To some fans, football is football whether it is preseason, the regular season, or playoffs. Lots of folks, however, don’t care a whole lot for the preseason. To them if the starters are not playing, they don’t care.

Colts fans, whether they are preseason haters or lovers, have an even bigger reason to attend the Colts preseason home opener Friday night at Lucas Oil Stadium. It is not to show their support and to show the team how much they care, but it’s to show the community how much they do.

By now, the world has heard of the stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair last weekend. In case you haven’t, right before Sugarland was scheduled to take the stage an incredibly strong gust of wind blew the stage over and it collapsed on the crowd. Five people were killed and dozens more injured.

The owner of the Indianapolis Colts, Jim Irsay, has agreed to make a donation to the Indiana State Fair Remembrance Fund, a fund that was created to help those that were injured or lost loved ones due to the tragic accident, for each ticket taken at the gate.

The team is also encouraging fans to donate at the game and to text in donations.

I have to give Irsay credit for this. The overall dollar amount might not add up to a lot, but if you think about it, the cost of a funeral these days can easily run a cool $10,000. I have no clue if that is what the money is going to go towards, but I’d imagine that would be one of the many things that the Fund is looking to help the victims with.

So if you have tickets for the game tonight you better go. Not only will you get to see some good football, but you will be helping your community out in the process.

As for the Colts, tonight we get a step closer to getting back into regular season form. The team broke camp on Thursday and is back in town for the duration of the 2011 season. If the Colts don’t look the greatest—don’t worry. Preseason has never looked too kind on the Colts but the boys will be ready to go when they head down to Houston for week one.