COASTAL CAROLINA COACH Jamey Chadwell has never seen "Ted Lasso," but that's about to change.
After the 24th-ranked Chanticleers host Troy on Thursday night (7:30 ET, ESPN2), they are set to travel to Georgia Southern next week. The bus ride from Conway, South Carolina, to Statesboro, Georgia, takes four hours, which will give Chadwell time to catch up on the series. He will learn all about the fictional college football coach from Kansas who leaves to coach soccer in England, bringing his folksy charm and eternally optimistic outlook to an unfamiliar sport in a new country.
"I know who he is, but a lot of people have said, 'Hey, you and Ted Lasso do some similar stuff,'" said Chadwell, who is 17-2 over the past two seasons at Coastal Carolina. "Somebody who is not in our staff told me that. He does a big 'believe' thing, and believe is a big thing for us.
"My coaches have told me I've got to watch it, so on our next road trip, I'm binge-watching 'Ted Lasso.'"
Chadwell, in his third season as Coastal Carolina's permanent coach, is one of several coaches who have drawn comparisons to Lasso. College administrators are increasingly prioritizing Lasso-like traits -- a player-centric approach, relentless positive energy, relationship-building and fun -- in their coaching searches. They also have been more open to candidates who, like Lasso, come from nontraditional backgrounds, rather than from the standard pool of playcalling Power 5 coordinators.
Recent hires, such as Chadwell, South Carolina's Shane Beamer, Arkansas' Sam Pittman, San Jose State's Brent Brennan and Charlotte's Will Healy -- none of whom were Power 5 offensive or defensive coordinators before landing their current jobs -- illustrate the trend.
"Ted Lasso makes you feel good. He's not your coach, it's a TV show, but there is a lot to be said for what he does," said Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek, who hired Pittman in December 2019. "He is that feel-good person who makes everybody in the organization feel good about their role."
After talking with administrators, coaches and others, here's a look at the Lasso effect in college football, how it started to take hold with Clemson's Dabo Swinney, why the approach works so well with current players and who could be the next Lassos.
CHADWELL COMES FROM a coaching family. His father, Jim, coached middle school and high school football in Tennessee, where Jamey grew up. Jim's coaching style was similar to many of his peers.
"My dad hollered all the time, so I was used to it," Jamey said with a laugh. "He was obviously old school, and he knew old school went out the door a long time ago. I think that's why he got out of it. He knows football X's and O's are not different, but he does know the relationship piece and how it used to be, that's not the way anymore.
"It's neat to see how that, in his lifetime, has changed a little bit."
As a player, Chadwell thought he performed better and was more engaged when his coaches related to him. He also saw other coaches take hardline approaches without getting the desired responses from their players.
When Chadwell first became a head coach, in 2009 at Division II North Greenville, he spent two months operating like he thought coaches should.
"I said, 'I can't do this. I've got to be myself,'" Chadwell recalled. "Culture wasn't a key word then. It was more so, 'How do I want the players to relate to me and how do I want to relate to them?' If you look at today's young people and all the different things that they have to deal with on a daily basis, social media, everything, that relational piece is huge.
"I think that's the biggest thing: People have issues with trust."
Chadwell said more than half of Coastal Carolina's players grew up without a father, and others come from families that endured other domestic challenges. He thinks many players arrive with walls already put up.
College administrators are increasingly focused on athletes' mental health, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and seek coaches who will be equally attentive.
"With the mental health issues [and] the young people in our society, the positivity of a coach is as important now as it ever has been," Yurachek said. "He or she has got to be able to make these young men and women feel really good about who they are, first and foremost, as a person, and then who they are as a student-athlete, how they represent your program.
"It's incredibly important."
South Carolina athletic director Ray Tanner coached baseball at the school from 1997 to 2012, winning national titles in 2010 and 2011. He said he became a better communicator later in his Gamecocks career but admits he occasionally created an over-pressurized environment for players.
"I was guilty at times of squeezing too hard," Tanner said. "Some of my colleagues, we called it intensity. Well, is it intensity or are you squeezing too hard? It becomes negative if you squeeze too hard."
Tanner remembers having players who didn't let his intensity hurt their performance. But he sees value in coaches who create different environments.
"The Lasso effect, if you can position yourself, you've eliminated a lot of reasons you can't be successful," said Tanner, who doesn't watch the show but knows about the character. "The 'Ted Lasso' effect still needs good players. But that approach opens up the door to be successful. It's OK to make a mistake. It's OK to enjoy success. It's OK to not have it to go your way. You can recover and bounce back."
The view on creating comfort for college athletes seems to be changing. For decades, coaches equated comfort to complacency and favored environments in which players were on edge.
