Since it’s supposed to be a slow week, here’s an item that is best suited for consideration during a slow week.
Colts owner Jim Irsay has taken to Twitter to call me out personally for a joke included at the bottom of a Saturday item regarding Irsay’s position that marketing rights aren’t holding up an eventual contract with quarterback Andrew Luck.
Since most of the latest available pictures of Luck show him wearing a mortar board and a gown tied and draped over his shoulders like an Andy Bernard sweater, and given that the topic of the item was Luck’s marketing rights via the poorly-crafted tweets of Jim Irsay, I closed with this: “Luck likely will be free to endorse whatever he wants to endorse, including the use of images of his Stanford graduation to be included in a campaign for online courses aimed at teaching rich, middle-aged white guys how to type legibly on Twitter.”
It was a slap at Irsay’s notorious habit of oft-indecipherable Twitter messages, and using the term “rich, middle-aged white guys” was aimed at describing Irsay’s overall demographic.
Irsay didn’t see it that way. On Monday morning, Irsay started the debate with this:
Mike Florio,this is a graffiti tweet site,mis-spelling n slang rein intentionally;but 4 you to bring up race,age,eco-status is inappropriate
— Jim Irsay (@JimIrsay) June 25, 2012
Then, without a response, he said this:
Mike Florio,ur comment about"campaign for online courses aimed at..white guys how to type legibly on Twitter",what do u mean? As opposed to?
— Jim Irsay (@JimIrsay) June 25, 2012
I considered not taking the bait; after all, the guy owns an NFL team. But like I mentioned above, it’s slow right now. Also, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the not-so-subtle effort to suggest that I expect only white people to type legible Twitter message. (For the record, I expect everyone to type legibly on Twitter.) Besides, Irsay asked a question. The least I could do was answer it.
@JimIrsay . . . The full term was "rich, middle-aged white guys," and since you're asking I meant "Jim Irsay."
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) June 25, 2012
A loyal PFT reader (I knew there was at least one) thereafter responded to the kerfuffle. Irsay then replied to Wes LaFever’s tweet with this:
Oh really Wes LaFever..so you like racist slurs,age discrimination and class warfare? Is that what your cheering about? I'm asking?
— Jim Irsay (@JimIrsay) June 25, 2012
So, basically, Jim Irsay thinks I’m a racist and I don’t like old people (even though I’m now seven years into the legally-protected class of old people) and I don’t like rich people (even though I’d very much like to be one, someday).
Wow. He really has cracked the code.
Now if only I could crack the code for interpreting 99.8 percent of his Twitter messages, this job would be a lot easier.