The Positive Masculinity of Ted Lasso
By Lewis Kendall
There’s a scene in the film “The Mask You Live In,” a powerful documentary about the struggles of young boys and men to navigate societal pressures, where former NFL lineman Joe Ehrmann talks about the impact coaches and sports have on shaping the modern patriarchy.
“Coaches in this country have so much power, such a position in the lives of young people that they do attain this fatherlike status. You’ve got all these young boys trying to seek the approval of that coach,” Erhmann says.
“Coaches can do an awful lot of good and an awful lot of bad.”
For many of us, sports are our first introduction to what it means to be a man. We learn to fight through pain and injury, to not show sadness or anything that could be construed as “weakness,” lest our opposition take advantage of us. Aggression and anger are our friends; the only emotions fit for the field. Many of the ideas that are embedded in the social side of our culture, those of power, control, and supremacy, are hammered home through sport.
I say we because I started playing competitive sports almost as soon as I could walk—mostly soccer, but also basketball and lacrosse. I was that kid who was told not to cry when I took a hard slide tackle or a stick to the wrist. I remember breaking my arm in a youth basketball game and my coach telling me to cry more quietly as I sat on the bench in pain. I remember my college soccer coach calling our team pussies after a difficult loss—weaponizing the idea of being soft or feminine, knowing that it would hurt.
Ted Lasso is not this kind of coach. If you haven’t seen the show (and you should, it’s great), Ted Lasso is an American coach played by Jason Sudeikis who gets hired to manage a down-on-their-luck British soccer team. Through a combination of unconventional training methods (exploring the English sewer system to learn about moving on after a loss), relentless positivity, and seemingly never ending trove of inspirational quotes (“Your body is like day-old rice. If it ain’t warmed up properly, something real bad could happen”) Ted helps get the team back to winning ways.
Spoilers ahead, but the sports narrative only tells part of the tale. In fact, we learn, Ted’s consistent-bordering-on-irritating positivity and desire to help those around him acts as a protective mechanism, deflecting the focus away from his own internal turmoil—the death of his father, the collapse of his marriage, and a general avoidance of self-examination. Like many modern men, Ted shies away from therapy. He bottles up his emotions so tightly that when they do inevitably spill out, the overflow comes in the form of a debilitating panic attack during one of the biggest games of the season.
This is part of what makes Ted a good character—he’s relatable. His repression is understandable, his avoidance explainable. Men watching the show can likely empathize with why Ted is the way he is. Maybe it’s the same way they got to where they are. Rather than remain stuck in these ways, though, Ted seeks help. He finds a therapist who helps him work through his anxieties and unpack the pain and grief stemming from his divorce and dead father. He develops a strong, supportive community of friends and fellow coaches. He admits to his shortcomings and learns to ask for help. The show devotes an entire episode to Ted’s fellow coach literally assisting him through a particularly thorny time with the team.
Perhaps most importantly, Ted does not fall into the tropeish traps of other fictional coaches. He doesn’t subscribe to the School of Hard Knocks style of Herman Boone in “Remember the Titans” or Norman Dale in “Hoosiers,” or even the more nuanced Tough Love™ of characters like Gary Gaines in “Friday Night Lights.” He leads with empathy, with curiosity, kindness and understanding. When addressing one of his players who gets caught up in a selfish streak, Ted counters the player’s anger with warmth. “You might be so sure that you're one in a million, that sometimes you forget that out there, you're just 1 of 11,” he says. “If you just figure out some way to turn that 'me' into 'us,’ the sky's the limit for you."
Moreover, Ted demonstrates open vulnerability and uncertainty in front of his players. There’s no bravado or postering, pretending that imperfection or a lack of knowledge are somehow equivalent to weakness. Pain and sorrow are emotions to be welcomed, not pushed away. While his optimism is relentless, Ted guides his team to lean into the grief of defeat as much as he does the revelry of victory.
“Let’s be sad now,” he tells the locker room after a loss. “Look at everybody else in here. And I want you to be grateful that 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.”
“The great myth in America today is that sports builds character,” notes Joe Ehrmann. “Sports does not build character unless a coach intentionally teaches it and models it.”
Ted reminds us that success is not about winning games. Success, he says, is about “helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”
Sports are a vehicle to teach people, including young men, how to be loving, supportive, vulnerable human beings who can sit with painful emotions and don’t act from places of rage and frustration. Good coaches can teach us that sadness is not weakness, femininity is not weakness, and strength does not equal power.
“I think,” Ted tells his boss Rebecca in one episode, “that if you care about someone and you got a little love in your heart, there ain't nothing you can't get through together."
I wish my coaches were more like Ted.
