Terry Smith

Terry Michael Smith (born May 1959) is an American sportsman, known for his playing and coaching career in American football and baseball, and his ownership of professional sports teams.

After starting his playing career as a defensive back for American football franchise New England Patriots, Smith moved abroad to the United Kingdom, where he achieved international success as the player and head coach of the Manchester Spartans. Smith was also head coach of the Great Britain national American football team. He later spent ten years as owner and general manager of professional American football teams, and two years as owner and general manager of English soccer club Chester City from 1999 to 2001, including a spell as manager during part of his ownership.

Collegiate career Smith attended Cornell University for two years, where he played American football at wide receiver and free safety and baseball at shortstop and second base.

He then transferred to Furman University, where he played football, baseball, and ran track. In football, he started at free safety for two years on two Southern Conference Championship Furman teams.

In baseball, he hit .414 in 1982, the 5th highest single season batting average in Furman history.

American football Professional career Smith started his professional American football career in 1982, signing as a free agent by the New England Patriots. However, he was later placed on the injured reserve list.

In 1988, Smith signed to play and coach for the Manchester Spartans American football team overseas in Great Britain’s British American Football Association. As a wide receiver and free safety from 1988 to 1998, Smith set more than 25 playing records with the Spartans, including setting the then National and League record for pass interceptions in a season with 11, and setting the National and British record for pass receptions in a single game with 15 pass receptions for 245 yards on July 7, 1991. His career best receiving yards season in Great Britain was 1988 with 1020 yards. He finished with more than 300 career pass receptions for more than 5,000 yards, and he retired as the all-time League career leader in interceptions. He twice led Europe in receiving for a season, he led Europe in interceptions for a season, and he was named to the All-Europe Team on several occasions as both a wide receiver and as a free safety. In 2004, Great Britain's governing body for American football chose Smith as the greatest defensive player in the history of the sport in Great Britain.

Coaching career After coaching at U.S. colleges, Smith went to Great Britain after signing with the Manchester Spartans football club in the NFL-sponsored League. After leading the Manchester Spartans from a 2–10 season to a 14–0 record in 1988, Smith was appointed head coach of the Great Britain national American football team. As the Manchester Spartans head coach, he won three straight Division Championships, three straight Conference Championships, two straight British National Championships, one Budweiser Bowl championship in 1989 at Crystal Palace in London, England, one Coca-Cola Bowl championship in 1990 at Crystal Palace in London, England, one Eurobowl championship with the Manchester Spartans in 1990 in Rimini, Italy, and one European Championship in Hamburg, Germany as the National team head coach with the Great Britain National Team in 1989.

As the head coach of the Great Britain national team, he took over a Great Britain team that had never won a single game against European competition, and in his first year Smith and his British national team defeated France 35–6 in the European Quarter-Final in a game played in Birmingham, England, defeated Germany 38–6 in the European Semi-Final in a game played in Hamburg, Germany, and defeated Finland 26–0 in the European Nations Championship Final in Hamburg, Germany to win Great Britain's first-ever European Championship.

At the same time Smith was coaching the Great Britain National Team, he was the player/head coach of the Manchester Spartans, where he led the Spartans to the Great Britain national championship in 1989 and qualified the Spartans for the European Football League 1990 European Professional Club Championship competition, called the EuroBowl. In the 1990 EuroBowl, Smith led his Spartans to victories over the Dublin Celts from Ireland in a game played in Dublin, Ireland, over the Amsterdam Crusaders from the Netherlands in the European Quarter-Final in a game played in Manchester, England, over the Berlin Adler from Germany in the European Semi-Final in a game played in Rimini, Italy, and over the Legnano Frogs from Italy in the European Championship Final in Rimini, Italy, to win the 1990 Eurobowl Championship. Until Smith and his Spartans, no British Club had ever won a single game in European competitions, but Smith's Spartans went 4-0 and won the entire European Championship in their first attempt. Smith and his Spartans also played in the Schweppes Cool Masters European Final in Hamburg, Germany in 1992.

With the Great Britain National Team, Smith led Great Britain to victories over France, Germany, and Finland by a combined score of 99–12 to win the 1989 European Nations Championship.

