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On the Pitch with Saint Augustine

Sean Strehlow

“What do you love?”

Ted asks Trent Crimm this simple question during the third episode of Season 1. Ted follows up with his own answer: “I love coaching. For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field” (“Trent Crimm: The Independent”). This notion that coaching can prepare athletes for life on and off the field echoes a strong cultural sentiment that participation in sport builds character. But when setting out to define “character,” concrete definitions are difficult to pin down. Ted’s definition of the offsides rule may well apply here: “I’m gonna put it the same way the US Supreme Court did back in 1964 when they defined pornography. It ain’t easy to explain, but you know it when you see it” (“Biscuits”).

One reason character is such an elusive notion is that it is rarely reducible to its readily observable dimensions. As a simple exercise, imagine one of several scenes in Ted Lasso where the Richmond team is working out in the weight room. We can assume that every athlete enters the weight room with a set of intentions, or goals, for their workout. Some athletes may be working on rehabbing an injury, while others may be looking to strengthen a particular muscle. Each athlete also shares a larger goal of improving his individual and team performance. Some (ahem… Jamie Tartt) may be more concerned with their physical appearance than anything else. How these intentions are ordered shapes the way the athletes engage in their workout.

As the above scene illustrates, our behaviors are made meaningful by our intentions, our goals or purposes that provide motivations for our actions. These lie close to our affective center. When evaluating a person’s character, we might begin with behaviors we can directly observe, or the reasoning that led to those behaviors. But what is infinitely more complex, and what forms our cognitive and behavioral patterns, is what Ted’s opening question highlights. More than anything, our character is defined by our heart—it is dictated by what we love.1

What Is Love?

One of the challenges and opportunities for philosophy and the clarity and rigor it seeks is the transient nature of language across time and place. Or, as Ted would advise, best not to smother English biscuits in gravy (“Biscuits”). Today, images related to love and the heart typically evoke a kind of sentimentality one might find in a Hallmark card or romantic comedy (“rom com”). Love is a rather degraded notion in common parlance. Reviews of Ted Lasso regularly feature a similar “heartwarming” emotivism.2 When ancient philosophers refer to the heart, though, it often carries the same weight as the Greek word kardia, which more accurately might be described as the soul—the spiritual epicenter of our deepest, most fundamental, longings and desires.

The heart (kardia) is an unavoidable part of the human experience. By asking Crimm about what he loves, Ted communicates the philosophical truth that the key question is not whether we love, but what we love. Perhaps no one knew this better than Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a North African Bishop whose writings remain essential to the Western philosophical tradition. Augustine belongs to a long line of philosophers, beginning with Aristotle (384–322 BC), who see happiness as the ultimate human aim. This is to say, all human activity is aimed at achieving a state of stable and sustainable happiness, understood in a robust and substantive way. For Augustine, happiness is inextricably tied to what we love.

To complicate matters, we have many loves that compel us to think and act in different, often conflicting or dissonant, ways. Consider the morally ambivalent Rebecca, whose desire to enact revenge against Rupert eventually clashes with her growing affinity for the Richmond Football Club and for Ted himself. As these two passions fluctuate in Rebecca’s heart, her actions realign with the one that takes primacy. This prioritization is what Augustine refers to as the ordo amoris, the ordering of loves, which

requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things; to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what is to be loved less, or equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.3

Drawing on this concept, we can think of our heart as an ecosystem of desires that are constantly competing for our attention. Augustine described our desires as having their own gravitational pull that prompts us to think and act in certain ways: “My love is my weight! I am borne about by it, wheresoever I am borne.”4 When faced with difficult decisions or moral dilemmas, our most deep‐seated desires “win out” to provide the motivation for our actions.

The Ordo Amoris in Ted Lasso

“Two Aces” most vividly captures this spirit in Ted Lasso. This is the episode of the training room curse. More importantly, it is the episode introducing the ebullient Dani Rojas. If Ted is the show’s most loveable character, Dani must be a close second. His infectious joy seems to permeate the entire show, demonstrating that one can, in fact, “give away joy for free” (“Diamond Dogs”). Avid Ted Lasso fans will be familiar with Dani’s mantra, “Football is life!” But there is another Richmond player who wears this mantra on his sleeve, even if he doesn’t say it out loud—Jamie Tartt. In fact, Ted says this explicitly while yelling at Jamie for missing practice:

We’re talking about practice. You understand me? Practice. Not a game. Not a game. Not the game you go out there and die for. Right? Play every weekend like it’s your last, right? No, we’re talking about practice, man. Practice!

Indeed, both Dani and Jamie love football as if it is life itself, but in very different ways.

Augustine can strengthen our analysis here. Jamie’s love for soccer resembles what Augustine refers to as cupiditas or cupidity, a disordered love. This kind of love is self‐serving because its intention is self‐gratification, even at the expense of others. Ted’s tirade about missing practice is a crucial moment because, for the first time, Jamie is directly confronted about this disordered affection. Notice what happens immediately after Ted puts Jamie in his place. Colin takes a jab at Jamie for being a “second‐teamer” and Isaac backs him up. Until that moment, they idolized Jamie, another example of cupidity. With Jamie’s change of fortunes, among a group of athletes with their own desires bouncing every which way, the gravitational center of their collective desires shifts ever so subtly toward the good of the team.

Immediately afterwards comes Dani Rojas, whose love for football is enlivened by a different intention. This type of love is what Augustine refers to as caritas, a rightly ordered love that finds pleasure and satisfaction in the good of others. Not only does Dani repeat his mantra. He also demonstrates it to the coaches (“You say it, I do it, coach!”) and to his teammates by attributing his goal to their efforts. Dani further shows this kind of love during his post‐practice shootout with Jamie—admiring Jamie’s shots and attributing his own success to luck. We might more accurately interpret Dani’s mantra as “football is life giving.” This newfound source of talent, energy, and concern for others leaves a noticeable impression on the team and the center of gravity shifts yet again.

Later, when the Richmond team gathers for the ceremony to get rid of the ghosts in the training room, Rebecca inaugurates another affective shift. In her obsession with getting revenge on Rupert, Rebecca had exemplified what Augustine calls cupiditas—a disordered love of something that should not be loved at all. Throwing the newspaper with Rupert’s headline into the trash can symbolizes a shift to prioritizing Ted and the Richmond team, even if it takes a little while to stick.

Jamie, too, uncharacteristically opens up about his painful past. We see his disordered love for football begin to shift ever so slightly. In fact, we can look at everyone’s sacrifices, even the silly ones (like Richard’s memento from his maiden voyage with a supermodel), as a reordering of loves. Each object represents a source of self‐gratification and comfort that their owners had valued above all else. The ghosts in this episode may not have been real, but there is something quite enchanting and transcendent, even supernatural, about an entire group of people giving up what means most to them for something that might benefit the group.

Worship at Crystal Palace

Ordering our loves is never a linear process, however. Jamie retreats back into himself when he’s recalled by Manchester City. Rebecca still waffles back and forth in her desire for revenge. Even Nate finds his own dark path in his...