Curiosity Not Conceit: We All Should Be So Lucky To Have Boss Like Carlie Irsay-Gordon

Carlie Irsay-Gordon, the principal owner and CEO of the NFL’s Indianapolis franchise, is most undeserving of the Taylor Swift treatment (as is Swift herself). All the dads, Brads and Chads who object to Irsay-Gordon’s high profile during Colts’ games really need to touch grass — preferably, the real kind, not the synthetic turf on the team’s home field at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Those triggered whenever the television cameras find Irsay-Gordon, who took over the franchise with her two sisters after their father Jim’s death last year, on the Colts sideline during games must be self-employed and disinclined to critique the boss.

As for the rest of us, most would welcome answering to someone like Irsay-Gordon, who cares deeply about understanding what exactly her employees do and how they go about doing it so that when their yearly reviews roll around, the feedback she has to offer is thoughtful, substantive. Informed. On this, sports talk show host Colin Cowherd and I are in lockstep.

Sunday thoughts on Colts Owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon https://t.co/mRFLP0JtEl

— Colin Cowherd (@colincowherd) October 11, 2026

Irsay-Gordon is not a headset-wearing, note-taking dilettante. She has paid her dues and then some. As the sports journalist Leah Lowe noted in a story she posted to X in September, Irsay-Gordon has sold tickets, she has plopped herself down in different sections of the stadium to soak in the game-day experience from literally all sides and she has attended team and position meetings for years.

Carlie Irsay-Gordon is there because her father spent decades preparing her for the responsibility. Maybe that’s something worth remembering the next time the television camera finds Jim Irsay’s eldest daughter down on the sideline. @colts @CIrsay #colts https://t.co/EYA9qySWNE

— Leah Lowe (@Leah2Go) September 26, 2026

My absolute favorite anecdote from Lowe’s story is that Irsay-Gordon had been sitting in the back row of the meetings for wide receivers for several weeks during the 2020 season before then-rookie Michael Pittman Jr. knew who she was.

Curiosity without conceit. It’s a rare quality to find in anybody these days, much less CEOs (or those in training) who are rewarded for leading from a place of self-protection.

And before it is suggested that no coach in their right mind would voluntarily agree to such a sideline arrangement, I must point out that the idea of putting a headset on Irsay-Gordon originated with Frank Reich in 2020, when he was the Colts’ head coach.

I reached out to the Jets, where Reich is the offensive coordinator, to ask what he makes of the commotion that he unintentionally created, but I was told he was engrossed in getting the Jets back to .500 and wasn’t available to entertain my question.

Not for nothing, but it couldn’t hurt the Jets’ fortunes for their owner, Woody Johnson, to dedicate himself to becoming a student of the game in the manner of Irsay-Gordon. And I bet it would have been super instructive for Commanders owner Josh Harris to have been able to hear the headset chatter in the final seconds of Washington’s tie against the Giants.

The real winner from the Commanders late game disaster?

Carlie Irsay-Gordon https://t.co/uuGgQgBZIC

— #RingerNFLShow (@ringernflshow) October 13, 2026

Given that most coaches guard their playbooks as if it were the nuclear code, I’ve occasionally wondered, Doth protect too much? Do their monosyllabic or meandering answers — because there’s seldom an in-between — in interviews spring from paranoia-style caution or because they’re essentially faking it till they make it?

In a 2025 interview posted to the Colts website, Irsay-Gordon recalled when the team was interviewing candidates that led to the 2012 hiring of head coach Chuck Pagano. The process drove home the reality for her that, “I need to learn more about this,” she said. “I need to be able to say, ‘Is this person full of B.S.? Do they even know what they’re talking about?’”

Wearing the headset and gaining access to ongoing communications pinpointed for Irsay-Gordon how complex an organism a football team is and how much needs to go right for a single play to succeed. If a pass fails, it’s not always because the receiver ran the wrong route or the quarterback threw a poor pass.

“So much of it comes down to just how we operate and how things work,” she said, adding, “I would suggest it for anyone else that has to pay coaches and GMs millions and millions of dollars. It helps you make a less expensive mistake potentially.”

She’s not Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who is alleged to have called down to the sideline from the owner’s suite during a game at least once.

She’s not the former Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams owner Georgia Frontiere, the first active female majority owner of an NFL team, who also spent most games on the sideline — where she was known for giving players pecks on the cheek and pats on the butt.

Frontiere, who took over majority ownership of the franchise after the death of her husband, Carroll Rosenbloom, and whose decades-long reign included a Super Bowl championship in 2000, was portrayed as a former nightclub singer turned socialite. She never got her proper due for being ahead of her time in providing her players with financial advisors, nutritionists, and mental health professionals.

Though they were shaped by different eras, Irsay-Gordon no doubt could appreciate where Frontiere was coming from when she famously said, “There are some who feel there are two different kinds of people: human beings and women.”

Could it be that the most jarring aspect of Irsay-Gordon’s presence on the sideline, besides the fact she is a woman, is her anachronistic use of a pen and paper? Would she blend in better if people saw her tap-tap-tapping on her smartphone, working in a notes app?

“It’s not an issue at all,” Shane Steichen, the Colts’ head coach since 2023, told reporters last Friday. “She’s been doing it for a long time.”

He added: “A ton of respect for what she’s doing. No one’s done it, and so it’s a credit to her that she’s learning and going through that process and hearing the right information that’s taking place on game day instead of hearing it from whoever else.’’

Indianapolis hasn’t advanced to the playoffs since the 2020 season and is 2-3 this season. In their 34-22 loss Sunday at Pittsburgh, the Colts punted only once but were able to convert only four of 15 third downs and were 1-of-3 in the red zone.

The Colts will host the 0-5 Tennessee Titans on Sunday, and Steichen has to know Irsay-Gordon is going through the process and gathering information to make the most informed decision on, among other things, his future. It’s what bosses do, and all he or any employee can hope for is to be evaluated fairly, based on having access to all the facts.