Before Smith became head coach, no British club or national team had won a game in European competition. Under his leadership, the Manchester Spartans and the Great Britain national team won their European competitions, including the first European championships won by British teams. As a result of these successes, Smith was nominated by Queen Elizabeth II for national end-of-year awards.

According to available records, Smith was the first coach to win both the European club championship and the European Nations Championship. He won more than 100 games in total as a head coach, while losing only 15. Due to his coaching success, Smith was selected as the National Coach of the Year three straight times, and as the European Coach of the Year twice. In addition, due to his playing and coaching success, Smith was selected to the Great Britain American Football Hall of Fame in 2004, and to the American Football Association (AFA) Hall of Fame in 1995 as one of only three Hall of Fame members to ever be chosen in the International category. The club was in administration when he took over, and close to folding with more than £1 million in debt. Some supporters credited Smith with helping prevent Chester City from folding. He also appointed three supporters to the club's board of directors.

At the time of Smith's takeover, most veteran players had been sold and the remaining players were mostly young. He kept these young players and tried to develop them in order to keep the player wages low, so that the club could not only balance the budget for that season, but also so they could try to pay off the £1 million of debt that Smith inherited.

Using this low budget strategy, along with increasing revenue through good Cup runs in the FA Cup and the Worthington Cup, increased attendance and commercial advertising, and with Smith serving as both manager and general manager for free at no cost to the club, then Smith was able to get all the club's debts paid off within only five months, which was two and a half years earlier than the administration required. As a result, the club was out of debt for the first time in at least many decades.

In Smith's four months and 21 league matches in charge of team affairs, Chester managed wins against Brighton & Hove Albion, Shrewsbury Town and others, but lost 5–1 and 4–1 to Leyton Orient and Carlisle United respectively, and required a replay to overcome non-league minnows Whyteleafe in the FA Cup. However, they did find success in the Worthington Cup, beating First Division Port Vale 6–5 on aggregate; they won 2–1 at the Deva Stadium in a game which saw both Marcus Bent and Martyn Lancaster sent off, and then drew 4–4 in the return leg at Vale Park.

They also had success in the FA Cup, as they made it to the third round for just the third time in the club's 100-year history. Drawn against Manchester City, they only lost in the final minutes after the score was tied at 1–1 with eleven minutes left. While scouting Man City ahead of the match, Smith, who came up with a strategy and team plan for the Man City match, found that when he could watch a match from up in the stands, then he was able to see the necessary tactical adjustments because of his many years of experience coaching American football, where coaches scout opponents by spending hundreds of hours every season watching game footage of their opponents that is filmed from high in the stands. This skill would benefit the team considerably the following season, when Smith would scout all of Chester's impending Cup opponents.

His methods included saying aloud the Lord's Prayer during his pre-match team talk, preparing lengthy written strategic game plans for each match that he went over in his pre-match team talk and gave copies of to each player, always staying positive no matter the current difficulties and circumstances, developing a school program where he went with players to speak with and coach schoolchildren, and to give out free tickets to each child for the upcoming matches, and appointing captains for the defence, midfield and attack.

In late December 1999, with Chester out of debt and on firm financial footing for the first time in decades, Smith chose to step down as manager. His decision came only one match after his team had pulled itself off the bottom of the Division following a 2–1 win over Halifax Town. Smith hired veteran manager Ian Atkins to the dual role of director of football and manager in a bid to avoid relegation, while Smith himself took on the role of goalkeeper coach for the remainder of the season.

With improvements in the club's financial position, the club was able to sign twelve new players that Atkins wanted and chose, doubling the player wage bill compared with when Smith was manager. The club was also able to afford to pay for team travel by luxury coaches to away matches instead of the regular buses used during Smith's period, and was able to pay for the team to stay at top hotels with excellent pre-match meals for all away matches instead of traveling to matches by bus on match day as had occurred during Smith's time period. The club also paid for a new training facility with two training pitches for Atkins' team, while Smith's team had endured training on a free piece of unlined grass in the middle of a horse racetrack. However, despite these financial investments in the team, the team began slowly under Atkins, losing seven of his first nine matches in charge, with only one win and one draw, and falling well adrift at the bottom of the Division table. Atkins' team lost his ninth match in charge by a 7–1 score at home to Brighton & Hove Albion, even though Smith's young team had defeated Brighton 3–2 away at Brighton earlier in the season.

