Noah Scott was sitting in the Raleigh-Durham airport eating a Subway sandwich after a cancelled flight when the call came in.
On the other end of the line was Larry Hall, chief curator of the Jim Irsay Collection, a multi-million dollar collection of what the late Indianapolis Colts owner loved most — guitars, pop culture, American history and rock and roll.
“Noah, I’ve got a question for you,” Hall said to Scott, getting straight to the point. “It’s confidential. Completely confidential.”
Colts coach Shane Steichen has this idea … a signature guitar to honor Irsay during the season … could you do it?
“I put my sandwich down,” said Scott, an engineering lead for Baby Ship, who also happens to be a guitar connoisseur, both building and playing. “It was kind of both an awe and an honor.”
The Colts wanted Scott and his partner in guitar making, Mark French, to have a custom, Colts-themed instrument ready to present as a surprise to the Irsay daughters at a team meeting on Labor Day. That gave the duo just weeks to complete the task.
Scott hung up with Hall and immediately called French. As he explained the project, including the impact of what they would be doing for the Colts, Scott mentioned Peyton Manning.
“And Mark said, ‘OK, that’s great,'” Scott said. “‘But who’s Peyton Manning?'” French wasn’t kidding. He really didn’t know exactly who Manning was.
“I knew he was a football player and I knew he had been a philanthropist, you know, a really good guy,” French said. “But I didn’t know who he played for. I didn’t know what position he played. I know now. I know now.
“It’s just not a world I inhabit, I guess.”
The world French inhabits isn’t one that involves much goings on in the NFL. He is strictly academia, engineering — and guitars.
He is Dr. Mark French, a professor in the School of Engineering Technology at Purdue University who also runs the Purdue Polytechnic Guitar Lab, a course where students design, build and take home their own hand-crafted guitars.
French met Scott, who is a Purdue alum, years ago. The two bonded over their love of the inner workings and outer designs of guitars.
And in late July, the two set off on what would be their most public project, a historic moment in Indianapolis Colts history — building the “Win for Jim” electric guitar that would honor the franchise’s late owner throughout the season.
At every Saturday night Colts team meeting this season, Steichen presents the guitar to a player to carry into the stadium before each game.
Once in the stadium, the player places the guitar on a stand in the locker room, a reminder that this season is about Irsay, that this season is about winning for Jim.
“Even though he’s not physically with us anymore, he’s always with us in spirit,” Steichen said as he revealed the guitar at the team’s Labor Day meeting, according to Colts.com. “And that’s part of him traveling with us — every game.”
For the Colts first game of the season, defensive tackle and longtime team captain DeForest Buckner was chosen to carry the guitar into Lucas Oil Stadium. At Game 2, left guard Quenton Nelson had the honors. And on Sunday, it was Colts corner Kenny Moore entering Nissan Stadium for a game against the Titans who carried the “Win for “Jim” guitar.
French and Scott sit back in amazement, seeing their creation hitting sports’ biggest stage. But, more importantly to them, it’s humbling to be a part of the Colts’ tribute to their guitar-loving Irsay.
‘OK, in about a day and a half, this all has to be a guitar’
The “Win for Jim” guitar is a modified Fender Stratocaster, a tribute to Irsay who often played on a Fender guitar and whose collection includes many prominent Fender guitars.
As Scott and French designed and built the guitar, they kept in mind the vision Steichen and the Colts had given them.
“That original design, it was close to what we eventually made. We had to make some changes, just for practicality,” French said. “We needed some space to put the ‘Win for Jim’ sign on it. But it’s a good sounding guitar. It actually plays pretty well.”
Scott did all the prep work, made the arrangements with the team and got the instrument painted in a bold, shiny Colts blue. Meanwhile, French gathered up all the components it would take to build the instrument. “I was spending money like a drunk sailor for about a day or two,” French says, laughing.
French wasn’t laughing so much when he found himself inside the Purdue Guitar Lab on that Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend, two days before the guitar was to be presented by Steichen at the Colts’ team meeting.
