Shad Khan’s whole life has been about hope, and he’s not giving up on the Jaguars

CHICAGO -– Near streets where he frolicked as a broke-but-buoyant teenager fresh from Pakistan in the 1960s, Shahid Khan on a recent warm afternoon is relaxing in his high-rise office/home. It exhibits a grand Lake Michigan, array of skyscrapers view.

He is calm. He is pensive.

He is Muslim, the first and only minority sole owner of a National Football League team.

His Jacksonville Jaguars, which he purchased in 2011, are simply one additional testament to his staggering symbolism as an American marvel. Shahid Khan, known as Shad, at age 16 in January 1967 arrived in America from Pakistan. He enrolled at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and on the same day gained a $1.20-an-hour dishwashing job at a near-campus Greek diner on Wright Street.

“I was happy, thrilled to find work on that day,” Khan, now 67, recalled. “There was 27 inches of snow. It was cold. But I was full of hope. I was excited for the chance.”

Today, through his bumper/auto parts conglomerate, his fortune is more than $8 billion.

Yet, his richness is not defined in his money any more than his money shelters him from racism.

In a nation, in an NFL today where racial and social strife are interlocking in rampant ways, Khan has a story to tell about his experience. His hope.

“There was a severity in the Chicago area in ’67 when I arrived here due to civil rights, but we began to move beyond that in color and religion,” he said. “But 9/11 (in 2001) began to change that for Muslims. It was kind of an awakening.

”Every international flight I was on for a few years after that, I was the one pulled off the plane for further screening. My wife and I began to joke about it. As agents would enter, we’d say to the other passengers, ‘They’re coming for us. Let’s get this over with so we can go.’ But there was an incident in Detroit in 2005 that was a watershed moment for me.

“The security grilled me for three hours. I had been visiting one of my plants in Windsor (Canada). Three hours! I had enough. I made a few calls. They finally let me go. I got a letter later (one dated Aug. 22, 2006) from the U.S. government apologizing. It assured me that this would not happen again.”

But even today, Khan takes no chances.

Every time he has traveled since, he carries that government-issued letter, his passport, and a small handful of other important identity papers in a clear, plastic folder. It is always with him, accessible. He knows instantly, exactly where to find it in his briefcase. The letter is never folded. Eleven years later, it remains crisp. Unblemished.

He is an international businessman, the leader of more than 30,000 employees in more than 60 auto-part plants across the world. He is the Jaguars’ anchor.

But that clear, plastic folder might as well be for Khan an additional finger, an extra eye. He goes, he comes, it goes, it comes with him.

Every single day.

“Like it or not, I am going to be judged just by who I am,” Khan said. “I know that I am going to have to set a good example.”

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Khan says he has not met that sort of resistance among the other 31 NFL owners. He describes them as “welcoming” from the start. Though his signature handlebar mustache is so different from them and though the Muslim traditional attire he occasionally wears is so stark from their looks, he has found a comfortable niche among them.

He enters his sixth NFL season as Jaguars owner hoping to unlock keys in football as he has in business. His Jaguars have gone 2-14, 4-12, 3-13, 5-11, and 3-13. He is on his second general manager, his third head coach, and this year has added Tom Coughlin as an additional layer of football operations management.

Khan is embarrassed by the Jaguars’ results.

He reluctantly agreed to this interview — “Let’s win some games, first,” he repeated — before finally acknowledging that this Jaguars season has promise and that his story in today’s NFL and national, social justice landscape should be imparted.

He met Donald Trump well before Trump became president.

“I thought the country was ready for change,” Khan said. “He (Trump) just said what he needed to say to get elected. But some things are happening with this administration that are unbearable and almost unacceptable. Our only hope now is in the judicial branch.”

The country just has to dust itself off, Khan said.

He often has.

He has reinvented himself a few times, working at an auto plant in college and then buying it, building an international empire, buying the Jaguars after originally in 2010 falling short of gaining a 60 percent interest in the Rams.

The Jaguars losing, though, has stung him.

“My approach with the franchise has been that I know business but I don’t want to micromanage the football,” Khan said. “I have tried to give our people the resources to be successful.”

His brow becomes deeply furrowed.

“We haven’t won, obviously,” Khan said.

So, he keeps building the culture, integrating change, counting on Coughlin, general manager Dave Caldwell, and head coach Doug Marrone this season in their first as a working trio to turn the Jaguars upward.

He is counting on starting quarterback Blake Bortles to do this.

“But he (Bortles) can’t do it by himself,” Khan said.

A bevy of critics think Bortles can’t do it at all.

Others think this is the season the Jaguars finally rise under Khan.

“He is a phenomenal, worldwide business leader, a thinker, a doer,” Coughlin said. “He is committed to winning. There is no quick fix in changing a culture, an attitude. But everyone here is working on the mental toughness, the physical toughness, the ability to run the ball, not turning the ball over. It’s an easier thing to speak than to do. He is not always here because of his various business ventures around the world. But he is very much involved and in constant communication.

“To win here would place his success in the realm of professional football. The passion, the satisfaction, the feeling of winning and success, from an emotional standpoint, would mean so much to him. This is very important to Shad.”

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One of Khan’s later jobs in college was working with the Illinois highway department. He would travel to companies’ gravel pits and test their gravel. He would place the gravel residue in a shaker tube, give it a shake and twirl, and see how it settled compared to four different markers on the tube. That would determine if the gravel was fit for use.

He has been sifting through America, through the Jaguars, giving it all a shake and a twirl. His NFL peers notice his resiliency and more.

“A very impressive individual, a completely self-made guy, a guy working for a company while in school that he bought as well as owning an NFL team,” Giants owner John Mara said. “Very engaging, thoughtful, a great contributor to the league. He serves on the Health and Safety Committee, which I am on, and he is an impressive contributor there. He chairs the Business Ventures Committee, very important to the ownership. He’s on the Finance Committee. He’s worked with the television group. That’s a lot of important contributions in five years of ownership.

“He has a challenging, smaller market in Jacksonville and has found a creative approach to include London games in that model. (His being a minority) is a very important factor for our league, for inclusion, for the quintessential American Dream. He built a fabulous company and remains a humble, down-to-earth guy we all respect. He has the ability to become one of the best owners in the NFL, if he isn’t already. We listen, respect and like him — that is a very rare combination among us.”

Khan believes that manufacturing jobs still have a huge role to play in America. That especially for those who do not have college degrees, the option of working in a factory and making fair wages that support their families is crucial. He said that is how middle-class America was built. He said he has tried to model his business to keep those opportunities for the middle-class and for all in mind.

“When I didn’t get the Rams, I got up and dusted myself off,” Khan said.

He did that as a dishwasher. As a highway worker. In international business.

He keeps doing it as the Jaguars owner.

“I love football,” he said. “I love the NFL.”

And that’s with all of the losing.

He can only imagine how that love would increase, what a “dust up” this season holds if the Jaguars turn losing into winning.