Afterwards, however, results began to improve, and a 5–0 home victory over Mansfield Town in April, where Smith signee Angus Eve, Trinidad & Tobago's career leading goal scorer with 43 national team goals, scored two goals, put Chester in a better position.

Going into the final game of the season, Chester had pulled themselves up to 23rd in the 24-team division, and faced a three-way battle with Shrewsbury Town and Carlisle United to avoid the drop to the Conference. With fifteen minutes left in the season, Chester were above both Shrewsbury and Carlisle, but conceded a late goal against Peterborough United that was enough to see them relegated from the Football League on goal difference.

Atkins left, and fan favourite Graham Barrow returned as manager. He rebuilt the team, and in the 2000–01 season, his side managed a respectable ninth place, reached the third round of the FA Cup for the second successive season (in a controversial loss to Blackburn Rovers), made it to the semi-finals of the FA Trophy, and won the Conference League Cup, the first silverware for the club in over 70 years. During the season, Smith served as Barrow's scout and set-piece strategist for all Cup opponents, travelling on his own to scout opponents at least once or twice before Chester played them. In this scouting role, Smith utilized his American football background, where every American Football play is planned and choreographed from a set position in intricate detail, to focus on the development of creative set pieces, both corners and free kicks, for all the Cup matches that were based upon the weaknesses he perceived in the opponents' defensive alignment.

In addition, Barrow approached Smith at the start of the season, and asked him to watch the first half of every Chester match from up in the stands as a scout would, and then report what he saw to Barrow at halftime while Barrow was walking from the pitch to the dressing room. This good working relationship between them continued throughout the season.

In spite of this success, ahead of the 2001–02 season, Smith appointed Gordon Hill, an ex-Manchester United and ex-England player who was a personal friend, to become the new manager. Chester made a dreadful start to the season under Hill, winning only one of their first twelve matches. Smith finally sold his interest in the club to Stephen Vaughan and left at the start of October 2001, with the club completely out of debt other than what it owed him.

In 2003, a British court ordered Chester City to repay £300,000 in unpaid loans to Smith and his family. However, Smith still wanted to help the club, and so he accepted a settlement of far less than half that amount.

In 2004, Chester City FC finished first in their division, and was promoted again into the English League Third Division, thereby at that time fully completing the financial and on-field renovation of the club that had begun when Smith first purchased the club in an effort to rescue it from being closed down in 1999.

Apple Magazine wrote in its April 23, 2021 edition that Ted Lasso "was actually inspired by the story of Terry Smith, an American gridiron football coach who took over the English association football team Chester City F.C. and subsequently installed himself as the first-team coach".

The writers and actors of the Ted Lasso series often spoke about Terry Smith before the series began. For example, in an interview for AppleTV in August 2020, Brendan Hunt, the co-creator of Ted Lasso, and actor who portrays assistant manager Coach Beard in the Ted Lasso series, is asked by the interviewer what Ted Lasso would say to the England National Team to motivate them to win the World Cup. Hunt answered the interviewer with the following quote, “I think he would do what Terry Smith did for Chester City back in the day. He would drape himself in the American flag and he would emphasize the American Dream, because that’s what I think English people love the most.”

Hunt’s response in the AppleTV and UK Movies interview is referencing a FourFourTwo soccer magazine article from September 1999 that was written about Terry Smith emphasizing the American Dream in a positive way. This areticle included a cover photo of Smith wrapped in an American flag. This 21-year-old magazine article was published in England in September 1999, when Smith was being the first American to ever manage and coach a professional English soccer team.

This answer by Hunt is also very revealing in itself because the interviewer did not mention Smith in the question, and so Hunt’s answer shows that when he was asked a question about Ted Lasso then Hunt answered with a fact about what Terry Smith did to motivate people. This shows that Hunt mentally associates Smith and Smith’s motivating actions with Ted Lasso and with what Ted Lasso would do, because the question Hunt was asked was about how Ted Lasso would motivate players.

