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San Antonio Commanders coach Mike Riley jokes that he’s a consultant with Oregon State by day and an Alliance of American Football head coach by night.

Commanders general manager Daryl Johnston, a former Dallas Cowboys fullback who juggles his AAF duties while working as an NFL analyst on Fox broadcasts, said the process has been a grind.

“It’s been hard. Long days. It’s a taste of a true startup,” Johnston said. “There are some days where at 3 in the afternoon, you’re wondering what you got yourself into, and by 8 at night you’re pretty excited about how the day went. So it’s been fun. I’ve enjoyed it.”

The Commanders are set to make their inaugural kickoff in the new league Feb. 9, and Riley and Johnston said all the necessary pieces are coming together.

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With time, Riley said many of his conversations have started to shift from issues such as staffing and facilities toward on-field concerns such as the roster and schematics.

“It’s kind of morphed from the logistics part,” Riley said. “We’re figuring out those dates and all of those other things that we’ve talked about, where we’re going to be and how we’re going to do it. It’s morphed into more football now, since we’re getting closer.”

Riley said his coaching staff is in place, though to this point the AAF has only announced defensive coordinator Jim Grobe, defensive backs coach Bill Bradley and outside linebackers coach Joe Baker.

Riley met with those three in San Antonio two weeks ago, and he’s been coordinating with his offensive assistants via phone. The AAF has announced 63 players signed to the Commanders, and teams will be limited to 50-man rosters during the season.

“We’re doing some research on it,” Riley said. “To really find out how it’s all going to basically come to a conclusion with the roster, I think we’ll find out a lot during camp.”

Quarterbacks signed to the Alliance will be in San Antonio for a quarterbacks-only camp Nov. 12-15, with a quarterback draft to follow later in the month.

The Commanders will then meet for minicamp in early December, mostly for medical evaluations and onboarding in San Antonio, Johnston said.

After a break for the holidays, coaches and staff will return to San Antonio on Jan. 4 for training camp, which runs up to the start of the season.

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“We think we’re in pretty good shape,” Johnston said. “We’ve kind of had a plan from the start, and we’ve stuck to it. A little methodical, probably, in some people’s opinions, but I’m very grateful to be able to work with these guys.”

Johnston said the Commanders’ staff will be based out of the Alamodome, and the team is close to finalizing where the players will practice, train and receive medical treatment. The AAF is also working to secure venues for training camp with all eight teams converging in San Antonio in January.

Johnston said building the San Antonio roster has been his No. 1 priority. He’s used his connections to the Cowboys to acquire film while leaning on evaluations from Commanders director of football operations John Peterson and player personnel director Bob Morris.

San Antonio’s roster will consist of players from an allocation area defined by the league. The Commanders’ territory includes Texas and Oklahoma colleges — with the exception of UTEP and Texas Tech — and players formerly signed to pro contracts with the Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles and the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.

“They’re actually reaching out to us,” Johnston said. “And we have the information of who is allocated to us, so we’re reaching out to some people and starting dialogues and letting them know what the Alliance is all about and easing some of their concerns or questions that they have.”

Johnston said he’ll be in San Antonio for the duration of training camp and most of the spring season, commuting from his home in Dallas so he can spend time with his daughter Evan, who is a junior in high school. Riley said he’ll make his full-time transition to San Antonio at the end of November.

“It’s been the most enjoyable part of this whole process to see the excitement that we have with the people in San Antonio,” Johnston said.