Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay looks and sounds like Johnny Cash, attired in black and speaking in a gravelly voice. It’s apropos. Irsay is in the middle of a national tour with his all-star band and his rock, sports and history collection, which includes vintage models once owned by Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Prince and Kurt Cobain and is insured for more than $200 million. “It is unquestionably the greatest guitar collection in the world,” he boasted.
The Jim Irsay Band’s next stop will be in San Francisco, where they will play a free concert Saturday at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. “It’s been an incredible journey,” Irsay said during a wide-ranging, hour-long Zoom interview late Monday, in which he veered from behind-the-scenes name dropping about rock ‘n’ roll royalty (Bob Dylan teaching him the importance of self-reinvention) to his decades as a power broker in the NFL (league co-founder George Halas attending Irsay’s 1980 wedding). Throughout, the eclectic Irsay sprinkled in his thoughts on spiritualism. With a life defined by the slam-bang worlds of professional football and rock music, Irsay believes the NFL will only get richer through lucrative gaming and entertainment ventures, pushing franchise values to $30 billion and leading to a European division in 10 to 20 years. (Forbes ranks the Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots as the mos …