Hunt’s answer also shows that he knows a huge amount about Smith in order to choose to refer to Smith off the top of his head in an interview answer for a question that was about Ted Lasso. Hunt’s answer also shows that Hunt thinks Smith is a person who motivates other people like Ted Lasso does, and shows that Hunt thinks Smith emphasizes, motivates with, and believes in the American Dream.

Most revealing, Hunt was referring to what Smith did 21 years earlier in a 21 year-old magazine article whose magazine is not available anywhere online. And so for Hunt to know about that old article, then he and his other writers would have had to research back 21 years to find a hard copy of the magazine. This shows that by Hunt knowing about a hard copy magazine article written about Smith from 21 years earlier, then Hunt is displaying what appears to be the huge amount of research that he and his co-creators had done on Smith before they began writing the Ted Lasso show.

Regarding Smith and Lasso’s Believe Philosophy, within days of taking over the team, Smith said in the Guardian national newspaper printed in London in August 1999, “Getting to the First Division in three years is not a promise, it’s a goal. There’s not much difference between being a Third and a First Division team. In every area of Life you pretty much become what you BELIEVE you can become. And if I have to stand up and say we’ll be in the First Division in three years and get people to BELIEVE that, then to me that’s what has to be done.”

Likewise, the Ted Lasso series is built around this same Believe Philosophy that Lasso put on the dressing room wall in the first episode of the series, just like Smith spoke about his Believe Philosophy in this Guardian article during the first days of his ownership and coaching of the team.

Smith also prepared a scouting report and a game plan for every match he coached, with every scouting report and game plan being an average of seven pages long. On the cover of every match scouting report and on the cover of every game plan Smith wrote the word BELIEVE.

Smith gave a copy of every scouting report and every game plan to each player before every game in the dressing room, all with the word BELIEVE in large letters on the cover page, and all with the word BELIEVE as the last word on the final page of each scouting report and game plan.

He was known to put up positive statements and messages for his players to build their confidence and Belief in themselves.

Smith became well-known for his emphasis and his creativity on set pieces like corners and free kicks. Because of his American football coaching background, and because every American football play is a set piece, then Smith’s coaching background allowed him to be creative and skilled at designing set pieces.

Likewise, Ted Lasso had several episodes where Lasso emphasized and designed creative set pieces.

Smith often said that his disadvantage as an American football coach competing in soccer against the experienced and very skilled English soccer coaches had a hidden advantage with set pieces, and so Smith had found a way to turn the disadvantage of being an American football coach into an advantage.

Ted Lasso also said these exact same things that Smith said in the final episodes of Season 1 about how being an American football coach gave him an advantage on set pieces, and allowed Lasso to turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

Seven months before taking over Chester, Smith wrote a motivational book that was published and sold throughout Europe, that he titled, “The Hero Inside Of You”, and in his book he wrote about his Believe Philosophy.

Newspaper reporters in 1999 often referred to Smith’s book and his completely positive personality, such as in the Chester Chronicle newspaper following Smith’s first game as manager, a Worthington Cup match, when Smith’s team scored 4 goals to defeat Port Vale, a club that was in the First Division, two divisions higher than Smith’s team.

The Chester Chronicle article wrote that Smith is always completely positive, never has a negative word or thought, and that he motivates his players with the same methods and enthusiasm that he wrote in his book, “The Hero Inside Of You.”

In October 2024, Smith became the president of the Women's Football Alliance, a nationwide League of more than 60 teams that plays in three Divisions across the United States, and plays its National Championships at the NFL Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, in games broadcast on ESPN.

Smith cared about his WFA women players and their futures, that the first thing Smith did as president was create a $1.4 Million partnership with edX, the online education platform.

Smith arranged this partnership so that all 3,000 women football players in the WFA could take for free any of the thousands of college and university courses offered by edX from the top universities around the world so that all the WFA players could gain degrees and certificates for free that would benefit them personally and in their future careers beyond playing football.

