‘Ted Lasso’ Reveals the Blue Collar Comedy Tour Inspiration for Ted’s Mustache

One of Ted Lasso‘s greatest mysteries has finally been solved. The Apple TV+ just revealed the origin story of Ted’s (Jason Sudeikis) iconic mustache. Did Ted grow it in honor of his beloved father? Actually, Ted reveals in Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 7 “The Strings That Bind Us” that he didn’t stumble upon the mustache until Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt) staged a last minute, pre-wedding intervention to get rid of Ted’s goatee. As Ted tells it, he was inspired by the facial hair of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour…only he started with the wrong point of inspiration before landing on the “Foxworthy.”

Ted Lasso Season 3 Episode 7 “The Strings That Bind Us” follows AFC Richmond after their sojourn in Amsterdam last week. There, Ted entered a BBQ sauce-inspired fugue state where he inadvertently stumbled upon the classic Dutch strategy of Total Football. This week, Ted tells the team that they are going to shift to this wholly new playing style. While training produces all sorts of hijinks — including a drill where an unhinged Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) laughs after forcing players to connect themselves with red strings tied to their penises — it doesn’t totally work straight out of the gate. When the boys attempt to play rival team Arsenal using the new tactic, it doesn’t go well.

During half-time, Ted attempts to rouse the players by using a story from his own life to make a point. He chooses the tale of how he got his mustache.

“I remember back in the early days of my coaching career, feeling compelled to express my individuality. Since I was a straight fella in Middle America working in sports and I was scared of tattoo needles, the only real option for me to do so was through my facial hair,” Ted says, before adding, “Obviously I couldn’t grow a beard. Otherwise Coach [Beard] and I here would, uh, look like a ZZ Top cover band.”

Ted explains that he turned to the four comics of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, who possessed the four most common types of male facial hair between them. There was Ted’s favorite comic, the clean-shaven Ron White, the “big old, bushy goatee” of Larry the Cable Guy, the “smaller” and “more manicured” goatee of Bill Engvall, and the classic mustache of Jeff Foxworthy.

“I went ahead and rolled the dice and grew myself one of them big, bushy Cable Guy goatees,” Ted says. “And I thought I looked great. Until Coach Beard here took me aside, right as I was about to walk down the aisle, and told me something I needed to hear. Remember what you said to me?”

“Your goatee makes it look like you ate out bigfoot’s butthole,” Beard says, remembering his brutal advice. Roy, to his horror, quips, “Making it ass-quatch.”

“Coach was right though. Not a good look. Not on this face,” Ted says. “So I shaved that puppy down right into a Foxworthy and I never looked back.”

Ted recounts this story to teach the players that sometimes “the right idea is just sitting behind a couple of wrong ones.” In the context of the episode, the team is right to pursue a “Total Football” strategy, but they need Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) to point out that they have to start playing “through” and not “to” him. This shift in perspective helps AFC Richmond score a goal in the second half.

So there you have it: Ted wanted to express himself in a heteronormative way in Middle America so he riffed on the facial hair of the Blue Collar Comedy Club before landing on his trademark mustache.