejected during a tirade in Iowa. He fires many on his coaching staff.
Both supporters and detractors of the coach abound in the Netflix series, with a number of residents believing that Brown and the program damaged the reputation of the community and school.
Some former players rose to Brown’s defense on social media and in the Netflix series, defending the coach’s crass and outspoken style.
In the last episodes of “Last Chance U,” Romstad attempts to put Brown’s short tenure in perspective. On Netflix, she is not quoted in regard to his comment referencing Adolf Hitler.
“As an administrator,” Romstad says, “I learned a long time ago, that everybody’s greatest asset can and sometimes becomes their biggest weakness and their fall.”
She later partially defends Brown, explaining that he was raised much like the athletes he was coaching, and, in that sense, thought he knew how to reach them and help move their lives forward.
“You know, I’m going to be honest,” she says. “I think the whole ‘Last Chance U’ story, the real paradigm that I see, is Jason is that kid. He didn’t survive and grow up by being politically correct.
“You know, he hustled. He’s a battler. He does it in a different way, because he’s been there. He knew what worked for him. He knew what got him out. And I think that’s his gift. And, uh, that’s a very important gift for the men that he brings into the program.”
Barwick, the then-president of the college, notes at the end of Season 4 that the move to hire Brown may have ended poorly, but it produced gains.
“I would say, yes, that with regard to Jason, it was a sad ending,” he says. “But the program itself, regardless of who’s the coach, is on better footing now than when it was when he arrived.”
Barwick resigned his post as president in June. The day the Board of Trustees accepted his resignation, they chose Romstad to be the interim college president.
Reaction on social media was roundly negative.
Romstad resigned within a month. She was hired in KCK by Keli Tuschman, the district’s new chief of human resources, whose most previous job was director of human resources for Independence Community College.
In June, Brown was charged in Montgomery County with eight felonies that include blackmail and allegedly posing as a lawyer from Johnnie Cochran’s law firm in Los Angeles as part of a ruse to prevent a community Kansas newspaper, the Montgomery County Chronicle, from writing negatively about him.
Brown faces four counts of blackmail, four counts of identity theft and two counts of criminal false communication.
“ICC groomed, glorified and amplified a monster, made love to that monster, and look what’s happened now,” said Andy Taylor, editor of the Montgomery County Chronicle, which first reported on Brown’s Hitler comment and was the object of his alleged lawyer ruse. “The community felt, I think, betrayed that they made this into their primary mission. And, as a result, things went south at the college.”
As for Romstad:
“She was part of the team within the administration that took this idea of making ‘Last Chance U’ and Jason Brown into a marketing tool,” Taylor said. “She took it on and ran with it, too. She thought it was a great thing. And it has not gelled. In fact, it’s fallen apart.”
This story was originally published July 26, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
