Colts owner Jim Irsay didn’t hold back when he recalled his 2014 DUI arrest in his first in-depth interview during HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” segment on Nov. 21.
The billionaire businessman was candid about his years-long battle with addiction and appeared visibly angry while recounting the night he was pulled over by police in Carmel, Indiana, for driving erratically.
Irsay explained the incident wasn’t a low point for him because he felt “the arrest was wrong” as he was recovering from hip surgery at the time.
“I had just had hip surgery and been in the car for 45 minutes and they asked me to walk the line,” Irsay told journalist Andrea Kremer, according to a clip on social media.
“Are you kidding me? I could barely walk at all.”
That’s when Kremer asked, “So you’re saying you couldn’t walk because you had the hip surgery, not because you were on any kind of painkillers?”
Irsay replied, “Yes! I mean I’m not saying that. It’s a fact.”
5 Colts owner Jim Irsay sits down for an in-depth interview about his years long battle with addiction with Andrea Kremer for HBO’s “Real Sports” segment in November 2023. X/HBO Real Sports
Numerous bottles of pills were found in his car when he was pulled over, Kremer said.
Irsay said he pleaded guilty — to one misdemeanor count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated in September 2014 — “just to get it over with.”
“I am prejudiced against because I am a rich white billionaire,” he said. “If I’m just the average guy down the block, they’re not pulling me in, of course not.”
Kremer stopped him.
“Do you know what it’s going to sound like if people hear you say they’re prejudiced against a rich white billionaire?”
Irsay wasn’t fazed.
5 Andrea Kremer sits down with Colts owner Jim Irsay for an in-depth interview about his years long battle with addiction for HBO’s “Real Sports” segment in November 2023. X/HBO Real Sports
5 Colts owner Jim Irsay being pulled over by police in Carmel, Indiana for driving erratically in September 2014. X
“I don’t care what it sounds like,” he said. “It’s the truth.
“You know Andrea, I could give a damn what people think how anything sounds like, The truth is the truth, and I know the truth.”
In police body cam footage from the arrest, Irsay can be seen stumbling before two police officers helped him stand up.
Irsay took to X Wednesday with a message about the interview.
“HBO’s Real Sports is why ‘Kicking the Stigma’ is so important to our efforts, defeating the Stigma of the DISEASE of Addiction/Alcoholism,” he wrote. “If I had overcome Pancreatic Cancer, I’m a courageous hero/instead Bryan Gumbel treats me with mean spirited contempt. So Sad.”
5 Colts owner Jim Irsay being pulled over by police in Carmel, Indiana for driving erratically in September 2014. X
Kremer explained that she knew her question to Irsay about how his comments would sound was risky but intentional.
“In this case, with Jim, I’ve learned over the years that when someone says something that could be considered controversial, when you repeat the words back to them, you take the risk of having them hear it and pull back on it, trying to walk that comment back,” she told Awful Announcing.
“But with Jim, it was just more about not questioning that he really believed that, he was very vociferous about that, it was just more along the lines of ‘Do you really understand how this is going to play out?’
“And clearly he did, because he doubled down on it in our conversation. And it was the one time in our interview that he was really angry. And he was really angry, not at me, but at the recollection of the whole issue. He said it over and over again, really, this was just how he felt.
“So again, when this is what somebody believes, what they’re saying, and it’s their reality, you’ve got to take them at their word.”
5 Colts owner Jim Irsay Getty Images
Elsewhere in the interview, Irsay said he went to rehab “at least 15 times.”
He also recalled an instance when he accidentally overdosed.
“One time I was trying to detox myself and I mixed multiple drugs that I didn’t know anything about,” Irsay said. “All of a sudden I start slurring my words and then cold blue I stopped breathing.
“They revived me and the doctor goes, ‘Jim you’re one lucky man because I had signed virtually signed the death certificate.’”
Irsay said he hasn’t had a drink since 2002 but still deals with challenges from his addiction.
Jim Irsay blames 2014 arrest on being ‘rich white billionaire’
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