His legacy should be mental health

When I live on Jim Irsay and look back, I was still glued to this seat in his back-corner West 56th Street office, which looks at a guitar that Kurt Cobain belongs and found that, like much of the life of the Colts owner and the obsessions, it was much more than strings or felt or a felt.

Irsay died on Wednesday at the age of 65, and in the way his life will be broken down in the coming hours and months and years, there is more in this guitar than each of them.

It is his willingness to open talks about mental health.

Forget the willingness. Rather from a god -understanding desire to throw in the damn door as if it were what he had placed on earth.

Irsay did not do it halfway and for the extreme results that were created in so many places of his life, I find it in honor of the honor that he did not stop at mental health in the lip service. This is the unintentional advantage of wounds that turn to scars. From battles with drugs and alcohol dependencies that manifested themselves in a DUI detention and trips to rehab to some of his most eccentric moments and disappearance of public life, they have all created empathy that is almost impossible in the kind of people who own professional sports franchise.

Think of the impossibility of this idea in a world in which Charles Woodson became a brown minority owner by investing more than 5 million US dollars – in order to own less than 1% of the overall part of the franchise.

Irsay's personality was often like a middle finger on the character card in “succession”.

This does not mean that he had no moments when he hadn't brought in. The perspective was missing in him as they have a lot of money or too many decades to separate from the people they have nearby. Because of its unique accessibility, these defects lived in famous sound bites, as his “If I die tonight …”, to be compared to his evening and Jonathan Taylor's privilege in the middle of a contract, or when he went to HBO and claimed that he was attacked by Carmel Police because he “Rich, White Billionaire” or “Bizarre Sace Twets”. -Tweets that could be pale as a victim.

But if you are willing to talk about a complicated man, there is also a permanent history here.

Irsay became a single owner of an NFL franchise by inheritance from his father Bob Irsay, but he never sat on this pot of gold. Sometimes the fans and those who were closest to him prayed, as in the dysfunction of a season 2022, in which two fire, three quarterback bankings and Jeff Saturdays would have arrived as interim coaches.

But the spikes in activity, from rehab to a super bowl, created something unique for sport on the way.

It is a legacy that passed from random and embarrassing to deliberate and permanent overview. It has had an official name since 2020 when he steps on the stigma, and the work of his daughter Kalen Jackson and so many in the Colts organization will continue.

It goes back to this guitar from Cobains, which he used in the music video “Riechs Like Teen Spirit”. On the day of May 2022, Irsay helped auction it for the month of consciousness for mental health. Cobain, the singer and guitarist of Nirvana, took his own life after fighting with drugs, alcohol and mental health.

That day Irsay started with a check of 2 million US dollars.

At that moment, I met Shaquille Leonard in the days after some endangered and viral comments that it was only more than one guitar or a check or a photo option or a franchise initiative. This was something that the man felt in a custom -made suit with enough money and lived to throw $ 100 in the training camp of $ 100, and which signed the checks of the millionaire athletes.

I didn't know because he said it, but because the players did it.

So I asked and he beamed when he replied:

“It is so cool and remarkable to see big, strong football players who are 6-4, 280, and the strongest men in the world what they do, and yet they talk about these things that make them so fragile,” said Irsay.

“We are all so fragile.”

Irsay knew how it was to be like this 6-4, 280 pound monster. He lifted with them and then started with weight championships, which caused damage to a back that was difficult to observe in his past few years. Like so many of us who love sport, he met a mortality mirror that finally comes for everyone.

It finally came for Leonard, one of the largest athletes I have ever gave.

But two weeks before this sale of guitar, Leonard came at a press conference with something unique inside. It was the first time that since last season, his best, he had led the NFL with 15 forced sales for the third time before his 27th birthday.

He made a short comment in a long answer that pointed out a lack of mental space, and I asked if he could explain more. And then he went for two minutes that a father and a sister got sick, dying a cousin, not healing a ankle, a hometown that looks down on him, and a mental space that was just beginning to crater.

“When I came in, I often couldn't get over it. I didn't smile. I fell in love with the game. I didn't enjoy it anymore,” said Leonard.

“… I ask everyone how they are. Sometimes it is okay to ask me how I am. Don't just ask me to ask me. ask me to really talk to me and understand that I am also a person. I have problems. I do things that many people go through.”

MORE: “I had to work on myself”: Colts' Darius Leonard accepted mental health in the low season

Leonard was one of several Colts Stars, which I found open to the weaknesses, on which the players were rather reserved during my stops, which covered the bears and lions.

There was Kenny Moore II, the day I met him and told how he only played football from the terror of great recruits in South Georgia in his final year.

There was Michael Pittman Jr. and asked if we could speak as the rest of the media and the fans on an opposite training camp so that he could open a stuttering problem that led to bullying when he was young, and the fire that he later cracked as a line backer and hit helmets.

MORE: Like Colts' Kenny Moore II. From a used duty before hits to man of the year

MORE: The diverse personalities of Michael Pittman Jr.

There was Ryan Kelly, who spoke in detail about the death of his little daughter Mary Kate; Or Tyler Goodson, who spoke with tears, but also about the conviction about the hatred and threats he knew after falling this round on the 4th and 1; or Jelani Woods, who opened through his friends in the Virginia soccer team that were shot; Or Juju Brents, who, one day I apologized to have asked him to experience his recent squeeze injury again, said, “No, thank you for looking at me.”

In an anger against the masculinity tropics in this country, the Colts players found a way to transform their vulnerability into a strength, similar to their owner.

It's May again. This is the month of consciousness for mental health, and although at all times there is tragic to die, this timing is also cosmic and faithful to what Irsay has built on this planet.

As 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 as well as in contrast to other owners.

And just enough like the rest of us.

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