With death of Jim Irsay, Colts lost a lifer and Indianapolis lost an icon

New York Times

22-05-2025

When my phone buzzed late at night and 'No Caller ID' flashed across the screen, I knew.
I knew who was calling. I knew I needed to get my notebook ready. Most of all, I knew I wasn't going back to sleep for several hours.
Those calls with Jim Irsay, the longtime Indianapolis Colts owner who died Wednesday at 65, were … an adventure. It came with the territory. I was a Colts beat writer for 10 years. The Irsay Experience was part of the gig.
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Sometimes they'd last for hours. Sometimes I'd barely squeeze in a question. He'd start on one topic, veer into a dozen others, then eventually find his way back home. He'd dish on Peyton Manning and Jimi Hendrix and Hunter S. Thompson in the same thought. He'd tell stories about watching Gayle Sayers in the 1960s and how it reminded him of watching Jonathan Taylor in the 2020s. He'd vent on the state of his team or an article I'd written that he didn't appreciate or whatever else happened to be on his mind at 1 in the morning.
Say this much about the man: in a buttoned-up league that often takes itself too seriously, he was a renegade. Jim Irsay couldn't do boring if he tried.
I watched him belt out the lyrics to 'All Along the Watchtower' at a concert in Nashville the night before a game. I sat with him in his office, in his suite at Lucas Oil Stadium and on the balcony of his hotel room at the NFL owners' meetings in Phoenix. I watched him sit in a cheap plastic chair and fight back tears the night Andrew Luck walked away from football. I shared too many late-night conversations with him to count, conversations that helped me better understand his football team and what it takes to win in this league.
He was a character, eccentric and outspoken, ruthlessly competitive and unfailingly optimistic. He could be combative, too, if his team's season wasn't going the way he thought it should. During those calls, Irsay did not hold back. He didn't just read what reporters thought about his team, he cared what reporters thought about his team. He valued local media in a unique way. He'd invite us into his office, the one with guitars worth eight times more than my house enclosed in glass. He'd stop to chat after road wins, knowing his words would fill up our notebook. He'd call, often late at night. He'd text. (Big emoji guy.)
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I imagine no owner in NFL history relished a microphone or camera as much as Irsay. He always reminded us that he was a broadcast journalism major at SMU, so he knew our jobs better than most. We weren't supposed to be cheerleaders. We were supposed to be fair. He understood that.
Even if, on occasion, what we wrote ticked him off. After one testy conversation late in the 2022 season, he called back after a few minutes to apologize. He'd fumed over a story I'd written about the Colts' reckless decision — his reckless decision — to hire Jeff Saturday as interim coach midway through the ill-fated campaign. He'd bragged the night he hired Saturday, challenging the reporters in the room to 'put your money on the table and bet against this man.' Everybody in that room — aside from maybe him and Saturday — knew it wouldn't work. The Colts stumbled home 1-7, were outscored by 87 points and suffered the single-biggest collapse in NFL history.
So when Irsay called back later that night, he was calmer. He seemed angrier at himself than at what I'd written — a 'brutal, sucker punch' of a season 'set up by destructive rationalization.' What kind of owner admits that?
Irsay was so stunningly honest in front of the cameras and microphones that it sometimes hurt him. (The same night he introduced Saturday as interim coach, he somehow mentioned Michael Jordan, flights to Mars, the CIA and the enduring lessons of Al Davis. Try fitting all that into a story on deadline.) He might own the NFL record for most news conferences held without uttering a single cliché. He told stories. He quoted musicians. He sold hope. He boasted about winning 'three straight Lombardis' even though his roster was in no way ready to compete for a championship.
Right or wrong, his passion spilled out of him every time he spoke. I once wrote he was the 'biggest Colts fan who ever lived.' He never disputed that. In fact, he wore it as a badge of honor. The man couldn't help himself. The team was his life.
Consider what some of his former players wrote on social media Wednesday night:
This is devastating..
Jim had friendships with a lot of his former players.. I was lucky to be one of them.
Playing for a team that Mr Irsay ran was an honor. He was funny, brilliant, unique, and somehow still wildly relatable for a man who became the sole owner of an NFL team… https://t.co/9dOUFziJJe pic.twitter.com/sVOT49ne3D
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) May 22, 2025
Please don't ask me if I'm ok. Cuz I'm not. Thank You Sooo Much Mr.Irsay. I will forever hold our talks close to my heart. Love You! RIP Mr.Irsay 🥹🥹🥹🥹😢😢 pic.twitter.com/EeOh5lmec5
— TY Hilton (@TYHilton13) May 22, 2025
This hurts my soul…. https://t.co/wpK1fPD3jW
— Reggie Wayne (@ReggieWayne_17) May 21, 2025
His reputation nationally — that he was this weird, rambling owner, the son of the guy who snuck the Colts out of Baltimore in the middle of the night — never squared with how he was viewed in Indianapolis. Here, he was respected. Revered, even. Irsay was the man who lifted a franchise from the league cellar into Super Bowl champs.
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Once a basketball hotbed, this is a proud football town because of the likes of Manning, Marvin Harrison and Edgerrin James. Make no mistake, it's also a proud football town because of Jim Irsay.
He'd watched his father sabotage this franchise in the 1980s, and privately, always vowed he'd do it differently. He learned what to do by learning what not to do. 'He had no idea how to run a football team,' Jim said of his father, later noting that his dad 'fired me more times than I can count.'
The younger Irsay, in many ways, became the opposite: a man of the people, beloved as much for his generosity as his accessibility. Fans never had to wonder what Irsay thought. Neither did reporters. From our seat, that's all you can ask for. He didn't hide, and he didn't sugarcoat. For better or worse, he was unfailingly authentic.
He was the owner who passed out $100 bills at training camp, who held contests on social media for free tickets, who flew fans to the Super Bowl and covered their hotel rooms and meals. And there was so much more he did that never made its way into the news. Ask anyone who's worn the horseshoe. Chances are, if they lost a loved one while playing for this team, Irsay flew them home on his private jet for the funeral. Starter or third-string, head coach or low-level scout, it didn't matter.
He was, without question, among the greatest philanthropists this city and state have ever seen. 'It has to be about more than just football,' Irsay once told me. 'It has to be about the community, making the community better. I think it's the most notable endeavor you can pursue.'
He was the rare owner who grew up in the game; Jimmy, they used to call him, started out as a teenage ballboy for his father's Baltimore Colts in 1972. He was general manager by 24, and the hard lessons from his draft whiffs and free agency misses humbled him. I once asked him why, after his father passed in 1997 and he assumed full control of the team, he didn't stay heavily involved in personnel decisions. Why not try and be the next Jerry Jones?
'There's no way I could do both, even back then,' he said flatly.
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Deep down, he knew if the Colts wanted to compete for championships, he needed someone else calling the shots. So he traded for Bill Polian in 1998 and stepped back. Months later, in the tense few days before the 1998 NFL Draft, Polian stormed into his office, sweating over the No. 1 pick. When Polian weighed the pros and cons of Tennessee's Peyton Manning, part of him saw another Bernie Kosar.
'You're getting Bernie Kosar!' Polian screamed at his new boss, slamming his fists on Irsay's desk. 'Can you live with Bernie Kosar?!?'
Irsay nodded. He knew he wasn't getting the next Bernie Kosar. The city would never be the same.
The NFL lost an original on Wednesday. Indianapolis lost an icon. The Colts lost a lifer.
There will never be another quite like Jim Irsay. Not in the NFL, and likely not in any sport. He made the Colts more competitive and my job far more fascinating. I'll be forever grateful our paths crossed along the way.