So I’m sure this has been covered already, but Ted Lasso is obviously an alternate universe where football club AFC Richmond exists and to be honest, while it’s implied they aren’t very good as they have few honors, this could easily mean they are a mediocre, bottom half club, but not bad enough to be relegated (yet anyways. I need to finish the show) though I’m not sure if you get a trophy when you get promoted. In addition, AFC Richmond seems to have been top flight since the 80s as they haven’t won’t at Everton FC in Liverpool in that long.
One thing too is in regards to American football. It says Ted Lasso was football coach at Wichita State. Wichita State hasn’t had football since 1986. Obviously they kept it in this timeline, but it’s said that Wichita won the division 2 national title. This means that Wichita State either dropped division 1 athletics, the ncaa got rid of its rule that all schools with football had to move their athletic programs to D1 ( before this, you had schools like Georgetown or Dayton or Butler playing D2 or D3 football with major basketball programs), or the ESPN announcer made a mistake and Wichita is in the Division 1-AA level, which has playoffs and includes teams like North Dakota State.
Any of these could be possible as Wichita would fit well in Division 2 as Kansas and Missouri have some very strong D2 programs like Pittsburg St and NW Missouri State. For sure in FCS they’d fit well into the Missouri Valley Football league with teams like North Dakota State and Northern Iowa. Either way, they exist and have football in that universe and it might have some implications on their basketball team.
Ok please forgive me I'm going to TRY and explain English football without spoilers regarding Ted Lasso using my team Norwich City who are very similar to Richmond....to the point my wife said "Is this show based in Norwich?"
We are a club like Richmond who float between the TOP tier Premier League and the SECOND tier The Championship (Yes we invented irony 😉) without ever winning the 'big' trophies.......
So we have 5 national leagues with promotion and relagation between each, the top of the football pyramid. Below that you get 'Northern' and 'Southern' leagues who have a promotion and relagation system beyween regional and national and so on down the various levels of the pyramid.
Next layer down are regional leagues South West or North West for example. And so on down the 'pyramid' you go with leagues covering ever smaller areas until you get to Level 9 which contains the top divisions of 16 sub regional leagues I guess......Each of these leagues has a different divisional setup, but they all have one thing in common. They have more leagues below them, each covering smaller and smaller geographical levels.
To the point my home city has a League of its own, that IN THEORY any of it's members could one day be a Premier League Club. All these leagues have Trophys and Cups that are very important if your club exist at that level.
Taking Norwich as a example we are 3rd behind Manchester City and Leicester City when it comes to 'Championship Winners' Trophys. Man City the most dominate force for the last 10ish years were a joke compared to Man United for all of the 20th century Hope that gives you a example how quickly fortunes can change in English football.
Many formey solid Premier League clubs are way down the league structure. Portsmouth, Sunderland, Oldham Athletic, Bolton Wanderers ect.......
I always try and go see a local club, cause it's cheap, fun and they need the money......plus the Ted Lasso Holligans exist at all levels
So I may be a Norwich City fan but I have a soft spot for my 'home town' club Bideford Town 'The Mighty Robins' and since I moved to the area the 'local' club Forest Green Rovers 'Green Army!'.
As for Ted's history pre-Richmond you probably know more than me.