Coaches and administrators still understand that players must be challenged to optimize performance. The key, though, is who challenges them and what type of relationships are already in place.
"Being comfortable doesn't mean you can't be pushed," Charlotte athletic director Mike Hill said. "Comfortable, maybe, is more equated with [being] safe. You can be part of a family environment that is positive and supportive and still delivers tough love because there's trust, because you're authentic as a head coach. They connect with you and they believe in you as a person. They know that you love them."
Hill calls "Ted Lasso" one of his favorite shows ever, and said he sees similarities between the character and Healy, a bubbly 36-year-old who revived the moribund FCS program at Austin Peay before landing the Charlotte job. Healy has structured Charlotte's program around four Lasso-ish values -- passion, energy, enthusiasm and positivity -- but places authenticity and accountability right beside them.
"I'm not going to try and go be Nick Saban," Healy said of the Alabama coach. "He's better than I am, he's won more games, he knows more football. I have so much respect for that, but it's not my personality. It's the same thing with recruiting a player. Be yourself. I'm a dorky white dude from Ooltewah, Tennessee, who grew up in a private school, who has a mom and a dad. I grew up on the lake. That is me, and I'm not going to try to be somebody else.
"I tell guys, 'There may be some of these things that I don't understand because I haven't lived that experience, but I care enough about you to want to understand more, and be there for you consistently.'"
YURACHEK HEARD THE criticism when Arkansas, which plays in college football's toughest conference (SEC) and division (SEC West), hired a 58-year-old career offensive line coach to lead its program.
Pittman had coached offensive line for 10 FBS programs, making two stops at Northern Illinois. His head-coaching experience was limited to two seasons at a junior college in Kansas (Lasso, coincidentally, coached Division II Wichita State football in Kansas before taking the AFC Richmond job). Pittman had never been an offensive playcaller in the FBS, and his name didn't surface for many head-coaching jobs, certainly not in the SEC.
These days, Yurachek receives different feedback about Pittman, particularly after Arkansas started 4-0 this season with wins over Texas and Texas A&M, and rose to No. 8 nationally.
"I've had calls from people who criticized that hire early on say, 'You know what, I was wrong,' and ask some of the questions, like, 'What did you see in Sam? What was different?'" Yurachek said. "There's some agents of offensive line coaches that have called and asked, 'What set him apart? What made you hire him [since he's] a little outside the box?'"
While other candidates with more traditional credentials expressed various concerns about the Arkansas job, Pittman, a former Razorbacks assistant, jumped at the opportunity. He was personable and beloved by former players and colleagues.
Pittman and Yurachek quickly worked out a deal and announced the hire at Pittman's home in Georgia, with both yelling Pittman's signature buzzword, "Yessirrrr!"
"Sam is opening up some avenues to where nontraditional folks can be successful," a Group of 5 athletic director said. "[Arkansas] got really bad reviews, obviously, when they hired Sam, but for a lot of us, we're saying, 'Maybe it's not always the low-hanging fruit of an OC. Maybe there are some defensive guys, maybe there are some position coaches.'
"What you'll start seeing is more open searches than in years past."
South Carolina's coaching search followed a similar path. Beamer, the son of Hall of Fame Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer, had coached position groups on both offense and defense, and been a special teams coordinator, but not a primary offensive or defensive playcaller.
The school vetted candidates with playcalling or head-coaching experience, but chose Beamer, a former Gamecocks assistant and recruiting coordinator who genuinely considered South Carolina to be a dream job.
"There's so many characteristics that go into it, versus, 'Well, I'm only going to hire an offensive coordinator,'" Tanner said. "I don't think that's the wrong way to go, but I don't think that's the only way. You get the right person for your program. And, if it's possible, you want to hire someone who [thinks] this is their final stop.
"I felt that potential with Shane."
Administrators seem increasingly willing to look beyond Power 5 playcalling experience when assessing candidates, especially following success from nontraditional hires. Brennan, previously Oregon State's wide receivers coach, last fall led San Jose State to its first league title since 1990 and first 7-0 start since 1939. Healy in 2019 guided Charlotte to its first bowl game, and opened the 2021 season with the program's first win against a Power 5 opponent (Duke). Before Austin Peay, Healy had coached quarterbacks and receivers at FCS Chattanooga.
Last fall, Coastal Carolina became the Sun Belt's first-ever top-10 team and won the league title. Chadwell, who had never coached in the FBS before coming to Coastal in 2017, followed through on a promise to grow a mullet.
