John Blanchette: Empire coach Adam Shackleford loves interaction with fans

Adam Shackleford has a high-profile job he performs in front of 5,000 people a night, and a former lineman’s physique that makes it hard to go incognito outside the dasher boards. Not that he tries.

So whether he’s ordering dinner off the menu with his family at a Spokane Valley eatery or ordering a deep pass off the play sheet he carries during Spokane Empire games or checking the flip card in front of him as a TV analyst for SWX, he cuts a pretty wide swath. He’s comfortable with that, and we with him. We know who he is.

Here.

Other places, he can cross people up.

“In my younger days, I was in the airport in Hawaii and a young man thought I was John Kruk and asked me for an autograph,” Shackleford said. “I had to tell him I wasn’t John Kruk. I sure couldn’t hit a baseball like John Kruk.”

Another time, back in his days as offensive coordinator with Louisville in the old af2, he walked into an arena in Manchester, N.H., and was greeted by fans hollering, “Andy Reid!”

“I just wish I’d had Andy Reid’s paycheck,” he sighed.

But no doppelganger moments in Spokane, where he can “just enjoy being Coach Shack.”

And for 10 years on now, albeit slightly interrupted.

It was a decade back that Shackleford showed up in our city with his bride of three weeks, Migdalia, and the impossible task of one-upping a departed coach who’d taken Spokane to a championship in its first crack at indoor football. That was also two leagues and one franchise rebrand ago.

Next to nothing is the same as it was – colors, rules, ownership – except the coach and some stubborn season ticket holders.

The Empire open their second Indoor Football League season on Thursday night against the Green Bay Blizzard -– who, as coincidence would have it, were part of the old af2 when Spokane first tried on indoor football for size as the Shock in 2006. In fact, it was the Blizzard that Spokane beat in ArenaCup VII in Puerto Rico that summer in front of a crowd that could have fit into the cockfighting arena down the street.

Coach Chris Siegfried used that championship season as a launching pad to the Arena Football League, and set the table for Shack.

“I’d been on three or four interviews,” he recalled. “I kept hearing, ‘Our concern is that you don’t have head coaching experience.’ Everybody runs into that, right? At the time, I was with Louisville in the summer and my alma mater, Anderson University, in the fall and I remember being on the practice field and getting the call offering me the job.

“It was a great first job. I felt lucky to have it.”

It seemed mutual. Shack won 49 of 57 games and another ArenaCup. Then the franchise took the bold step into the AFL and the original ownership concluded that Shackleford was not the bold leader – or something – his assistant, Rob Keefe, was. It was a tacky episode, even put in the context of Spokane winning the AFL that very first season.

“But I’m not sure how it would have worked out between me and (former owner) Brady Nelson anyway,” Shackleford said. “I don’t think I would have lasted. It costs a lot of money to be in that league and I’m not sure they had the resources to sustain it. I like the way we do things now.”

It’s funny how things work out. Money did get tight. Nelson sold his majority stake to Nader Naini. AFL members like Green Bay and Iowa bailed for the cheaper IFL, joined last year by Spokane and this spring by the Arizona Rattlers.

And last year, Shack came back.

He hadn’t really been gone. Dumped by the Shock, he landed a job with the Tri-Cities Fever in the IFL – but he kept his home and commuted from Spokane. Sons Elijah and Caleb, now 9 and 7, were born here.

He got the Empire to the IFL title game a year ago, but understands part of the undertaking now is fan outreach and trying to salvage – and rebuild – a following. The dropoff at the gate – about 2,800 a game in 2016 from the last AFL season – is concerning, but he still insists it’s a better game just in search of an audience.

And, hey, the AFL is down to four lonesome teams clinging to a cliff. Is that the product people are pining for?

“It gives us credibility as an organization when we’re recognized,” Shackleford said. “I enjoy that interaction with fans – even the fans who say, ‘Hey, we were Shock fans and we miss those days.’ Those were great days. I miss them, too.”

They don’t have to miss the coach. He’s the same old Shack.