Indianapolis Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon has defended her sideline behavior during games over the years.
The Colts owner, who took over team control when her father, Jim Irsay, passed away, has been spotted on the sideline, wearing a headset and taking notes during games. Sunday night, she was strutting up and down the sideline, during her team’s overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Irsay-Gordon was called out by some reporters and former NFL executives for being a distraction to her team.
Irsay-Gordon, though, has defended her right to do this in the past. She says that she learns a lot from being on the sideline.
Colts owner defends her sideline behavior
Irsay-Gordon has a process that she likes to go through.
“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 told the Colts’ official website in June of 2025. “‘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.”
She added: “You could say, ‘Oh, that person ran that route wrong.’ 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.”
Fair or foul, it’s her team, and she’s paying them millions of dollars per year, so she’s not going to stop.
