Other owners could learn from Carlie Irsay-Gordon

The NFL is a copycat league. If so, more owners will start copying the in-game habits of Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon.

Her team is 6-1. And her involvement in the game-day sausage-making process is unmistakable.

She’s on the sidelines for the games. Not standing with arms crossed, as most owners who venture down from the caviar-and-champagne level for the post-game celebration do. She’s involved. Headset on. Listening. Watching. Talking. Working.

For any owner who has any role, direct or indirect, in their team’s football operation, more information is better. That means acquiring it in real time, monitoring the process and learning from it.

“I need to be able to say, ‘Is this person full of BS? Do they even know what they’re talking about?’” Irsay-Gordon explained during a June press conference. “It is such a complex organism, a football team and how it operates. . . . You could say, ‘Oh, that person ran that route wrong.’ Then you learn, ‘Oh, someone tagged the wrong WR and it wasn’t really the player’s fault, it was the person that called it.

“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.”

She’s right. Owners (except for Tom Brady when he’s not working his day job at Fox) are typically detached from the in-game experience. How can any owner ask informed questions when the owner has not taken advantage of the opportunity to get answers?

It’s smart. And others should do it. Unless they plan to stay completely out of the football operations and rely on their hired specialists to handle the team, they can — and should — spend the three hours on Sundays not hobnobbing but eavesdropping. And it’s not really eavesdropping. She’s there. In the fray. Monitoring the entire operation.

Many will scoff at her constant presence. Plenty of owners will regard taking up a position in the bench area as beneath them. Irsay-Gordon gets it. If she’s going to make smart decisions about the course of her team, she needs all available information. And there’s 60 full minutes of it, every week, to be had.

It’s crazy not to do it. And it’s working for the Colts.

Again, it’s a copycat league. When will another owner copy what Carlie Irsay-Gordon is doing? If none follow suit, because it gives her an edge that other owners don’t have.

A common question for most teams is this: “Who has the owner’s ear?” By injecting herself into the scrum, she doesn’t need someone to translate the coachspeak or to serve as the liaison between football decisions and business decisions. She can do it herself.

We’re always looking for trends. This should be the next one. First, it can’t hurt. Second, it can only help. For the Colts, it very well may be.