The Hate is Still There: Jim Irsay Says Belichick is Lying About the Colts Piping In Crowd Noise

Jerry Thornton10/09/2024 2:40 PM

Justin Lane. Shutterstock Images.

There's something profound about two old adversaries becoming friends later in life. Long after the bullets have stopped flying and the war is over. When the hatred has dissipated. The hot blood of battle has cooled. And all that remains is mutual respect between worthy opponents. Think the way Lincoln ordered the Confederates to be treated with mercy, and generals on both sides who had studied at West Point together were reunited in peace. British Major General Sir Neil Campbell, who helped defeat Napoleon at Waterloo, escorted Bonaparte to his exile on Elba, and the two greatly admired one another. (Until Napoleon escaped and took control of France again.) My own beloved father-in-law fought in Patton's infantry. And and for the rest of his life, his primary care doctor was a German soldier he'd met during the war. It's a deeply beautiful thing when former combatants can lay down their arms and become allies.

But you know what's even more profound and beautiful? When guys keep that hatred going. When the bloodlust survives the years and lasts even into their golden years. That's when you know it's real. And there's no better practitioner of holding a grudge than Bill Belichick. So when he brought an old beef up and threw it in Peyton Manning's massive, elongated face on his own show:

… it was a highlight of the season. And of Belichick's post-coaching career so far. It proved that semi-unemployment hasn't mellowed him at all. And he has zero intention of going quietly into that good night.

And just to prove the emotions are still raw from this, even 17 years later, the Colts owner wasn't going to take this lying down. Jim Irsay put his pill-addled brain to work firing back with a bit of revisionist history:

Don't you dare try to tell these two old enemies, the war is over. You just don't turn it off:

I guess you have to give grudging respect to Irsay for refusing to change his tune after all these years. "The TV broadcast skipped" is his story, and he's sticking with it. Probably to the grave.

The problem with it though, is that in 2007, everything was recorded, and the internet was preserving things for eternity. Good luck trying to convince anyone this was just CBS' audio glitching:

Not a chance. And even if you're a Colts fan who wants to smell what Irsay is cooking, riddle me this. Why has this never happened at any other time? In the literally thousands of games that were played before or since? In the hundreds of thousands of hours of live sports we've all seen covered by the same network using the same equipment.

By the same token, what would the reaction have been from Irsay, Colts fans and the rest of the league had that noise loop occurred in Gillette? There would've been a nationwide state of emergency declared. Emergency meetings of congress. The UN Security Council would've convened to discuss an embargo of New England. Belichick would've been dragged before the international court in The Hague and charged with war crimes.

For sure, no one would believe it was the broadcast's fault. Like I said in yesterday's post, Tony Dungy and Manning used to meet in the hallway as Gillette because they were convinced the visitors' locker room was bugged. Mike Tomlin accused the Pats of jamming his quarterback helmet communications. John Harbaugh accused them of hacking the scoreboard late in the 2011 AFC championship game to make him think it was 3rd down instead of 4th. Even the fact the league handles the helmet radios and the scoreboard didn't stop them from believing these "1000% fictions." So why should Irsay get the benefit of the doubt on this? Who are we going to believe, a doped up lucky spermer, or our lying ears?

I know which side I'm on. And I know that when a conflict like this rages on for eternity, we all win. This is one Forever War I can get behind.

Kiss the rings.