Written by Have you seen Ted Lasso yet? If not, you should. It’s not really about what you expect it to be. Sure, the show chronicles a folksy American football coach from Kansas going to England to coach a Premier League team. Much of the comedy centers around the clash in cultures and Ted’s lack of understanding of soccer or England. However, the show is really about what it takes to be successful.
The show had received a lot of critical acclaims and earned a lot of attention. Jason Sudeikis won a golden globe recently for the role, for which he set new standards for style in his acceptance speech.
What makes the show exceptional is how Ted wins over the team, his boss, and the fans slowly with his positive energy. He doesn’t beat people over the head with it but patiently shows encouragement while setting a good example. He teaches a talented young striker the importance of making a pass to an open teammate and teaches a grumpy old veteran how to become a leader. He uses empathy to connect with people.
What is striking is how we view his behavior as odd. We expect our coaches to be macho, to preach winning and toughness, like our high school football coach. Or obsessive and demanding like the coach of the cheerleading squad on Cheer. We don’t expect our coaches to be examples of “positive masculinity.” Why not?
I read a great article in The Athletic recently about the inspiration of the Ted Lasso character. Sudeikis gave several people credit, but the one that sticks out is Donnie Campbell. Cambell was Jason’s high school basketball coach and was an avid fan of John Wooden. He would start practices with John Wooden’s quotes, like the title of this article. Campbell says in the article, “Sometimes you don’t realize how you impact kids, but sometimes that’s because the words don’t impact them until they get older.”
If you look closely, you can see a copy of John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” in Ted’s office in the show. As he describes in his classic Ted Talk, Wooden created the pyramid when he was a high school coach and English teacher in Indiana in the 1930s. Great ideas survive the test of time. Hopefully, the notoriety created by Ted Lasso will renew attention to the principles included in Wooden’s pyramid.
“Winning” is notably absent from the pyramid. Wooden expected his players to follow a simple set of rules, be gritty, and do the best they can. He wanted his players to be themselves. Winning is a result. When asked about his favorite players, he not only mentions the talented ones like Walton and Alcindor but players he thought would never make the varsity team but turned out to be key role players by achieving their full potential.
Angela Duckworth, a psychiatrist who also has a great Ted Talk, studied the topic of grit. Her research was to determine what characteristics made up grit and how to measure it. Her book, Grit, describes what she found. Passion and perseverance were critical to being gritty. Talent is essential but not as important as effort. Effort counts twice in Duckworth’s equation. As a teacher, the key is to encourage students to meet their commitments. Just like Wooden preached, set a realistic goal then hold them accountable.
We talk a lot about the problems in youth and amateur sports on this website. It is too bad that we view coaches like Ted Lasso as the exception rather than the rule. We overlook effort while becoming enamored with talent. We focus solely on winning without considering Wooden’s building blocks of industriousness, loyalty, alertness, initiative, enthusiasm, self-control, friendship, cooperation, intentness, confidence, skill, team spirit, poise, condition, and competitive greatness as defining success.
Ironically, in the show, Ted is hated by the English fans because he is an American, while his views are rather un-American. According to Gallup, Americans view “status” as the primary determinant of success in our society, followed by education and finance. However, if you ask them what success means for them personally, you get responses more in line with Wooden’s pyramid. The problems we see in sports, and our society in general, likely lie in this gap.
Maybe we should take Wooden’s timeless advice and teach kids to forget what others think and be the best they can be. To fly with the eagles. It worked for him.