His legacy should be about mental health
As I look back at Jim Irsay’s life and my brief time in it, I’m still glued to that seat in his back-corner West 56th Street office looking at a guitar once owned by Kurt Cobain and realizing that it, like much of the Colts owner’s life and obsessions, was about so much more than strings or a felt.
Irsay died Wednesday at the age of 65, and in the ways his life will be dissected in the coming hours and months and years, there’s something in that guitar I’ll remember more than any of them.
It’s his willingness to open up conversations about mental health.
Actually, forget willingness. More of a God-forsaken desire to kick the damn door in, as if it was what he was placed on this earth to do.
Irsay didn’t do things halfway, and for the extreme results that created in so many places of his life, I find it most honorable that he didn’t stop at lip service when it came to mental health. That’s the unintended benefit of having wounds that turn to scars. From battles with drugs and alcohol addictions that manifested in a DUI arrest and trips to rehab to some of his most eccentric moments and public disappearances, they’ve all created in him an empathy that’s nearly impossible to find among the type of people who own pro sports franchises.
Think about the impossibility of that idea in a world where Charles Woodson just became a minority owner of the Browns by investing more than $5 million — to own less than 1% of the franchise’s total stake.
Irsay’s personality, oftentimes, was like a middle finger to the character map in “Succession.”
This isn’t to say he didn’t have moments of living out of touch. Perspective lacked in him the way it does in people who have a lot of money or too many decades separating them from the people they’re around. Because of his unique accessibility, those flaws lived in famous soundbites, such as his “If I die tonight…” rant comparing his and Jonathan Taylor’s privilege amid a contract standoff or when he went on HBO and claimed he was targeted by Carmel police because he’s a “rich, white billionaire” or the bizarre string of tweets afterward that painted himself as a victim.
But if you’re willing to speak in nuance about a complicated man, there’s an enduring story here, too.
Irsay became a sole owner of an NFL franchise through inheritance from his father, Bob Irsay, but he never sat on that pot of gold. Sometimes, fans and those closest to him just prayed he would, like in the dysfunction of a 2022 season that featured two firings, three quarterback benchings and Jeff Saturday’s arrival as interim coach.
But the spikes in activity, from rehab to a Super Bowl, created something unique to sports along the way.
It’s a legacy that went from accidental and embarrassing to intentional and enduring. Since 2020, it has an official name of Kicking the Stigma, and it’ll carry on through the work of his daughter, Kalen Jackson, as well as so many in the Colts organization.
It goes back to that guitar of Cobain’s, the one he used in the music video “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That May 2022 day, Irsay was helping to auction it off for Mental Health Awareness Month. Cobain, the lead singer and guitarist of Nirvana, famously took his own life after battles with drugs, alcohol and mental health demons.
That day, Irsay began the bidding process with a $2 million check.
The moment struck me, in the days following some vulnerable and viral comments from Shaquille Leonard, that this was all about more than a guitar or a check or a photo opportunity or a franchise initiative. This was something felt and lived by the man in a custom suit with enough money to toss out in $100 bills at training camp and who signed the checks of millionaire athletes.
I knew it not because he said it but because the players did.
So I asked, and he beamed as he answered:
“It’s so cool and remarkable to see big, strong football players who are 6-4, 280 and the strongest men in the world at what they do, and yet they talk about these things that make them so fragile,” Irsay said.
“We’re all so fragile.”
Irsay knew what it was like to want to be like those 6-4, 280-pound monsters. He used to lift with them and then competed in weight lifting championships, doing damage on a back that became hard to witness in his final years. He, like so many of us who love sports, met a mirror of mortality that eventually comes for everyone.
It eventually came for Leonard, one of the greatest athletes I have ever been around.
But two weeks before that guitar sale, Leonard arrived at a press conference with something unique buried inside. It was the first time he spoke since the previous season, his best yet, where he led the NFL with 15 forced turnovers to become a first-team All-Pro for the third time before his 27th birthday.
He made a quick comment in a long answer that referenced a lacking mental space, and I asked if he could explain more. And away he went for two minutes about having a father and sister get sick, a cousin die, an ankle not heal, a hometown look down on him and a mental space that just started to crater.
“A lot of times when I came in, I couldn’t get over it. I wasn’t smiling. I fell out of love with the game. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore,” Leonard said.
“… I ask everybody how they’re doing. Sometimes it’s OK to ask me how I’m doing. Don’t ask me just to ask me. Ask me to truly have a conversation with me and to understand that I’m a human, too. I have problems. I go through things that a lot of people are going through.”
MORE: ‘I needed to work on me’: Colts’ Darius Leonard took on mental health in offseason
Leonard was one of several Colts stars I found open to talking about the vulnerabilities that players were more reticent on in my stops covering the Bears and Lions.
There was Kenny Moore II, the day I met him, sharing about how he didn’t play football until his senior year of high school out of terror of what the big recruits in south Georgia would do to his compact frame.
There was Michael Pittman Jr., asking if we could talk on an opposite training camp field as the rest of the media and fans, so he could open up on a stuttering issue that led to bullying when he was young and built the fire he later cracked linebackers and punched helmets with.
MORE: How Colts’ Kenny Moore II went from a boy scared of hits to Man of the Year
MORE: The multiple personalities of Michael Pittman Jr.
There was Ryan Kelly, talking at great length about the death of his infant daughter, Mary Kate; or Tyler Goodson, speaking with tears but also conviction about the hate and threats he knew were coming after dropping that pass on 4th-and-1; or Jelani Woods, opening up about his friends on the Virginia football team who were shot to death; or JuJu Brents, who, when I apologized one day for asking him to relive his latest crushing injury, said, “No, thank you for checking in on me.”
In a rage against the tropes of masculinity in this country, Colts players have found a way to turn their vulnerability into a strength, much like their owner.
It’s May again. This is Mental Health Awareness Month, and so although any time is tragic to die, this timing is also cosmic and true to what Irsay built on this planet.
Like with Cobain’s guitar, a man can die, but a conversation can live on.
This is Irsay’s legacy. He wrote it with a life that was both like and unlike other owners.
And just enough like the rest of us.
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