INDIANAPOLIS — Jim Irsay started his football career as a ball boy. He finished it as a team owner.
Along the way, the NFL’s music man created his own, unique brand.
Irsay worked his way up through the organization, learning how to run a football team, restoring the Colts’ once-proud tradition to glory and created what some have dubbed the greatest guitar collection on Earth — all while battling health issues and addictions to alcohol and painkillers.
On Wednesday, Irsay’s remarkable journey ended at age 65. Pete Ward, Irsay’s longtime right-hand man, made the announcement in a statement, saying Irsay died peacefully in his sleep.
“Jim’s dedication and passion for the Indianapolis Colts in addition to his generosity, commitment to the community and, most importantly, his love for his family were unsurpassed,” Ward said. “Our deepest sympathies go to his daughters, Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Casey Foyt, Kalen Jackson and his entire family as we grieve with them.”
Irsay, a Lincolnwood native who attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, had a profound impact on the Colts franchise.
With the help of Hall of Fame general manager Bill Polian, Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy and Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning, Irsay turned the Colts from a longtime laughingstock into a perennial title contender, even winning a Super Bowl title.
He then used that success — and Manning’s aura — to help convince city leaders to build a retractable-roof dome stadium that opened in 2008 and eventually allowed Indy to host a Super Bowl.
“I am heartbroken to hear about Jim Irsay’s passing,” Manning said on social media. “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. His impact on the players who played for him will not be forgotten.”
More recently, though, Irsay battled health issues and became far less visible following a fall at his home Dec. 8, 2023.
Police officers from Carmel, Ind., a northern suburb of Indianapolis, responded to a 911 call from Irsay’s home. According to the police report, the officers found Irsay breathing but unresponsive and with a bluish skin tone.
A month later, Irsay was diagnosed with a respiratory illness.
During his annual training camp news conference last summer, Irsay told reporters he was continuing to rehab from two subsequent surgeries.
“It’s great to see you guys, the fans and to be out here,” he said at the time. “I’m feeling great, you know, just trying to get this left leg stronger, which it will be.”
Irsay also did not speak during the recent NFL draft as he usually did.
But his story is one of a kind.
As a teenager, he tossed footballs with MVP quarterbacks Johnny Unitas and Bert Jones. He relied frequently on the lessons he learned from rubbing elbows with some of the game’s most important owners — Al Davis, Lamar Hunt, Wellington Mara and Art Rooney — as they worked through the 1982 players strike and the implementation of a salary cap.
And he presided over the greatest quarter-century of Colts football thanks to Manning and quarterback Andrew Luck.
Irsay handled everything from ticket sales to public relations as he rose through the organization even watching No. 1 pick John Elway force a trade to the Denver Broncos in 1983.
When he took over as owner following his father’s death in 1997, things were different. The arrival of Manning helped Irsay — and the Colts — create a passionate local following that hadn’t previously existed but still remains strong today.
Colts owner Jim Irsay celebrates with the Vince Lombardi Super Bowl trophy after his team beat the Bears 29-17 in Super Bowl XLI on Feb. 4, 2007, at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)
On Feb. 4, 2007 — 10 years after taking over ownership — the Colts played the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI. In the lead-up to the game, Irsay said “it almost had to be this way.” His father was friends with Bears founder George Halas, who was only five years removed from coaching and still running the team when the elder Irsay bought the Colts in 1972.
“We used to go to the Bear games in Wrigley Field in the ’60s,” Jim Irsay told the Tribune in January 2007. “I can remember driving there with him, sitting in the freezing cold, just a little kid. … George Halas was at my confirmation when I was 12 years old. He was at my wedding, so the connection is huge.”
Irsay’s Colts beat the Bears 29-17.
Things weren’t always easy for Irsay after he took over control of the franchise.
When a 55% inheritance tax threatened his hold on the team, the younger Irsay found enough cash to keep the family business.
