The Colts on Tuesday were named the 2025 Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year, a prestigious honor presented at the ESPY Awards and given to a sports club or team that demonstrates how teamwork can create a measurable impact on a community or cause.
For the Colts, that cause is mental health awareness, research and treatment, with the team significantly supporting those areas through Kicking The Stigma, which was founded by the club and Irsay family in 2020. In launching Kicking The Stigma, the Colts became the first major professional sports franchise to create an initiative focused on mental health disorders and removing the stigma so often associated with mental health.
One in five American adults, including one in four Indiana residents, will suffer from a mental health disorder in their lifetime. Additionally, one in six youth (ages 6-17) experience a mental health disorder each year.
Over the last five years, Kicking The Stigma has made a deep, targeted, positive impact on the mental health of countless Hoosiers and Americans. Since 2020, more than $31 million has been committed to these goals by the Colts and Irsay family through Kicking The Stigma, including over $6.4 million in Action Grants, which have funded critical research and treatments while breaking down barriers to access them for residents of Indiana and beyond.
Among programs and nonprofits supported by Kicking The Stigma Action Grants have been Children's TherAplay, Recovery Cafe Muncie, U Bring Change To Mind at Indiana University and the HOPE Family Care Center.
The Irsay family has also personally made significant donations through Kicking The Stigma to several organizations to advance mental health awareness, research and treatment, including a $3 million donation to create the Irsay Institute at Indiana University for researching and addressing the stigma associated with mental health.
Creating Kicking The Stigma was a deeply personal cause to late Colts Owner and CEO Jim Irsay and his daughters, Carlie Irsay-Gordon, Casey Foyt and Kalen Jackson.
"Instead of the story being told about us, we wanted to tell our own story in hopes of helping others who are struggling," Jackson said.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, too, has seen the Colts' efforts in the mental health space come from an overwhelmingly authentic place.
"Jim had such a capacity to care for people, to take the bold step to do something different and to make a difference in the world," Goodell said. "So it didn't surprise me at all when the Irsay family, led by Jim, really came out with the Kicking The Stigma initiative because it's what Jim's all about — doing something different to make the world a better place.
"... I think it's incredibly authentic that Kalen is leading this because she has this passion inside her. You have to have one conversation with her and understand how deeply she feels about this, the way it's impacted her and her family, the way she sees it in her community."
The Colts are the first team to win the Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year award for their work in the mental health realm.
"In the mental health space, any award like this or any light being shown in this area is just so important and saves lives simply by talking about it," Jackson said. "... I hope that anyone seeing us receive it or hearing the story of Kicking The Stigma, I hope that it makes those people that are suffering silence know they are not alone. And that we are going to continue to fight the fight to get more resources, the fight to bring this to people's attention and make people realize the need in this space is still extremely high, and we're not stopping any time soon."
The Colts have been a finalist for the Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year award in each of the last three years, and are just the third NFL team to earn the honor. Other NFL winners have been the Denver Broncos (2022) and San Francisco 49ers (2017). The award has been given out annually since 2015.
The Colts were one of four finalists for the 2025 honor, along with the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and MLB's New York Yankees.
