A Colts Story Told Through Eight Games, Eight Versions of a Life, and One Parallel Resurrection

“I picked the Colts when I was thirteen. Not because of stats, but because of gold teeth, dreads, and intuition.”

INTRO

If Mickey was the inner mystic, the Colts have always been the outer one.

I didn’t inherit this team. I wasn’t born in Indiana. I wasn’t raised on blue and white.

I picked the Colts at 13 years old with a Walkman in my pocket, listening to Celine Dion and Les Misérables, and seeing Edgerrin James with gold teeth and dreadlocks and thinking:

Yeah. That one. That’s mine.

And somehow — impossibly — that choice grew into a twenty-year parallel timeline.

My life would rise, fall, and resurrect in the same rhythm that the Colts did.

Peyton. Luck. Steichen. JT.

My own health and collapse.

My burn-pit decline and the slow resurrection on the other side.

This is not a scrapbook.

It’s not “game recaps.”

It’s eight Sundays worth of geometry — snapshots you read with coffee in hand and a Colts game humming in the background.

Eight games.

Eight versions of me.

Eight timestamps running alongside the franchise I’ve loved since childhood.

This one is for Colts fans.

For the ones who feel the team in their chest.

For the ones who ride the seasons like chapters of their own story.

Welcome to The Ponies.

SUNDAY ONE — San Diego, 2008

My first Colts game after leaving the Marine Corps.

45-yard line, six rows up, tequila buzz still in my bloodstream.

Peyton Manning in person felt unreal — like watching a myth walk around in shoulder pads.

Vinatieri won it with a 51-yard field goal at the buzzer.

My shorts were soaked in beer.

A Bears fan got jumped in the parking lot.

Tom was chasing college girls.

I was on top of the world again.

I didn’t know this yet, but the Colts would always show up at the exact turning points of my life.

SUNDAY TWO — Denver, 2010

Me and Shanel.

Chemistry, chaos, Denver air, and Manning still slicing defenses like he was playing chess in real time.

This game was the last stretch of innocence — Colts dominant, me still whole.

Both timelines about to shift, neither of us knowing the cost.

SUNDAY THREE — Denver, 2016 (Part I)

By now my decline had begun.

Quiet.

Invisible.

Creeping.

Iron depletion. Cognitive slip. Emotional fragmentation I couldn’t articulate.

Luck was hurt too — the franchise held together with tape and hope.

Nicole came with me.

We fought.

The Colts lost.

And looking back at my face from that day… I see it now.

I was disappearing a little.

So was the team.

SUNDAY FOUR — Indy, 2016 (Part II)

Colts vs. Bears.

My first game at Lucas Oil.

It should’ve felt like a pilgrimage.

Instead, it ended with me and Tom arguing about life, while Luck played through pain the front office refused to acknowledge.

The whole franchise was pretending.

So was I.

Two years later, Luck would walk away.

And within that same window, my body and brain would actively collapse.

We were mirrors.

SUNDAY FIVE — Los Angeles, 2017

The worst game in Colts history.

46–9.

Scott Tolzien.

A franchise in purgatory.

I was in a Malik Hooker jersey — rookie optimism I desperately needed.

Trying to save a relationship that was already burned out.

I almost fought the crowd after a Rams fan made a dumb comment..

Not because of the game — because I didn’t recognize myself anymore.

This was the lowest Sunday of both timelines.

My collapse was in full swing, even though I didn’t know the cause yet.

Burn pits were already rewriting my future.

SUNDAY SIX — Indy vs Giants, 2018

A Hooker interception sealed it, poetic after the year before.

But inside?

I was barely holding on.

Cognition fading.

Fatigue unexplainable.

Depression deepening.

Identity slipping.

Luck’s final chapter was forming, even though we couldn’t see it.

The Colts won.

But I was losing myself.

SUNDAY SEVEN — Vegas, 2022

Marine Corps Ball weekend.

Me and Art.

Colts-Raiders.

By now I was nearly gone — hemoglobin at dangerous levels for far too long, brain operating at survival level.

Hair thinning.

Vision blurry.

Focus broken.

Still tattooing.

Still pretending.

Colts won this game too. Maybe the one highlight of the season.

I didn’t feel a thing.

That hurt worse than any loss.

A year and a half later, the ER.

The collapse.

The “your brain isn’t working” moment.

That was rock bottom for both of us.

SUNDAY EIGHT — Indy, 2024

This wasn’t resurrection yet — not fully.

This was the flicker.

5 months post-ER.

My brain barely beginning to spark in familiar ways.

My body steadier, but still nowhere near its real self.

Tattooing clearer, but still half-intuitive, half-survival.

2024 was the year where both of us — me and the Colts — were trying to remember who we used to be.

There were flashes.

Moments where you could feel something under the surface waking up.

Anthony Richardson started hot… and then pulled himself out.

It felt symbolic:

not broken, but not ready.

That was me too.

The glimpses were there — the speed, the instincts, the taste of something brighter.

But the stamina wasn’t.

The clarity wasn’t.

The trust in the system — mind or football — wasn’t complete yet.

Me and Tom went to Indy for Round 2 of our tradition.

Lucas Oil was still electric, still the best home in football, but even the stadium energy felt like a team caught mid-evolution.

And me?

I enjoyed the game.

I was present for the first time in years.

But I was still limited.

Still rebuilding.

Still carrying the last residues of a brain that had been starving for years.

Neither of us made the playoffs.

Neither of us were ready yet.

Both arcs were in that uncomfortable-but-promising stage where only the people paying attention can sense what’s coming.

Everyone overlooked the 2024 Colts the same way everyone will overlook these books until they’re suddenly undeniable.

No one saw the 2025 Colts coming.

Just like no one saw me coming back.

2024 was the inhale.

2025 is the exhale.

SUNDAY NINE — Seattle, 2025 (Dec 14)

This one hasn’t happened yet.

But both storylines already told us what it is:

Mickey Year 8
Ponies Game 9
My mind restored
My body rebuilt
Colts resurrected
JT rewriting the franchise record books
Carlie shaping a new era with boldness and vision

The geometry is too clean to ignore.

Seattle won’t be a game.

It will be the moment both timelines sync in real time.

OUTRO

Eight Sundays.

Eight snapshots.

Eight mirrors.

This isn’t a fan scrapbook.

This is the story of two resurrections that just happened to share a horseshoe.

And Dec 14th?

We add the ninth chapter — and close the loop.

THE PONIES — EIGHT SUNDAYS