INDIANAPOLIS — For more than a year now, Colts owner Jim Irsay and his family have been in the middle of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, challenging the community to donate to Gleaners food bank, providing aid to restaurants, listening and responding to his team’s calls to put an effort toward social justice.
Somewhere in the middle of those efforts, Irsay and his family found the fight they plan to put front and center.
And the Irsays aren’t about to let the Kicking the Stigma initiative they began months ago fall out of the public eye.
Already hard at work after filming a commercial with Darius Leonard and committing more than $4 million to expand treatment of mental health throughout Indiana, the Irsays announced a star-studded, four-day virtual fundraiser to keep the momentum Kicking the Stigma has going in the right direction. From May 3 to May 6, Kicking the Stigma will release a roundtable with Leonard and other NFL stars talking about their own battles with mental health issues, hosted by Carson Daly; hold an auction of signed memorabilia to raise money; and use their contacts with everybody from Colts legends like Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy, to celebrities like Rob Lowe and Mike Epps, to current Colts like Frank Reich and Carson Wentz to raise awareness around mental health issues.