Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Every great relationship starts somewhere unlikely. Mine with the Indianapolis Colts started on a road trip, far from the RCA Dome, with four guys, plenty of NASCAR, a big cooler, and too many golf clubs for the trunk.
Four Guys, Daytona, and a Bad Idea That Turned Out Great
For about five years, every February, the four of us — Ray, Barry, Eric, and me — headed south for the Daytona 500. The race was the perfect excuse. We’d arrive the Sunday before and play 18. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were non-track days, so we played 36 each day. On Thursday and Friday, we played 18 holes first thing in the morning, then the track in the afternoon. Saturday and Sunday were all racing. Somewhere along the way, we solved every problem in the world except our own golf swings.
On one of those trips — I’d like to say it was at the 19th hole, because it usually was — the talk turned to football. Indianapolis had just used the first overall pick in the 1998 draft on a kid from Tennessee named Peyton Manning. The Colts weren’t much to look at yet, but something about that pick stood out. You could feel it.
So we did what four guys with a few drinks in them and a “why not” attitude do. We said, “Let’s get season tickets.”
Like many decisions I’ve made in my life, I didn’t fully think this one through. When I got home and told my lovely wife what we’d done, she said the only thing a football-loving wife could say: “I guess you’re going to half the games, because I’m going to the other half.”
Let’s see where this takes us. It took us a long way.
The Golden Years
If you were in Indianapolis in the 2000s, you know. Sunday wasn’t game day—it was a holiday. The RCA Dome was loud enough to rattle your fillings, and every Manning audible at the line felt like watching a conductor lead an orchestra.
The winning seasons stacked up so fast we stopped counting. Twelve wins. Thirteen wins. Fourteen wins. Playoffs every January. We got spoiled, and honestly, we didn’t mind. Somewhere in those years Eric moved away — and yes, my wife and I finally had two tickets of our own.
Then came February 4, 2007. Super Bowl XLI in Miami, in the rain, against the Bears. The Colts won 29–17, and Manning finally got his ring. I can still feel that night — the hugs, the phone calls, the feeling that all those Sundays had added up to something.
Three years later, we were back. Super Bowl XLIV against the Saints. That one didn’t end the way we wanted, and the onside kick to open the second half still stings if I think about it too long. But two Super Bowl trips in four seasons? Most fan bases never see that in a lifetime.
Through it all, Ray, Barry, my wife Katy, and I were there. Same seats, same tailgate rituals—rituals that grew as the wins piled up. Those Sundays became the thread that held the friendship together long after the Daytona trips got harder to schedule.
We took road trips to Denver, Pittsburgh, and KC for a playoff game, and eventually we started planning vacations around the international games — Frankfurt, Berlin, and London among them.
Chuckstrong
The best season of this whole stretch had very little to do with football.
Manning was gone. He missed all of 2011 recovering from neck surgeries, and the Colts crashed to 2–14. The silver lining was the first overall pick, which became Andrew Luck, and a new head coach, Chuck Pagano, with Bruce Arians as his offensive coordinator. We thought we knew the plan: rebuild, be patient, and see what a rookie quarterback could do.
Then, three games into the 2012 season, Chuck was diagnosed with leukemia. He stepped away to start treatment at the IU Simon Cancer Center in Indianapolis, and Arians took over as interim head coach.
What happened next is why this team still holds a special place in my heart. The players shaved their heads in support of Chuck, and “Chuckstrong” showed up on shirts all over the city. In the first game without his coach, Reggie Wayne wore orange gloves to raise awareness of leukemia, and the team pulled off a comeback win over Green Bay. Week after week, Arians kept the team rolling. When Chuck was still on the mend, the Colts won nine of the twelve games Arians coached, the most wins ever by an interim head coach in NFL history, and Arians was named AP Coach of the Year (Wikipedia, Colts.com).
On December 24, Chuck returned to the job, with his cancer in remission. A week later, he was back on the sideline at Lucas Oil for the season finale, a 28–16 win over Houston that finished the Colts at 11–5. Nine more wins than the year before, and a team that had been 2–14 was back in the playoffs (Colts.com). Nobody cared that they lost in the wild-card round. That season was never really about the scoreboard.
Then the Love Got Complicated
Here’s the thing about being spoiled: you don’t know you are until it stops.
Luck gave us a few more good Januaries. The 2014 team won the AFC South and made it to the AFC Championship Game. Then, in January 2019, the Colts beat Houston in the wild-card round, and we made the trip to Kansas City for the divisional round. It was a snowy afternoon at Arrowhead, and a young quarterback named Patrick Mahomes won his first playoff start, 31–13 (Kansas City Star). We didn’t know it, but that was Andrew Luck’s final game. He retired in his prime that August, and the quarterback carousel started spinning: one veteran after another, each introduced at a press conference full of hope.
And now? It has been more than a decade since the Colts won the AFC South or played for a conference title. Their last playoff win was that wild-card victory in Houston in January 2019. Their last playoff game was a 27–24 loss at Buffalo after the 2020 season. For a group that came to see January football as a birthright, that’s a long, cold stretch.
Last season might have been the cruelest of all. The 2025 Colts started 8–2. We were checking playoff scenarios. We were — let’s be honest — checking Super Bowl travel. We had no idea that watching the Colts beat Atlanta in overtime in Berlin would be the last win we’d see all year. Then they lost seven straight and finished 8–9, the first team in NFL history to start 8–2 and finish with a losing record. If you’d told me in 1998 that this team would set a record like that, I’d have bought you another round and asked what you were drinking.
This year has started 2–4, including a home loss to a previously winless Titans team. It was a perfect tailgate day with perfect weather, the roof and the big window wall wide open, and in the first half we were all smiling ear to ear. Then the Colts apparently forgot to come back from halftime. The fan in me wants to boo. The friend in me wants to call the guys and complain.
Why We Keep Showing Up
So why keep the tickets? Why keep driving down to Lucas Oil, bundling up in December, and watching another fourth-quarter lead slip away?
Because it was never really about the wins.
It’s about the tailgates and the inside jokes that are nearly 30 years old now. It’s about the incredible food and the stories we share. It’s about knowing that no matter how busy life gets, we’ll all be in the same place, shoulder to shoulder, yelling at the same thing on eight or nine Sundays a year.
Tough love is still love. You don’t walk away from family when it hits a rough patch, and the Colts are family. Frustrating, maddening, occasionally heartbreaking family — but family.
A Glass Raised to the Next Good Season
I’ll leave you with this. Somewhere in my cellar is a bottle I’ve been saving for the next time the Colts win a playoff game. I haven’t decided which one yet: a 2016 Vineyard 29 Aida Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, or an Indiana Norton to keep it home-grown. Either way, it’s been waiting a while. The cork’s probably getting impatient.
But that’s the thing about good wine and long-suffering fans: we both get better with age, and we both know how to wait.
See you at the tailgate.
Go Colts.
— Tim, Fishers Vino Vibes
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