Overview
- On Thursday, Sauce Gardner told The Athletic he was born on Aug. 31, 2001 and that he is 24 years old.
- Gardner and the Colts say his driver's license, birth certificate and a team-verified passport show the 2001 birth year, but one reported account says the Colts told The Athletic the passport lists 2000, leaving a narrow, unresolved discrepancy in public reporting.
- The wrong 2000 birth year appeared for years on widely used sources including Wikipedia, ESPN, Pro Football Reference, Pro Football Focus and EA Sports' Madden, and those entries helped spread the error into Google summaries and other databases.
- The NFL confirmed clubs notify the league about incorrect birthdates and players can self-verify personal data through a player portal, which is the formal route for fixing official records.
- Beyond the small factual question, the case shows how a single mistaken public entry can ripple across sports information systems and why primary documents and league procedures matter for historical accuracy and fan trust.