“I put everything out on the bench and said, ‘OK, in about a day and a half, this all has to be a guitar,'” French said. “I was sanding and scraping, and there was a lot of problem solving that had to go on. I hit kind of a low point where I wasn’t too sure if this was a good idea or not. But by Sunday, about Sunday noon, it was looking pretty good.”
And by late Sunday afternoon, it was looking really good. The guitar was finished and it was beautiful.
Scott headed to meet Hall to make the delivery. As he handed off the guitar to Hall, he asked him where he was going.
“He said, ‘I’m going right to the complex. I’m taking it right in, like this thing is on lockdown,'” Scott said. “I was like, ‘Great. Cool. It’s out of my hands.'”
Their work was done. And for Scott and French, it was an absolute honor.
This guitar has life
How Scott and French became the two guys who would build Irsay’s final guitar started decades ago. For Scott, the love of the strings started very early.
When he was in first grade, growing up in Warsaw loving 80s guitar, his parents came home from a school teacher conference where they learned from a paper they were given that Scott had filled out he was really into Guns N’ Roses.
After that, he made a bet with his parents at 6 years old that he would one day get to see Guns N’ Roses live, but the band broke up before that could happen.
Then, right before Scott’s 18th birthday, the band got back together and his parents made good on that bet. He got to see Guns N’ Roses live and, more importantly, he got to see band member Slash, who Scott says was a big influence on him.
Alas, Scott didn’t go on to become a famous guitar player like his idols. But he does play.
“I was in what I call a ‘dad band’ for a little while. It was great,” Scott said. “But right now I am the most amazing, best player that lives in my two-bedroom apartment. So, I claim that mantle and just have fun with it.”
What Scott loves about the guitar, or really any music or art, is that “it really spans across everyone and everything,” he said.
“You can find anyone in any walk of life who, as unsuspecting as they may look, may be an absolute wizard at an instrument,” Scott said. “And I love encountering people who are wizards of guitar. And that doesn’t mean they have to play well. They might just have a passion for it.”
Scott says French is one of those people. He may not be a Slash at playing the guitar, but he has an incredible respect and adoration for the instrument.
When French was a kid, he played guitar a little bit but “never got any good at it,” so he stuck with being “an airplane nut” who grew into an aerospace engineer.
Out of college, French spent the first 10 years of his career as a civilian aerospace engineer for the U.S. Air Force. And it was during those years in the 1990s that he went back to that thing he was never any good at. But this time, instead of trying to play guitars, he took an interest in building them.
That interest wasn’t an easy one to entertain 30 years ago.
“This was before there was any internet, if you can believe that. There was just no reference material,” French said. “So all I knew to do was to just go around to guitar shops and buy what parts I could find and go to the lumber yard.”
The first 10 guitars French built “were just horrible, just awful,” he said. But then he started learning bit by bit, guitar by guitar how to create his own masterpieces.
“I didn’t get into it because I wanted a guitar. A lot of people who get into building want to build these really, really nice instruments,” French said. “I got into it because I wanted to know how they worked.”
That’s the engineer in French talking — and it has served him well.
“I used to build electric guitars, but I don’t anymore because they’re not enough of a challenge,” he said. “But I started acoustics and then archtop acoustics, and now I’m building archtop mandolins.”
Until recently when French was asked to build another electric guitar, a very special guitar.
Both French and Scott love that the “Win for Jim” Colts guitar they built isn’t immediately going into some display case in a museum. It is being carried into NFL stadiums by players who loved their owner.
“In the course of the season, I have to guess that it’s going to have a bit of a life. It’s going to get dragged around, banged around, knocked over,” French said. “It’s going to get some wear and tear by the end of the season.”
And that is wonderful.
“If you see a perfectly pristine guitar, it means it’s been kept in a museum for a long time,” Scott said, “or it’s had no life after it was made.”
But this guitar has life. This guitar is honoring Irsay.
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Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.  Â