Carlie Irsay-Gordon spent decades learning as much as possible about her family's business, knowing one day she and her sisters, Casey Foyt and Kalen Jackson, would assume ownership of it.
Her family business, of course, happens to be football. And one way Irsay-Gordon worked to learn the family business was by putting on a headset during games and listening to how coaches communicate with each other in a high-stakes, no-time-or-room-for-error environment.
"I think one of the things that I learned in going through, even as back as when we hired Chuck Pagano (in 2012), is that sort of accelerated my, 'I need to learn more about this,'" Irsay-Gordon said. "'I need to be able to say, is this person full of BS? Do they even know what they're talking about?'
"And I think one of the things that being on the headset has really helped me learn is to the question earlier, it's such a complex organism of football team and how it operates."
Anyone who's attended a Colts game has seen Irsay-Gordon stationed on the sidelines with a headset on and a call sheet and pen in her hands. She's not doing it to micromanage coaches, but to better understand the myriad intricacies that go into a single play.
Having that perspective, then, helps Irsay-Gordon comprehend how she, at the ownership level, can further support her team's coaches.
"You could say, 'Oh, that person ran that route wrong,'" Irsay-Gordon said. "When you learn to find, 'Oh, someone tagged the wrong wide receiver, and it wasn't really the player's fault – it was the person that called it.' I think that's been very valuable, because it also helps us be able to know where do we need to make tweaks, what resources do we need, what do we need to fix.
"So much of it comes down to just how we operate and how things work and the headsets – 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."
Colts coaches, too, appreciate Irsay-Gordon's commitment to understanding football at a high level.
"As far as football, she's around and she understands it," head coach Shane Steichen said last month. "When you talk football with her, she gets it. She understands it. She goes over the defensive stuff, the offensive stuff. She's been involved since I've been here from Day One, very hands on and she's been tremendous. I think she's going to do a phenomenal job."
Having Irsay-Gordon in meetings and on the headset during games has been welcomed by the other coaches on Steichen's staff.
"It's been really cool. She's been in a ton of different meetings (and) practices around," offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said. "A lot of the stuff that we do as coaches, you don't often get people in that in those roles, in those meetings. She's asking questions, trying to learn a ton about different things, and then also sort of teaching us things about different aspects of the game. She's been great to work with, great to be around. It's been a great few years of that, and been fun having her in a ton of different meetings and hearing her input. She's very, very knowledgeable, but very interested in gaining that knowledge. That's how she's gotten to this spot. So been really, really cool."
Special teams coordinator Brian Mason agreed.
"It's a ton of respect that she has spent years being heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the football organization," Mason said. "She's really detailed and spent a lot of time to kind of know the ins and outs of everything that's happening, and wants to make sure that we get the absolute best that we can as an organization, that we're putting players in positions to be successful and can kind of reach the standard that we have set as an organization. So, I just kind of respected that she was going the extra mile to both understand everything that was happening from a schematic standpoint, understanding and trying to get the best out of the players, the coaches, and being actively involved.
"I don't think it's a situation where – obviously, it's not a situation where she's actively speaking on the headset or she's stepping on anybody's toes, or there's not any situations where decisions are going through ownership in that kind of realm or situation. So, it's not like a situation where anybody's being micromanaged. It's just a situation where she's fully involved in the success of the organization."
One of the many defining aspects of late Colts Owner and CEO Jim Irsay's stewardship of the franchise was his high-level football knowledge. He was an important sounding board for general managers, coaches and players; he himself spent 10 years as the Colts' vice president and general manager, a title he received as a 23-year-old in 1984.
And Irsay-Gordon, like her father, has applied herself to learn as much about football as she can – and however she can.
