Shock’s marriage suffers first spat

Message boards are the crack houses of the Internet, but you meet the most interesting people there.

For instance, a cruise through the Spokane Shock’s free marketplace of ideas after their abrupt exit from the af2 playoffs the other day unearthed this nugget:

“I was really sad to see our ‘home field advantage’ turn into more of an advantage for Louisville than for our own team. When you boo your own QB from the first incomplete pass he throws and do your best to let him know you’re not behind him (even when the game is still very much in reach) and chant for the backup all game, you are turning one of our greatest assets into a liability. Last night, unfortunately, the 9th man didn’t do much to pick up our team. I’m sad to say that I think our chances of coming back would have been better on the road.”

The biggest upset was that the poster signed his name in what normally is a clubhouse for the courage impaired.

It was Adam Nebeker.

He’s the Shock’s general manager.

And the honeymoon is so over.

It is one thing for a team’s customers to rage and vent and stew over their team’s poor performance. It’s what they do. Fan, we’re often reminded, is short for fanatic, as loon is short for lunatic. Just which “tic” defines the person who would get that lathered up over indoor minor league football and guys cashing $200 paychecks is a good starting point for an abnormal psychology curriculum.

But it is quite another thing when management decides to vent back, to the point of suggesting a road game would have been preferable to playing at home.

Because even if it’s right, it’s wrong.

Nebeker may have sensed as much and returned to his keyboard a couple of days later to issue an apology “if anybody took it in the wrong way,” as he said in an interview Tuesday.

Still, it was pretty hard to miss the meaning in some of his original remarks:

“Those of you who like to brag about how you’re such better fans than those who don’t cheer as loud as you when things are going well, are mostly the same ones who made our own team and coaches feel unwelcome in their own building at a time when we needed the support of the fans the most.”

Just how he was able to make this determination is unclear, unless all those braggarts decided to put their screen aliases over the “9” on their souvenir Shock jerseys.

When reached on Tuesday, Nebeker took pains to explain that he was upset – and justifiably so – over the conduct of a number of customers who occupied seats close behind the team bench. Whether they were beered up or brain dead or both, they took their heckling of coach Adam Shackleford and his players to “vulgar and obscene levels,” the GM said.

“Two of our players had to be restrained from going after fans,” Nebeker reported. “There were racial remarks made. We had to move the coach’s wife back behind the end zone. I think most of our fans are extremely loyal and great fans, but my extreme displeasure and the comments about losing some of our home-field advantage were due to the one percent of the fans who went way out of line and did it to get in the heads of our own players – and that was clearly their intent.”

There is no question that the atmosphere at the Arena was less than nurturing, but it’s something that’s been brewing all season – and, in fact, something Nebeker said management was prepared for nearly from the moment last year’s coach, Chris Siegfried, resigned after taking Spokane to the af2 championship in the club’s first year of existence.

“Whoever we brought in was going to be perceived as something less,” Nebeker said, “unless we won another championship.”

And probably even if they’d won it all again. Fans are funny that way. Issues with quarterback Andrico Hines gave them another bottle for their bile, even as he was leading the Shock to 10 of their 12 victories.

Apparently, Vince Lombardi was wrong – winning isn’t the only thing.

Nebeker on Tuesday endorsed Shackleford’s handling of the quarterbacks and indeed Shackleford himself, saying management was “very pleased” – with everything but how the season ended. He doesn’t begrudge any of the Shock’s constituency the right to dissent; he does begrudge the hatefulness.

But really, there is little percentage in getting into an on-line spitting contest with the customers on any level, particularly when it veered toward the personal. It wasn’t quite the old Lee Elia rant at Wrigley Field fans (“85 percent of the world is working, the other 15 percent come out here”), but you let Crowd Management Services take care of the cretins and you swallow whatever insinuations you’d like to make.

“At no point did I say we lost the game because of our fans,” Nebeker protested.

No, but the minute you have to resort to clarifications, you know how your message has been received.

And if you don’t, there’s always someone on a message board who’ll tell you.