Colts Fan Warns Team Could Relocate to London by 2030

In a column for Stampede Blue, a longtime Indianapolis Colts fan warns that the franchise’s lease at Lucas Oil Stadium — running through 2038 but re-evaluable as early as 2030 — leaves the team with less time to turn things around than it had upon arriving in the city. If the product looks as bad in three years as it does now, he writes, the Colts could find themselves bound for London instead of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

The column comes after Sunday’s loss, which the writer declined to break down play by play. His assessment was blunt: Allen played well, Farmer was serviceable, and everything else was bad. In his view, the Colts will not be good this season no matter what the administration or the coaching staff does.

Two Season Tickets From 1985 Through 2011

That pessimism is anchored in a date, not just a mood. The lease locks the team in through 2038, but the organization can re-evaluate as early as 2030. A sale or a relocation — or both — becomes easier to justify if fans walk away.

Colts Fan Warns Team Could Relocate to London by 2030

Some fans have vented about disowning the team or giving up season tickets, but the columnist argues that doing so would hand the organization exactly the excuse it needs. He draws on personal history: he renewed two season tickets every year from 1985 through 2011, through the worst and the best the Colts offered, in that order. Paying for those tickets was not easy, he writes, but he was always afraid that if he gave them up, he would never get them back once the team finally turned the corner.

He had the newness of NFL football in Indianapolis on his side back then. The league was just an hour up the road, and he was young enough to enjoy the tailgating and the bar-hopping as much as the results. He even put money on the opposing team at times, reasoning there was no reason not to recoup the ticket price if the Colts lost; he did not mind losing the bet if Indianapolis won. None of those buffers exist this time, he argues.

The Dolt Era Was Not Simple in Hindsight

Some fans, he writes, have compared the last ten years under the current front office to the 15 pre-Peyton Manning years and called them equally bad or worse. The columnist pushes back on that comparison from his own experience. The Dolt-era teams, he says, produced multiple high draft picks that did not pan out until the franchise finally made the right call in the Manning/Leaf draft sweepstakes. That decision changed the team’s fortunes, he argues, but it took the hiring of Bill Polian to make it happen — it was not as simple as it looks in hindsight.

Building a Leadership Pipeline for Player Development

The columnist’s prescription is a chain of hires: the team first has to find a general manager — or whatever title that person prefers — who makes the right decisions, then a head coach, then position coaches who spend as much time developing players as placing them on the field, and finally players who want to win above any talent they possess. He is not optimistic about the timeline. Given the lease situation, he writes, the Colts do not have nearly as much time as they did when the Mayflower trucks arrived in 1984, and he is not sure the franchise survives unless the next hire is as good and as fast as Polian was.

On the coaching staff specifically, he questions the stubbornness of Shane in continuing to play Jones and of Lou in continuing to play ADG, writing that benching them probably would not change the outcomes of the coming games but could make the losing more palatable to watch.

How is that ray of sunshine from your resident optimist?

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