Jim Irsay has a problem.
The principal owner, chairman and CEO of the Colts was found unconscious and unresponsive Dec. 8 at his home in Carmel, Indiana. Reports said he had turned blue and was cold to the touch. He was given Narcan by responding police, the drug being the one given to people who have suffered opioid overdoses.
Then Jan. 9, the Colts announced Irsay, 64, was continuing ‘‘to recover from his respiratory illness.’’ The statement added, ‘‘We will have no further comment on his personal health,’’ and asked that ‘‘Jim and his family’s privacy be respected.’’
That privacy should be respected, but an NFL owner’s serious health problem is of great importance to fans of the multibillion-dollar league, which makes its players’ health public and publishes reports on their injuries all season long.
And health concerns — including for coaches, owners, general managers, etc. — can mightily affect the gambling side of the NFL, which the league now heavily promotes.
Transparency is especially important when dealing with an owner who is as hands-on with his club as Irsay is with his. And the possibility of him having had an opioid overdose puts him in a pool with many other Americans as we suffer through an opioid crisis of epic proportions, one spiked by the demon drug fentanyl.
Indeed, in 2021, more than 106,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses. According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, there were a record 2,000 deaths attributed to opioid overdose right here in 2022.
Irsay was pulled over by Indiana police in 2014, and a following toxicology report showed he had the painkillers oxycodone and hydrocodone in his system. Guys his age are often in pain, especially a guy who stressed out his joints years before by squatting with 700 pounds on a bending barbell.
That was back when Irsay, who called himself a ‘‘fat kid with glasses,’’ willed himself into becoming a heavyweight powerlifter. He needed something, anything, to be proud of.
He had suffered through a traumatic childhood dotted with the deaths of loved ones and ruled by a brutish father, who ran the Colts in a merciless, alcohol-fueled way. Colts fans won’t soon forget Robert Irsay packing up the organization’s goods and moving the club from Baltimore to Indianapolis in the dead of night in 1984.
In 2012, Time magazine named the elder Irsay one of the ‘‘Top Ten Most Hated Sports-Team Owners,’’ along with doozies such as Marge Schott, Dan Snyder and Donald Sterling.
When he was drafted first overall by the Colts in 1983, John Elway said he never would play for them but would play pro baseball instead. So Robert Irsay was forced to trade him to the Broncos.
The point here is that Jim Irsay, who took over the team upon his father’s death in 1997 and was in charge when the Colts beat the Bears in Super Bowl XLI in February 2007, always has seemed to be a seeker of something larger and more elusive than mere wealth and power. Call it self-worth, core values, identity.
He plays the guitar, writes music and performs with the Jim Irsay Band, sometimes with stars such as John Mellencamp and Buddy Guy. He has what has been called the greatest guitar collection in the world, having bought guitars used by Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia and Kurt Cobain, among others.
He also bought the famous scroll on which Jack Kerouac wrote the Beat classic ‘‘On the Road.’’ Irsay paid $2.4 million for it in 2001, had it restored and sent it on the road for display to the public, a kindly gesture.
But he had demons inside him that needed calming, that didn’t subside with the accumulation of mere things. He recently told ‘‘Real Sports’’ interviewer Andrea Kremer he had been to rehab for addiction 15 times and once nearly had died from an overdose. He added, ‘‘Addiction and alcoholism is a fatal disease.’’ He even complained that cops were busting him simply because he was a rich man.
Of his distant and mean father, Irsay said, ‘‘The alcohol made him do crazy things.’’ Then he said something about his father, without realizing he actually was speaking about himself: ‘‘It’s hard to stop a man from self-destruction.’’
There is no word from the Colts about how Irsay is doing right now. One hopes he recovers and maybe ponders a line from his hero, Dylan, that a man ‘‘not busy being born is busy dying.’’
