Silver rates Irsay 7th

Michael Silver’s owner rankings are up and he puts Irsay at #7

7. Indianapolis Colts – Jimmy Irsay: You’ve got to hand it to Irsay, who has played a significant role in his franchise’s decade-long run of sustained success following Peyton Manning’s(notes) arrival. It was Irsay who pushed hard to hire Tony Dungy after the Bucs fired him, and now, in the wake of the coach’s retirement and his promotion of Jim Caldwell, he feels he has another winner in place. Despite some obvious limitations in market size, Irsay has gotten the most out of his situation in Indy, cutting a stadium deal so sweet that, this past spring, the city’s Capital Improvement Board asked him to renegotiate the Lucas Oil Stadium lease. (Irsay told city officials to go pound black gold, which was his prerogative.) If I’m going to ding him for anything, it’s that he should have been more careful with his comments after the complicated “retirements” by longtime offensive assistants Tom Moore and Howard Mudd (reportedly because they were concerned about changes in the league’s pension program) caused much anxiety within the organization, and especially to its most important employee, Manning. In an effort to offer public reassurances that the two coaches would return in similar capacities, albeit with altered titles that allowed them to protect their ability to receive lump-sum pension benefits, Irsay essentially announced to the world that the two men would be gaming the system. Theoretically, that could have piqued the interest of the feds who administer it, but the new arrangement seems to have avoided scrutiny. No muss, no fuss.

Well, the logic is weird, but more strange is who he’s behind…  Bob McNair? Jerry Richardson?  Jerry Jones?  Seriously?  The Maras, Rooney, Kraft…I can live with that.  The others…not so much.