Working with edX, Smith also created five unique course pathways that are designed specifically for the WFA players, which include Women in Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance, Public Speaking, and NIL Branding, because these are the five key core areas that the WFA players will most benefit from in their personal development and in their current and future careers.

Working with commissioner Lisa King, Smith also did work to initiate the WFA's expansion into Canada, the creation and development of WFA Properties and WFA Films, and the creation of the WFA Flag National Pro Tour, which is a nationwide and international Flag Football competition.

In 2025-2026, Smith also negotiated and created the Women’s Football Alliance league headquarters at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, designing a 10,000 square foot league office and WFA retail store that overlooks the end zone of the iconic Pro Football Hall of Fame Stadium where the NFL players are enshrined every year in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Because of his love for the women of the WFA, Smith took on this cost personally on his own. In the media announcement, Smith said,"The reason I was so motivated to create this for the Women's Football Alliance is because the women who make up our WFA are some of the finest, kindest, most humble, and most amazing women in the world," WFA President Terry Smith said, “And so, it's an honor for me to be able to help our fantastic women in any way possible."

In March 2025, Smith purchased the Brantford Red Sox, a 115-year-old professional baseball team in Ontario Canada's Canadian Baseball League that has won a record 15 League Championships, but has been struggling in last place and near financial closure for the past several years.

With six home games remaining in the 2025 season, the Red Sox were on a ten-game losing streak and had a home record for the entire season of one win and fourteen losses, with a thirteen-game home losing streak. It was at this point that Smith took over as the team's manager/head coach, and his Red Sox team responded by going undefeated and winning all six of its remaining home games with Smith as manager, the longest home winning streak the Red Sox team has had since 2004.

During the 2026 season, Smith was chosen as a coach for the 2026 Canadian Baseball League All-Star Game, and Smith coached in the All-Star Game in July 2026.

Personal life Smith purchased the Mountain Television Network in 2008 for only a $10,000 deposit because the television station and network was ready to be closed down and go off the air. Smith transformed the station and network by producing one hundred hours each week of their own new television programming, the most of any television station in America, and by expanding the station and network from being broadcast on only one cable network in only two counties of one state, to being on sixteen cable networks that broadcast across seven states in the entire Southeast of the U.S.

Smith's overriding rule in providing this all-inclusive coverage was that MTN and all of its staff were only allowed to broadcast positive television shows and positive news stories and coverage. Unlike all other television stations across the country that usually focus on only negative news stories, Smith focused MTN entirely on everything positive and great that was happening in America.

Smith implemented his only positive network rules so that even the MTN news broadcasts were only allowed to cover positive news stories. He even created a special "What A Wonderful World" news segment on the Evening News every night, where an especially positive news story was told and shown footage of while the musical background of the story had Louis Armstrong singing the song, "What A Wonderful World".

In order to achieve its mission of emphasizing good news stories in the region as well as the country as a whole, MTN ensured that its broadcasts were uninterrupted around the clock.

As a result, MTN produced more hours of its own television content during these years than any other television station in the United States.

Throughout these years, Smith created and hosted the television program The Veteran's Voice, which featured interviews with U.S. military veterans. Smith worked with WW II veteran and author Ken Wiley, a World War II veteran of seven D-Day battles in the Pacific where he drove the LCVP landing boats right up onto the D-Day beaches, as well as with World War II veterans HC Moretz, Norman Isenhour, and Sam Wotherspoon, and World War II historian Keith Buchanan, to film and broadcast more than three hundred two-hour life story interviews with World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War military veterans.

Smith produced more than 300 Veterans' Voice television programs documenting the experiences of American military veterans. He also provided DVD copies of every interview to every veteran's family member, including sons, daughters, wives, husbands, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, brothers and sisters, so that family members would have a DVD copy of the veteran's interview.

A collection of these television shows and DVDs are archived at libraries and war museums in Washington DC and across the United States, including in the Watauga County Library.

Smith also helped organize two World War II symposiums, one at Appalachian State University in 2012 and another at Watauga High School in 2013, to recognize veterans of the Second World War.

