Why Ted Lasso coaching a women's football team in season 4 is the most important sports storyline on TV right now

Ted Lasso is back. Three years after what everyone assumed was a farewell, Jason Sudeikis returns to Richmond on August 5, 2026, this time to coach a second-division women's football team called the Lady Greyhounds . The show didn't choose this storyline for novelty. It chose it because women's football is the fastest-growing sporting conversation on the planet right now, and a fictional American coach navigating that world, with all its financial strain, institutional skepticism, and genuine emotional stakes, is more timely than anything else on television.