"Everybody wants X's and O's, but people are leaning toward, you have to be relatable and able to communicate," Chadwell said. "[Coaches have] got to have a foundation of X's and O's. They can't be clueless. But how they relate and how they can get young people to buy into something, that, to me, is the most important thing."
There's some longer-term evidence in the hires as well. P.J. Fleck was a career wide receivers coach when Western Michigan hired him days after his 32nd birthday in December 2012. Fleck, best known for "Row the boat" and other phrases that feed into his holistic approach toward program-building, led Western Michigan to the Cotton Bowl in 2015 and Minnesota to 11 wins in 2019, the team's most since 1904. Midway through a disappointing 2008 season, Clemson fired Tommy Bowden and made Dabo Swinney the interim coach. Swinney had never been more than a position coach but soon earned the permanent job.
He has guided Clemson to its most successful stretch ever, featuring two national titles, seven ACC titles and six consecutive playoff appearances. Swinney also took a different approach to championship-level coaching. He popularized the acronym #BYOG (Bring Your Own Guts) after a rain-soaked win against Notre Dame, danced in the locker room after victories and put "Have fun!" at the end of the goals board in Clemson's team room.
In some ways, Dabo is the first Lasso.
"Dabo, to me, is the one who has been like this and has lived it," Healy said. "You hear Dabo speak and he'll say something that is not like what most other coaches would say. People give him a hard time about it because they're like, 'That's corny,' or whatever. But the people in his building know that's him. Dabo is one that I've looked at as a young coach and said, 'I'd like to do a lot of things like he does.'
"When Dabo makes it cool to be like that and you see the success that Clemson has had, other people are looking for somebody like him."
IN THE PILOT episode of "Ted Lasso," the coach is introduced while dancing in the locker room with Wichita State players. The indelible scene from Pittman's first year at Arkansas is him in the locker room, after the Razorbacks snapped a 20-game SEC losing streak, telling the players, "Did we believe? Alright, baby. Turn that dang jukebox on!" The jukebox line has become a meme.
After Charlotte wins, the locker room transforms into Club Lit, complete with strobe lights, pulsating music and, occasionally, a shirtless, crowd-surfing head coach.
"Ted Lasso might be a little better dancer than Will," Hill said.
"At the next Club Lit, there's a couple Ted Lasso dances that may or may not be copied," Healy said. "I am extremely jealous of his incredible dance moves, and I'm working on some of those."
The challenge for coaches such as Healy and Chadwell is to maintain a positive, supportive environment even after negative results. Last week, Charlotte lost to Florida Atlantic 38-9 at home. Coastal Carolina dropped its first regular-season game since 2019 on the final play against Appalachian State.
Healy has talked to his players about how every team that beats Charlotte "can't wait to talk about Club Lit being closed." He challenges players to maintain energy on the sidelines, even if games aren't going well. This week in practice, there's a problem if Charlotte's entire offense doesn't celebrate a touchdown, or if the defense doesn't dunk the ball in trash cans following takeaways. Healy also asks his staff to make sure he reflects the program's values, especially on non-game days.
"If you can build a strong bond of trust and continue to build that relationship through the ups and downs, it's easy to have it when you win, but also when you're struggling and they still know who you are," Chadwell said. "We work hard on that each week."
The college coaching carousel is already spinning with six FBS jobs open -- four at Power 5 programs -- and more to come. The Lasso trend is unlikely to slow down in this cycle. Some future candidates who fit the mold include Coastal Carolina co-offensive coordinator Willy Korn, SMU running backs coach Ra'Shaad Samples, San Jose State running backs coach Alonzo Carter, Eastern Washington coach Aaron Best, UCLA quarterbacks coach Ryan Gunderson, Minnesota wide receivers coach Matt Simon, Charlotte tight ends coach Joe Cox and Boise State defensive coordinator Spencer Danielson.
One reason is the shifting power balance between coaches and players, who now can profit off of their name, image and likeness, and could soon carry more power.
"The reality of this is: Being able to relate to players and be someone that is more of a players' coach is becoming more important because players are having more and more say," Healy said.
An administrator at a school looking for a coach added that the old-school approach with players -- "dog-cussing them, dressing them down" -- is no longer desired.
"It's about treating people the right way, treating people with respect, treating people with kindness," Hill said. "I know for a fact that you can be a champion and still be a good person, and treat people well, and you don't have to be an a--hole. With 'Ted Lasso,' I'm sure some people will read this and roll their eyes and say, 'OK, that's a bunch of feel-good stuff, it doesn't really work.' But there's definitely a segment of people, myself included, who believe that it is an approach that can work, and does work, and it is more appropriate in dealing with today's student-athletes, who are still trying to figure out their way."