JIM IRSAY SAYS HE’S “A RICH, WHITE BILLIONAIRE,” SO NFL SHOULD REMOVE HIM
In a league vigilant about racial slurs, an owner says police arrested him in 2014 because of backwards privilege — and after issuing a break the first time, Goodell should be ruling aggressively
The one time I was arrested, with reasons I’ll dispute until death, I noticed neither officer was white. There was no reason to announce they were busting a writer and commentator because of any media prominence. In the public eye, the police are the police if you’re an analyst on ESPN.
Or if you own the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts.
Jim Irsay should be banned from running a $4.35 billion team in the heartland, handed over by a father who died of heart failure. In a league vigilant these days about racial slurs, Irsay says he was arrested in March 2014 because police were prejudiced against him for being “a rich, white billionaire.” Looking back with a warped mind, he regrets almost 10 years later: “If I'm just the average guy down the block, they're not pulling me in, of course not."
Which year is this, Jim? Did you see Colin Kaepernick? Watch George Floyd? Take in the rioting on Jan. 6?
In his world, Irsay isn’t abiding his long history of addictions to pain pills and alcohol. Never mind that he pleaded guilty to operating a vehicle while intoxicated and acknowledged having hydrocodone, oxycodone and Xanax in his system, which led to a Class C misdemeanor. And that officers in the Indianapolis suburb, Carmel, found “numerous prescription medication bottles containing pills” and $29,029 in cash inside his vehicle. And that he still was in mourning after the death two weeks earlier of Kimberly Wundrum, then 42, who died of an accidental drug overdose in a townhome that Irsay presented her in 2013.
In a recent interview with Andrea Kremer on HBO Sports, Irsay now says he pleaded guilty, “Just to get it over with.” When asked if this was a rock-bottom moment, he replied, “No, not really, because the arrest was wrong. I had just had hip surgery and had been in a car for 45 minutes and what? They ask me to walk the line. Are you kidding me? I can barely walk at all.”
If Irsay couldn’t remain stable and had trouble standing, as officers indicated in the police report, why in the world was he driving a car? Why drive when he was just released from hip surgery, when he was ailing over a loved one’s death? Even during the current holiday season, isn’t this a man falsely bleeding when no one would be sad to see his blood?
“I don't care what it sounds like," Irsay said. “It's the truth. ... I could give a damn what people think how anything sounds or sounds like. The truth is the truth, and I know the truth.”
He should have buried what came down later that year, when NFL commissioner Roger Goodell issued a six-game suspension and fined him $500,000 after violating the league’s Personal Conduct Policy. That decision came on Sept. 2 and was a weak play by Goodell, who was in the throes of changing Ray Rice’s original two-game suspension — on Sept. 8 — to an indefinite punishment for domestic violence. While no one disagrees with the Rice call after a public viewing of the running back punching his fiancee, Irsay stayed firm at six games when he should have been tossed from the league an entire season.
Instead, the billionaires who pay Goodell are protected by him again. The big boss, who appreciated Irsay’s media teardown of Daniel Snyder when the league forced him to sell the Washington Commanders, also can’t be thrilled about the new, awkward Wundrum memories — calling her “a girlfriend.” He said he took her to rehab at “Betty Ford and, God bless her, she tried and she tried” before he gave her money and they went separate ways. Yet, hearing she died, Irsay responded, “You know, she would say, ‘I just can't wrap my arms around what it takes to be in recovery,’ and it was just so (expletive) sad.”
With a personal toll, which included his own rehab stays of 15 times, Irsay told Kremer about his own near-fatal overdose. “I was trying to detox myself and I mixed multiple drugs that I didn't know anything about and so all of a sudden I started slurring my words and then code blue, I stopped breathing,” Irsay said. “And they revived me, and the doctor goes, ‘Jim, you're one lucky man because I had signed, virtually, the death certificate.’ ’’
His health struggles are worth hearing. But his comments about race and class are tone-deaf and disastrous to the NFL. He is what he is — a rich, white billionaire — and he was arrested because he was a menacing presence on the streets. The Carmel police had thought the worst was in the past. “We are very sorry to hear that comment about our officers and our department," Lt. D.J. Schoeff wrote to the Indianapolis Star. “We have a very professional agency consisting of officers that strive to protect our community with integrity and professionalism.”
The commissioner should re-administer the case. A suspension of Jim Irsay should be, at least, a full season or longer. But he already was given a golden opportunity, only six games and come back, that he blew on HBO. In a tweet condemning the host of the show, Irsay wrote Wednesday, “If I had overcome Pancreatic Cancer, I’m a courageous hero/instead Bryant Gumbel treats me with mean spirited contempt. So Sad.” Irsay then went blast-furnace at ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith on “First Take,” tweeting, “1st take, your gonna get your ass Sued.” What did the man expect?
This time, because he sees himself as a reverse victim of privilege, here’s a better plan. He should be removed like Dan Snyder and any other owner unfit for professional football.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.