Mark Woods: In Jacksonville, $10,000 tips and the lingering effects of Colts Fever

It’s hard not to love the story of what happened last weekend in a Jacksonville hotel, the night before the Jaguars game against the Indianapolis Colts.

The Indianapolis Star reported that Jim Irsay, owner of the Colts, wandered the hotel with a bag of cash, handing out stacks of $100 bills — $10,000 “tips” for a housekeeper in the middle of her shift, for a musician playing a guitar in the lobby, for other workers doing their jobs on a Saturday night.

Irsay shared a video with the paper of some of these exchanges — with both the NFL owner and the workers getting emotional — and said he has a newfound passion to identify people in need, ask them their name and story, and bless them by sharing some of his time and wealth.

"How many times do we walk into hotels and just walk past people that are working; bellhops, people that are behind the desk, as if they're artificial intelligence robots, for god's sake," Irsay said. "When you're blessed, when you're given blessings, when God blesses you with a lot, God asks a lot in return."

It was the kind of feel-good story that went viral, particularly in NFL cities.

I’m guessing that hotel workers where the Colts typically stay will be asking to work when Indy comes to town.

Beyond that, there was the reaction of: “Why don’t we have an owner like that?”

In Jacksonville, some noted that at the same time the Colts owner was handing locals thousands of dollars, Jaguars owner Shad Khan was asking for about $1 billion in public money to renovate the stadium and build around it — and with nearly 1 million residents, that comes out to about $1,000 a person.

Not that this is how it would work. But you get the point.

There is some Owner Envy. There also are some significant flaws and irony in this.

A lingering case of Colts fever

Not to dismiss what Irsay did last weekend in Jacksonville. It was wonderful. It was heartwarming. And while some have questioned his motive, to me it feels genuine.

I’d absolutely love to see more stories like this. I’d love to hear about other team owners wandering around with bags of cash, handing out piles of $100 bills. But more than that, while it isn’t nearly as emotionally uplifting, I’d really like to see less stories about teams asking for large piles of public money to help some of the most wildly profitable businesses in America; less stories about how if a city and its citizens don’t come through, an owner will take his ball and head elsewhere.

This is something that has been going on in the NFL for decades, something that fans in Jacksonville should be quite familiar with.

To a degree, it is a lingering nationwide case of Colts Fever.

The Colts and, in particular, the Irsay family have played a key role in where we are today with NFL stadiums.

And, of course, Jacksonville played its own role in this when Irsay’s father owned the Baltimore Colts.

After negotiations for a new stadium in Baltimore broke down, Robert Irsay started touring the country, threatening to find a new home for his team.

In August 1979, then-Jacksonville Mayor Jake Godbold and his staff hastily put together an event at the Gator Bowl that drew more than 50,000 fans — and an estimated 10,000 more in the parking lot — to greet Irsay when he landed at midfield in a helicopter.

Those gathered chanted, “We want the Colts!”

While they didn’t get the Colts, that night often is pointed to as significant in Jacksonville getting an NFL expansion franchise. And now sports economists often point to Irsay’s tour as significant for different reasons.

Along with Al Davis moving the Raiders (for the first time) in the 1980s, Robert Irsay blew open a door that many an NFL owner has threatened to walk through since.

'Most-Subsidized Stadium in America'

Next March will mark the 40th anniversary of when the Colts loaded up a fleet of Mayflower moving vans and left Baltimore in the middle of the night for a new home, the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis.

It wasn’t just the move that was significant. As Karen Given says in a Global Sports Matters podcast devoted to the debate of public vs. private funding for sports venues, the Colts’ move “reset the longstanding precedent that city funding for stadium development was usually a loan, not a subsidy.”

Robert Irsay died in 1997. The Hoosier Dome, which was renamed the RCA Dome, also is long gone. In 2008, less than 25 years after it opened, it was imploded. Yet while the Colts began playing in a new home 15 years ago, the city continued paying off the debt on their imploded stadium.

Their new home, Lucas Oil Stadium, cost about $720 million.

Taxpayers covered more than 85 percent of the cost.

The Colts contributed $107 million (but also received $48 million to void the RCA Dome lease).

Put that in current dollars and Indianapolis-area taxpayers (the stadium includes taxes from surrounding counties) committed in the ballpark of the Jaguars’ ask of Jacksonville — yet with a significantly smaller commitment from the Colts.

Not long after the stadium opened, the Colts wrote an open letter to fans, saying the team never asked for a new stadium — that the city wanted a new multi-use facility — and at no time did it “threaten to leave Indianapolis or otherwise ‘hold the city hostage.” While that might be true, some of those negotiating for the city have said that as a small market, the team had the leverage — and one of the fears was that if Indianapolis lost the Colts, it never would get another NFL team.

However it played out, for more than a decade — until Las Vegas built a stadium for the latest Raiders move — Lucas Oil Stadium held the title for, as one headline put it, “the Most-Subsidized NFL Stadium in America.”

It wasn’t just the construction of the stadium. According to the Indianapolis Star, the Colts pay $250,000 a year to play in the stadium, pay nothing for maintenance, and reap millions for revenue from other events, naming rights and the “profit portion” of concessions.

Combine the stadium deals with the NFL’s staggeringly lucrative television deals and the team that Robert Irsay acquired for less than $20 million in 1972 (buying the Rams and swapping franchises with Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom) and moved to Indianapolis 12 years later, now is worth more than $4 billion.

As Jim Irsay said last weekend, he has been blessed with a lot.

And those blessings have made it possible for him to do some unusual things.

Like spending tens of millions of dollars to gather an eclectic mix of historical artifacts — Muhammad Ali’s “Rumble in the Jungle” championship belt, the original manuscript of “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac, the bass drum used by Ringo Starr on “The Ed Sullivan Show,”JFK’s rocking chair and Lincoln’s pocketknife — and take the nearly 500-piece Jim Irsay Collection on the road as an exhibition, open to the public for free.

Or to have a Colts Kickoff Concert at Lucas Oil Stadium featuring the Jim Irsay Band — along with Stephen Stills, John Mellencamp, Ann Wilson, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and more — with fans getting free tickets and $10 vouchers for food and drink.

Or to go to a road game in Jacksonville and wander the hotel, handing out stacks of $100 bills.

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Colts' Jim Irsay's $10,000 tips in Jacksonville create owner envy