Blanchette: Spokane Empire, Iowa Barnstormers have lot in common

Spokane and Des Moines are 1,200 miles apart and next-door neighbors on any number of demographic breakdowns.

City population. TV market size. Most skywalk bridges.

And shadow movements in the world of indoor football.

On Friday evening, they catch up with one another again at the Spokane Arena – the Iowa Barnstormers visiting town to meet the Sh … sorry, Empire. Gonna outgrow that eventually, promise. Might say “Shempire” a few more times, though. And wouldn’t one of the Stooges make for a great mascot?

Anyway, it’s the Barnstormers and Empire and the brave, new world of the Indoor Football League – the brave being those customers who stuck it out for all 3 hours, 35 minutes of the Empire’s home debut a few weeks back when the yellow flags spent more time on the turf than in the referees’ pockets.

“Well, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed,” said Iowa vice president and chief operating officer John Pettit. “The officiating hasn’t gotten better.”

Wha?

“Just kidding,” he said, chuckling.

Who says the stolid sons of Iowa have no sense of humor?

Pettit and team president Jeff Lamberti head the group that took the Barnstormers out of the Arena Football League and into the IFL a year before Spokane’s ownership made the same move this season – the road map for secession, if you will.

“We probably started looking at it back in 2013 because of the problems we were having with the AFL,” Pettit said. “Teams were constantly folding, the league would keep taking them over and we would have to pay for them. We couldn’t afford to pay for everybody else’s bills. They were looking for big-market teams. In Iowa, we didn’t fit their plan.”

The Barnstormers got into the Arena game about a decade before Spokane, but the AFL franchise moved to New York in 2001. They made a new start as an af2 team that year but suspended operations after just a season, coming back in 2008 – after Spokane had joined the league. Two years later, in the wake of the original AFL bankruptcy and the disintegration of the af2, both teams threw in with the new AFL.

Spokane, as it had been in af2, was an overnight success, winning the championship.

Iowa never made the playoffs in five years.

But both franchises saw the same slippage in attendance (more than 20 percent over five years), the same increasing difficulty in attracting difference-making talent and the same fiscal madness. It was Iowa that made the first move.

“The fans here in Iowa love the indoor game,” Pettit said, “and this was the only way we could make it work.”

But they faced the same damage-control job Empire management faces now – playing in a $250-a-game league perceived as a lesser product, without the premier quarterbacks and with scores as likely to be in the 30s as in the 60s.

It’s not an easy sell. In its first year in the IFL, Iowa saw its average attendance drop from 8,201 in the AFL to 6,421. Likewise, Spokane – which averaged 8,034 in its last AFL season – drew just 6,325 on IFL opening night.

“We saw some drop-off,” Pettit admitted, “but we were getting that in the AFL, too. We definitely had fans that were mad and upset – sometimes upset that their favorite players weren’t going to be here. But we found as we went, we picked up some new fans – and some of the old ones who said they’d never come again came back, especially when we started winning at the end of the season.”

Oh, right. Winning. The secret ingredient.

It didn’t help the Barnstormers last year that they opened the season with four road games and a 2-6 record. Just like it didn’t help the Empire’s early momentum and profile to have three bye weeks in a month. The IFL bounces troubled teams instead of bailing them out, but it comes at a scheduling cost.

Empire management has advanced the conceit that Spokane’s indoor heritage makes Spokane a more attractive destination for talent than some of their IFL rivals. That didn’t work out for Iowa in year one – the Barnstormers missed the playoffs yet again. With a new coach new to the IFL game, Iowa’s learning curve may have been longer.

Otherwise, Pettit’s sales pitch is an echo of the Empire’s – it’s still a development league with promising players, it’s closer to outdoor football with an actual running game, defense can be played without the linebackers all boxed up by the rules. That can take time to resonate, though.

What probably prevented a bigger fan exodus, he noted, was the fact that “no matter what league we were in, we were still the Iowa Barnstormers, and that’s a name that means something to people.”

Spokane, meanwhile, is breaking in a new name as well as a new game. But at least it’s keeping familiar company.