Irsay had dealt with health issues of late, having been treated for severe respiratory illness in January of 2024 and, in March of last year, said he was doing well after his 26th surgery in the past seven years.
The 2024 season was Irsay’s 38th with the club, having become the NFL’s youngest general manager at 25 in 1984. Irsay took over as the team’s principal owner in 1997 and saw the Colts advance to the playoffs 16 times, win two AFC championships and one Super Bowl during his tenure.
“We were deeply saddened to learn of Jim Irsay’s passing today,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “Jim was a friend, and a man deeply committed to his family, the game, the Colts, and the Indianapolis community. He spent his life and career in the National Football League. Starting as a teenager as a Colts’ ballboy, he learned every position in the organization before assuming leadership of the Colts approximately 30 years ago. Jim’s Colts won the Super Bowl, hosted another and built Lucas Oil Stadium.
“Within the League, Jim was an active Chairman of the Legislative Committee and member of the Finance Committee. He led with integrity, passion and care for the Colts’ players, coaches and staff, and his courageous work in support of mental health will be a lasting legacy. Outside of football, he was a talented musician and built an extraordinary collection of historical and musical artifacts that he shared with people across the country.
“On behalf of the entire NFL, I extend my heartfelt condolences to Jim’s daughters and their families, and to his many friends throughout the NFL.”
Under Irsay, the Colts — with a big assist from Peyton Manning — transformed the state of Indiana from a basketball stronghold to football territory. Irsay spent the early part of his life apologizing for his father’s volatile behavior — Robert Irsay, who made his fortune in sheet metal and ventilation businesses, acquired the Colts when Jim was 12 — even boarding a team bus when he was 16 years old to express regret to a coach his father had just fired after a preseason loss.
“Sometimes your best teachers teach you how not to do it,” Irsay said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times.
Irsay did learn plenty while working for his father, though, serving a football apprenticeship, often shepherded by then-Colts employee Ernie Accorsi. Irsay became steeped in everything from ticket sales to personnel evaluation, even serving as the general manager soon after the team relocated from Baltimore to Indy. It gave Irsay a breadth of football knowledge unusual among today’s newest owners and it served him well when — in one of the first of a series of moves he made when he assumed control of the team in 1997 — he hired Bill Polian to be the general manager, ushering in an era defined by Manning’s sustained excellence.
Accorsi credited Irsay with having the self-awareness and selflessness to give up the general manager’s job for the good of the franchise. But even after he created distance from football decisions, Irsay remained closely involved with the team and personally close to many players. When Irsay released Manning after a neck injury threatened his career — and after Irsay spent an entire season agonizing over the decision to move on, with the opportunity to draft Andrew Luck staring him in the face — he wept. It was, in one moment, an encapsulation of Irsay: a clear-eyed businessman who also deeply valued relationships.
“I consider myself a really serious businessman, but I think big business can have a big heart,” Irsay said in the 2005 New York Times interview. “My influence from people like John Lennon and others growing up, my feeling is that you can be a lot of different things. People like John Lennon, Pete Townshend, Bob Dylan had a huge influence, their beliefs, the way Lennon was a guy who took it to far lengths in terms of the peace movement.”
The Colts enjoyed extraordinary consistency — and by extension, business success — with Manning and, eventually, coach Tony Dungy. During Manning’s 13 starting seasons in Indianapolis, the Colts won at least 10 games 11 times, prevailing in one Super Bowl and going to another. In the process, the Colts became one of the NFL’s biggest draws and Irsay got a new, mostly publicly-funded stadium built. And he later hosted a Super Bowl.
Irsay, however, thought Indianapolis ultimately underachieved in winning just one Lombardi Trophy with Manning. And when the team bottomed out in 2011 — with Manning injured — Irsay cleaned house. Dungy’s successor, Jim Caldwell, and Polian were fired. Manning was sent packing. It was an excruciating period for Irsay, whose relationship with Manning grew so strained in that stretch that they fully reconciled only after an extended cooling-off period.
During that time, Irsay mused aloud over the fraught balancing act he had tried to sustain as an owner.
“The bottom line is you’re trying to always go toward greatness,” Irsay told The New York Times in January 2012. “There’s great affection, tremendous loyalty, but any time you open up the season, when you walk in the locker room, there is a circle. And my obligation to everyone in that locker room is the circle has to be as strong as possible to give us a chance to win.
“Continuity is a great thing; staying the course and being patient, those are important virtues. But also there is virtue in being realistic enough to know you have to make serious changes sometimes.”