For All The “Losers” Out There

A Tribute to Ted Lasso and Losing…Together

I was recently on a routine zoom meeting with some faith leaders, and, before the group got started with our agenda, we ended up talking about soccer.

“Have you seen the show Ted Lasso? I’m a bit of an evangelist about it,” one woman burst out excitedly.

“Really?” I exclaimed.

“Oh, I recently watched it, too” another woman on the call remarked.

For those of you who haven’t seen the show, the titular character Ted is a coach from Kansas who recently won a Division II college football championship. He is recruited to be the coach of AFC Richmond, a mediocre British premiere football team.

Coach Lasso doesn’t really know anything about soccer — ehem — I mean football — and took the job to give his wife some space; their marriage is under strain. The team’s owner Rebecca is trying to exact revenge on her ex-husband by hurting what he loves the most — the team. She hires Coach Lasso precisely because she hopes Lasso won’t know what he is doing and tank the team.

And Rebecca’s plan largely works, even as she eventually regrets her motives and comes to love the team. As the season progresses, we watch the team lose — a lot. By the end of the season, the team faces dreaded relegation, where they would be demoted to a lower tier league than the premiere one.

While a clever and eccentric premise, what exactly has captured the hearts of so many I know?

Why do I find myself rooting for the losing team and smiling after each episode?

Is it the rapid-fire wordplay between Lasso and his assistant, Coach Beard, who love to note all the different linguistic differences between British and American English?

Coach Ted: If I were to get fired from my job where I’m puttin’ cleats in the trunk of my car …

Beard: You got the boot from puttin’ boots in the boot.

Is it the joy of watching team member Dani Rojas exclaim, “Football is life” as he careens across the field with his arms outstretched like Icarus in a soccer uniform?

Or is it the knowledge that the team’s owner Rebecca, who suffered for years under the emotional abuse of a philandering narcissistic misogynst billionaire ex-husband, receives biscuits in little pink boxes every morning from Ted who — we discover in an outburst of frustration — bakes them himself?

Does she serve as a cathartic figure for all of us who have endured the last four years of Trump and decades of toxic masculinity in our culture?

Or what about the moment when Ted Lasso offers a military themed gift to Sam, the Nigerian player, and he politely refuses recalling how American militarism does not hold the same boyhood joy that it might for the Kansan coach?

Or is it — as so many have observed — a perfect show for its time — when we all feel like we are on the losing team with a pandemic crippling our world, and rising uncertainty about the future of America and its allies?

Maybe, but on a personal level, I will admit, I often feel like I’m both lost and losing at life.

I’m 40 and single, not something many strive for in their life, and certainly not something women are praised for by our culture.

I’m a Christian lesbian (an oxymoron for many), and a failed academic with her PhD in theology. I’ve spent most of my life meandering around Christian communities, and yet never formally sought ordination. My denomination largely sees me as “incompatible” with Christian teaching, and yet like the prodigal daughter I returned.

Talk about being rejected by a losing team.

Never mind my own run of the mill neuroses.

But, in the Ted Lasso world, community is a balm for pain, a place to uplift those who have been pushed down, and a caution for the self-obsessed.

In the Ted Lasso world, it’s like we are reassured that sometimes the “losing” team is the best team to be on:

“Please do me this favor, will you? Lift your heads up and look around this locker room. Look at everybody else in here. And I want you to be grateful you’re going through this sad moment with all these other folks because, I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad. And that is being alone and being sad. Ain’t no one in this room alone.”

After a stinging loss, Lasso encourages the team to have a dance party and eat birthday cake for Sam, who is a bit homesick for his family and country.

Personal book recommendations — some highly unexpected — are gifted to each team member by the coaches as encouragement for self-improvement. One player even gets a copy of the Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time as his recommended reading.

For Rebecca, we realize how deep her hurt is over the way the press rakes her over the coals about her divorce even as her ex-husband is a rotten creep.

We see Ted’s pain after his wife and son come to visit him across the pond and he ends up signing divorce papers mid-season.

And the beautiful thing is, Ted and Rebecca find solace through community — whether that is through a hug in an alley outside a party, or a best friend sitting on the bench waiting to be there after a painful letting go.

There are also those in the show who don’t have the means or position in society to go it alone. They don’t have the power or the money or status to do so. And the show insists that those folks have worth and voice as well.

Nathan Shelley, a young man of color, who is in charge of tending to the needs of the team — like fresh towels and full water bottles — is teased and bullied by team members for the entertainment of others.

But Lasso quickly takes him under his wing, giving him a nickname “Nate the Great,” praising him for his particular sports drink creation, and eventually promotes Nate after he offers successful suggestions for plays on the field.

Conversely, we watch Jamie Tartt, a cocky young player, alienate himself from the team either through enjoying a laugh at the expense of others — especially Nate — or through refusing to pass the ball. His desire for celebrity eventually catches up with him, and he moves to Manchester City, a much stronger team. But at what cost to Jamie’s long term flourishing as a human being?

In Ted Lasso world, the marginalized are named and lifted up, and the powerful are brought low.

Music to the Gospel’s ears.

In case you think this show doesn’t attend to the demands of a competitive world, there is a helpful warning to any community not to get too comfortable with its losing position, and it comes through the voice of Coach Beard.

Later in the first season, when Lasso is debating whether to bench an older player whose performance is slipping, Coach Beard grows frustrated and exclaims:

Look, I understood this mission when we were in Kansas. But those were kids and these are professionals and winning does matter to them. And it matters to me. And that’s okay….How do you not get it? Losing has repercussions. We lose, we get relegated. We get relegated, this is over and we will have built nothing. And if you wanna pick a player’s feelings over a coach’s duty to make a point… I don’t wanna drink with someone that selfish. (https://lassoism.com/Ted-Lasso-quote.php?id=185).

It’s one thing to lose when you’ve tried your best and left everything out on the field. It’s another thing when you aren’t willing to do the hard thing for the betterment of the team.

How often have I hesitated to do the right thing out of my desire to be liked by someone I respect and admire and end up hampering the work in the process? How often have communities become stagnant because they are afraid of letting go when its time?

So, while I’m pretty sure I’m on the “losing” team in much of my life, I’m going to try to live in the Ted Lasso world. You can’t endure the inner demons of self-doubt or the bullying of others without it taking its toll on your soul. You need others to go through it with if you want to feel like you have a purpose in the world. If you want to feel any kind of real joy.

A culture that is full-throated in its insistence on the efficacy of a go-it-alone mentality — especially for men — through self-help apps, mastery over one’s thoughts, and glorifying celebrity (even in the church) is dangerous.

It only exacerbates the degree of loneliness and isolation that occurs when (not if) we, like Icarus, fly too high, get burned, and crash.

So, I’m going to keep eating birthday cake and dance around with my friends; I’m going to hang my head when I lose but do it with my friends around. I’m going to help my community seek out the lost and forgotten. I’m going to discipline my own instinct to go it alone. And sometimes I’m going to yell at myself and my community to wake up and do the hard thing that’s going to make things better for everyone.

It’s better than letting the “winning team” be the best we can strive for.

It’s better than not being part of anything at all.