Staples: You’d better believe it, Indiana’s Tom Allen is the real Ted Lasso
New York TimesIn one of his first acts as the manager of fictional English soccer club AFC Richmond, former Wichita State football coach Ted Lasso tapes a yellow sign with the word “BELIEVE” emblazoned on it to the locker room wall above his office door. One of the first reasons we know this is that even though it might give him a nice social media pop to tie those similarities together Friday as Season 2 of “Ted Lasso” drops on Apple TV+, Allen has never seen “Ted Lasso.” When told this was getting written, he wasn’t certain whether this column would celebrate him or poke fun at him. Here’s Lasso after the crushing season-finale loss to Manchester City that got AFC Richmond relegated … And here’s Allen after Indiana fell 42-35 at Ohio State last November … Proud of our fight!! “I will totally corroborate this story if you let me play the part of Coach Beard,” Wommack said, name-checking Lasso’s loyal assistant who plays chess without a board, who serves as Lasso’s own version of Jiminy Cricket and who does a killer karaoke version of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” Wommack absolutely sees the similarities between Lasso, whose motivational tactics induce groans before they produce gains, and Allen. Nathan Shelley begins Season 1 as AFC Richmond’s “kit man,” which is what a college football coach would call a team manager.
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