Death of an Original.
The Colts' Jim Irsay was his own man to the end
When Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay passed away Wednesday at age 65, the folks at ESPN almost immediately pumped out an obituary so long and authoritative that it could only have been written weeks, if not months, in advance. Irsay’s death, that is, was a sadly foreseeable event.
By his own account, Irsay had been to rehab at least 15 times, and in late 2023 he was found unresponsive at his home, an event that Indianapolis police characterized as an overdose and the Colts called a respiratory illness. Once a person that you could hardly miss even on the NFL’s star-studded landscape, Jim had been rarely seen or heard from since early last year.
It’s a sad end, but I’d rather not dwell on it. Irsay had demons, yes; through the decades of his ownership of the Colts franchise, he became more erratic, less predictable in his public demeanor and comments. Sometimes it was painful to watch.
On balance, though, Jim Irsay ought to be remembered not only for his successful stewardship of the Colts, but for a sprawling legacy of interests, including his abiding passion for philanthropy. The Irsay family has spread scores of millions of dollars throughout Indiana and beyond.
Places like the Riley Hospital for Children and the Wheeler Mission Center for Women & Children have felt the benefit of those gifts. So, too, the Irsay Family YMCA, the Indianapolis Zoo, Indiana University’s Cancer Center and the Kicking the Stigma foundation, which raises awareness of mental health disorders.
I’m barely scratching the surface of the family’s generosity. And I don’t bring it up to deify Jim Irsay, but rather to reassert something that I think we all probably understand but sometimes forget: A person is more than one thing.
Addiction, we’ve learned, ran in Irsay’s family. His father, Bob, will only be remembered for stealing the Colts from Baltimore, moving the team lock, stock and office furniture to Indianapolis in the dead of night; but behind the scenes, the elder Irsay struggled for years with mental health and addiction issues. He died in 1997 after suffering a stroke and later contracting pneumonia, and he left the franchise to his son, who was only 37, making Jim the NFL’s youngest owner at the time. (Jim’s plan has been to leave the team to his daughters, who are already in the organization.)
As fate would have it, the 1998 NFL Draft happened to include a quarterback named Peyton Manning. Jim Irsay’s second year as owner changed the entire direction of the franchise.
"I am heartbroken to hear about Jim Irsay's passing," Manning said in a statement posted to social media Wednesday evening. "He was an incredibly generous and passionate owner and I will always be indebted to him for giving me my start in the NFL. His love for the Colts and the city of Indy was unmatched.”
Irsay loved music, played in his own rock band and was an avid collector of rock music, American history and pop culture. (He’s got Muhammad Ali’s title belt from the Rumble in the Jungle, among other things.) He could be sneaky funny, sometimes not intending to be. He loved football and loved owning the Colts, even if they broke his heart on a fairly regular basis.
The last decade in particular was not kind to Irsay, and his struggles were too often the biggest news the Colts made. But Irsay was more than just that, more than one thing. He was many things, a person, and when fans in Indiana look around tomorrow or next week or next year, they’ll see dozens of reminders of that — places that got better and will stay better because of Irsay and his family. That probably won’t be his legacy, but it should be.