Smith became a full-time professor at Lees-McRae College in North Carolina, teaching eight courses every semester in the School of Business and Management. He was promoted to become the Head of both the Sport Management Department and the Health and Fitness Department within the School of Business and Management. He was also promoted to become the Faculty Athletic Representative where he served in the President's cabinet and reported to Lees-McRae College president Barry Buxton.

Smith became a Director for Elizabethton High School in Tennessee in 2017. Under Smith's leadership, the Bartleby program and Elizabethton High School were selected as one of the 10 XQ Super Schools in the entire United States in 2018. Smith then wrote a grant document describing and outlining their program, school courses, and educational methods, a document that resulted in their program and school receiving a $2.3 million grant from the XQ Foundation.

With the success of Elizabethton High School, Smith was invited by the United States Congress, and by U.S. Congressman Phil Roe of Tennessee's First District, to come to Washington, D.C. for Smith to speak on Capitol Hill to the United States Congress about the innovative and very successful educational methods Smith had created at Elizabethton High School, and to have Smith speak with Congress about the future of education in America. Smith was one of only four public school educators in the entire United States to be honored with this invitation and achievement.

From 2022 through 2024, Smith became the president of the non-profit NFL Alumni Association for Washington DC, and during these years he did work for and raised money for a large number of homeless, financially and physically disadvantaged, children, and family charities and non-profits throughout Washington DC and nationwide, including for Toys For Tots and for Foster Children organizations.

In this role, working with DC Divas owner Rich Daniel, Smith initiated a partnership between the NFL Alumni Association and the Women's Football Alliance, a women's professional tackle football league, creating a close relationship that would recognize and honor women football players and women athletes by having the WFA women be honored as full playing members of the NFL Alumni Association.

In October 2024, Smith became the president of the Women's Football Alliance, a nationwide League of more than 60 teams that plays in three Divisions across the United States, and plays its National Championships at the NFL Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, in games broadcast on ESPN

One of the first things Smith did as president was create a $1.4 Million partnership with edX, the online education platform, to help women players and their futures.

Smith arranged this partnership so that all 3,000 women football players in the WFA could take for free any of the thousands of college and university courses offered by edX from the top universities around the world so that all the WFA players could gain degrees and certificates for free that would benefit them personally and in their future careers beyond playing football.

Working with edX, Smith also created five unique course pathways that are designed specifically for the WFA players, which include Women in Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance, Public Speaking, and NIL Branding, because these are the five key core areas that the WFA players will most benefit from in their personal development and in their current and future careers.

Working with commissioner Lisa King, Smith also did work to initiate the WFA's expansion into Canada, the creation and development of WFA Properties and WFA Films, and the creation of the WFA Flag National Pro Tour, which is a nationwide and international Flag Football competition.

In 2025-2026, Smith also negotiated and created the Women’s Football Alliance league headquarters at the Pro Football Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, designing a 10,000 square foot league office and WFA retail store that overlooks the end zone of the iconic Pro Football Hall of Fame Stadium where the NFL players are enshrined every year in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Because of his love for the women of the WFA, Smith took on this cost personally on his own. In the media announcement, Smith said,"The reason I was so motivated to create this for the Women's Football Alliance is because the women who make up our WFA are some of the finest, kindest, most humble, and most amazing women in the world," WFA President Terry Smith said, “And so, it's an honor for me to be able to help our fantastic women in any way possible."

In March 2025, Smith purchased the Brantford Red Sox, a legendary 115-year-old professional baseball team in Ontario Canada's Intercounty Baseball League that has won a record 15 League Championships, but has been struggling in last place and near financial closure for the past several years.

With six home games remaining in the 2025 season, the Red Sox were on a ten-game losing streak and had a home record for the entire season of one win and fourteen losses, with a thirteen-game home losing streak. It was at this point that Smith took over as the team's manager/head coach, and his Red Sox team responded by going undefeated and winning all six of its remaining home games with Smith as manager, the longest home winning streak the Red Sox team has had since 2004.

During the 2026 season, Smith was chosen as a coach for the 2026 Canadian Baseball League All-Star Game, and Smith coached in the All-Star Game in July 2026.