Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay wasn’t caught on a hot mic. He wasn’t being secretly recorded without his permission. He wasn’t being tricked. Irsay knew the cameras were rolling during his interview on HBO’s “Real Sports,” and he wanted to tell the world how he really felt.
The show took a critical look at Irsay’s life and discussed his affluent yet tough upbringing, the sister he lost in a car accident, his penchant for expensive collector’s items and the pressures of being an NFL general manager at 24 years old and an owner at 37. But perhaps the most notable and impactful parts of the interview were when Irsay discussed his bouts with drug and alcohol addictions, in which he admitted publicly for the first time that he overdosed and nearly died.
GO DEEPER
Sins of the father: What Jim Irsay learned watching his dad cripple the Colts
It made me think of how much strength that took, even for a billionaire, to discuss what rock bottom felt like. People’s lives can be touched, changed and saved if they see one influential person acknowledge their own struggles and admit that sometimes life is indeed hard, but there’s still plenty of joy and wholeness out there if we’re willing to fight for it.
I’ll always respect Irsay’s willingness to speak up on that because addiction doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor or Black or White. It’s not picky, and it shows no mercy.
But what I can’t respect is Irsay’s reasoning when he dismissed the charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated — which he pleaded guilty to — in 2014. A toxicology report revealed that Irsay had oxycodone, hydrocodone and alprazolam in his system when he was pulled over by the police. There’s also video footage of a shaky Irsay being asked to perform a field sobriety test.
But during the “Real Sports” interview, Irsay still called the arrest “wrong,” adding that he “just had hip surgery and been in the car for 45 minutes,” so he couldn’t walk straight. When he was asked why he disagreed with it by award-winning sports journalist Andrea Kremer, Irsay quickly erased any empathy that had been evoked about his addiction battles with one tone-deaf and gaslighting response.
“I’m prejudiced against because I’m a rich, White billionaire,” Irsay said, criticizing the Carmel, Ind., police. “If I’m just the average guy down the block, they’re not pulling me in, of course.”
GO DEEPER
Colts owner Jim Irsay says police in his 2014 arrest profiled him because he’s ‘a rich, white billionaire’
Kremer followed up, asking Irsay if he understood how ridiculous it would sound for him to say police are “prejudiced against a rich, White billionaire.” She’d graciously offered Irsay an out, a chance to clarify his words. Instead, he doubled down.
“I don’t care what it sounds like,” Irsay said. “It’s the truth. Andrea, I could give a damn what people think or how anything sounds or sounds like. The truth is the truth, and I know the truth.”
When I first heard these comments, it was the defiance that really struck me. Irsay’s inability to admit that maybe he messed up nearly a decade ago is his business. But the parts I couldn’t move on from are how he compared being a “rich, White billionaire” to being “the average guy down the block,” and claimed that police treat the former worse than the latter. The world I live in, with the experiences I’ve had as a young Black man, the police still treat you a lot differently, at a fraction of the price.
The police can’t tell how much money you make through your car windows, but they can tell what you look like.
Before I had the chance to work in the NFL and the NBA and sit in the same room as a “rich, White billionaire,” I was a Black high school sports reporter in northwest Indiana. A few years ago, while driving home at night from a holiday girls basketball tournament, I was pulled over. When I rolled my window down to speak to the White police officer, he asked me if I knew why he stopped me. I wasn’t sure, so I told him, “I don’t know.” His response? “Well, you weren’t speeding. You were just going fast enough to catch my attention.”
How would you feel if that happened to you?
I hadn’t done anything wrong, but this officer asked to see my license and registration anyway. I still lived in Illinois at the time, and after explaining to him I was a college graduate working my first full-time journalism job, only then did he relax. After a few minutes of looking over my information and shining his light into my car, he told me, “You’re a long way from home,” before handing me back my items and sending me on my way.
No traffic violation.
No ticket.
No reason to pull me over.
I’ll never forget that feeling of being racial profiled for driving my own car, the one I saved up for while working thousands of hours in college. And that’s just one story of many. The point of even sharing it is not for pity or sympathy. It’s not to make it seem like all cops are bad, racist or prejudiced. It’s to introduce a different perspective and a different world, one where a darker skin color is much more likely to encounter prejudice and injustice. I don’t know if Irsay has ever been to my world. But I know a few who have — NFL players. And better yet, his players.
According to The Washington Post, in a story from 2020, nearly 60 percent of NFL players are Black, and it’s fair to wonder how Irsay’s comments went over in the locker room at West 56th Street after his thoughts became public Tuesday.
Not that I’ll ask them. That wouldn’t be fair to them. No matter how they feel, he’s still their boss. He signs their checks. They’re just trying to maximize careers they know can be taken away from them at any moment. But the reason I feel so confident in saying Irsay’s remarks about being profiled by police could be viewed as shortsighted by those taking the field is because of the difficult conversations that took place off it just a few years ago.
The whole world — both mine and Irsay’s — watched a White police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneel on the neck of a Black man, George Floyd, for several minutes in May 2020. By the time Chauvin finally got off Floyd, there was no life left in him. Chauvin was later convicted of second-degree murder, a decision that was upheld Monday when the Supreme Court dismissed Chauvin’s appeal.
Video of the murder ignited a worldwide reckoning of the intersectionality of prejudice, racism and police brutality, and the NFL — known for having its own issues with race — couldn’t ignore it. The phrases “END RACISM” and “IT TAKES ALL OF US” still line the back of the end zones at Lucas Oil Stadium more than three years after Floyd’s death.
The NFL was forced to join those often taboo discussions with several players at the time speaking out, including members of the Colts. Irsay chimed in, too, sharing on social media in 2020 that, “Of COURSE all lives matter, but the phrase ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ is about unequal treatment faced by BLACK Americans. It does not say or imply that ONLY Black lives matter.”
To contrast that sentiment with Irsay now saying he was unfairly treated by police because he’s White and wealthy is strikingly tone deaf. For Irsay not to recognize the privilege of his position at this point in his life is sad. But it might not be as sad as the fact these comments are going to drown out the good he tried to do by speaking to “Real Sports” in the first place.
To be clear, Irsay is not some sort of villain. I’ve witnessed his big heart and generosity firsthand, and this one interview shouldn’t be an all-encompassing indictment of his character. His openness about his struggles are admirable, and the “Kicking The Stigma” initiative his family started to help combat addiction and mental illness has helped many in need. That should be celebrated. However, when a person who is supposed to be a leader in his community doubles down on insensitive comments regarding race, when he plays the victim instead of taking accountability for his actions, well, he not only fails to live up to his responsibility, but also can blame only himself for the backlash that has ensued.
Irsay stood by his comments Wednesday, sending out a series of social media posts to make himself seem like more of a victim, while simultaneously taking aim at others who dared to say he missed the mark and dared to suggest that perhaps a “rich, White billionaire” has been subject to much more privilege than prejudice.
This should serve as an opportunity for Irsay to really look in the mirror and then to the world around him. Because for a lot of us — the non-White and the non-rich — the one he lives in doesn’t exist.
(Photo: Zach Bolinger / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“The Football 100,” the definitive ranking of the NFL’s best 100 players of all time, is on sale now. Order it here.