When his most prominent players were about to cash in during free agency, Irsay often ponied up top dollar to keep them.
And though some criticized him for focusing too much on offense and not enough on defense, the combination allowed the Colts to find their place in a small-market city that revered basketball.
“The man hates to lose more than he likes to win,” current general manager Chris Ballard often said.
Things didn’t always go smoothly, though.
Robert Irsay was reviled in Baltimore following the move. Decades later, even after another Baltimore team won a Super Bowl, and after Jim Irsay repeatedly explained the move was precipitated by the city’s attempt to take the franchise through eminent domain, Baltimore still referred to the team only as the Indianapolis football club.
A quarter-century later, following a 2-14 record in 2011, Irsay tested the fans’ loyalties by releasing a 34-year-old Manning, who missed the entire season with a neck injury. The rebuild began around rookie QB Andrew Luck — a move that drew comparisons to his father’s trade of Unitas in 1973 and the subsequent selection of Jones in the draft.
The impending decision about Manning also became a public spectacle throughout the 2011-12 offseason and again in 2013 when Manning returned to Indy for the first time with his new team, the Broncos.
“It was the right move to make,” Irsay said later. “Peyton and I talked about it. He said it best in the press conference: I didn’t decide, he didn’t decide, the football gods had laid the cards out and we both knew it was best for him and us. Emotionally, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. In professional football, it’s about winning and you have to be able to make the decisions that are best for the franchise.”
But football was only part of Irsay’s story.
He spent millions buying the original manuscripts to Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining novel “On The Road” and Alcoholics Anonymous’ “Big Book” and routinely made them available to the public.
A portrait of Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay holding an Elvis Presley guitar, with the scroll of Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road” in the foreground, on July 15, 2022, at his Indianapolis home. (Stephanie Sinclair/Chicago Tribune)
His ever-expanding musical collection included instruments and items from The Beatles, James Brown, Prince, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, Johnny Cash and Jerry Garcia; signed Presidential documents; an original “wanted” poster for John Wilkes Booth; a 1953 Jackie Robinson bat; Muhammad Ali’s title belt from the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle;” even the saddle from Secretariat’s triple crown wins.
Irsay also befriended singers such as Stephen Stills and John Mellencamp, took inspiration from the lyrics of Bob Dylan and revered the writings of Hunter S. Thompson, the self-described “Gonzo journalist.”
“It’s a lot of fun to have these pieces, and guitars are always kind of the most interesting, in some ways, because you can play them, unlike a book, a manuscript or a painting,” Irsay said during summer 2016. “You can play them, and they can become four-dimensional.”
But Irsay also had his struggles.
He was a recovering alcoholic and his professional successes couldn’t insulate him from a constant battle with painkillers. In a November 2023 interview with HBO Sports, he acknowledged he had been to rehab at least 15 times and once accidentally overdosed.
The low point may have come in March 2014 when he was arrested near his home in Carmel while driving erratically. When officers searched the car they found nearly $30,000 in cash and numerous bottles of prescription pills. Five and a half months later, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Irsay for six games and fined him $500,000.
Irsay described the absence as heartbreaking.
Still, he was wise enough to allow Polian almost free rein to construct a team that won a then-record number of regular-season games in a decade (115). And he leaves a legacy that won’t be blowing in the wind.
Aside from the images of Irsay wearing a tie wrapped around his forehead on a magazine cover, tossing footballs in a suit, or his utterances on Twitter, he was a shrewd businessman with a big heart.
When the Colts won the Super Bowl, he even sent a ring to two-time rushing champ Edgerrin James, who had left in free agency before the championship season.
“The guy grew up with this team,” then-coach Chuck Pagano said in January 2015. “He’s got so much insight and so much knowledge. He’s a football man through and through. It runs through his veins and he’s got so much wisdom to share with all of us. He makes a huge impact.”
Originally Published: May 21, 2025 at 7:14 PM CDT