Mike Elko brings accountability to Texas A&M, which made right hire at right time | Bohls
Mike Elko races from one tour stop in Fort Worth to another in Dallas with more visits to Austin, San Antonio and Houston to come next week. But don’t dare suggest to Texas A&M's new head football coach that he’s running on fumes.
“No, come on now,” Elko cracked this week. “I’m only five months in. If I’m worn out already, I didn’t sign up for the right job.”
Exactly.
This 46-year-old coaching lifer is bustling with energy as one might expect of someone who routinely rises as early as 3:30 a.m. — yep, you read right, he’s a full-fledged morning person. And he makes it through his days without so much as one Red Bull or a steady stream of coffee. He prefers the quiet of the morning before the suffocating hubbub of each day.
Trev Alberts: I think Mike Elko can get things done
Texas A&M did land the right man for the job after a major and very public flirtation with Kentucky’s Mark Stoops. The Aggies hired solid, grounded Elko on the heels of his upgrade of the Duke program where he won 17 games in two seasons. The Blue Devils hadn’t done that in eight years.
He’s not flashy but instead flush with confidence. He knows what he’s doing. He’s sharp. He’s more R.C. Slocum and Mike Sherman than he is anywhere close to Jimbo Fisher or Kevin Sumlin.
"I didn't really know Mike, but I respected him from afar," said new A&M athletic director Trev Alberts, who has picked Elko's brain when sitting next to him at A&M baseball games. "I know Mike is an extraordinary, intelligent person. He's very low-maintenance with a genuine sense of humility. He doesn't have a big ego, and I think he can get things done."
More: Texas football season countdown begins and it will start off with a bang | Bohls
Elko gets his adrenaline rush from recruiting players, navigating a transfer portal that has brought in 23 new Aggies, constantly evaluating his current roster including only 10 returning starters — just four on defense — and also preparing for his first season as head coach in the meat-grinder that is the SEC.
He has plenty to keep him busy. In between shoring up support since the school's wildly extravagant breakup with Fisher and planning for a pretty favorable schedule that includes home games with Notre Dame and his former Duke quarterback Riley Leonard, plus LSU and Texas and that bypasses Alabama and Georgia, Elko is in full stride.
He’s not trash-texted the Hoosiers-like inspiring Leonard or anything. “I am not. I’m doing my best not to get him riled up.”
Some have likened the mild-mannered but grounded and very driven coach to the second coming of Slocum, the consummate beloved Aggies coach who was a defensive mastermind and took football to incredible heights, but not the ultimate. And Elko figures to bring a fierce brand of a new version of the Wrecking Crew defense to Kyle Field.
The differences between Mike Elko and Jimbo Fisher
By most accounts, Elko, too, is a Coach Everyman who checks every box. Alberts calls him a "genuine, authentic man who is very transparent with people, and young people and their parents immediately gravitate to that."
“I call him the common man’s coach,” said one Aggies insider. “He’s not a celebrity coach.”
Elko’s a common man’s coach with an uncommon journey and a strong if safe hire for A&M and its underachieving football program that’s still in search of its first SEC title since joining the league in 2012.
More: LISTEN: Texas softball coach Mike White on NCAA title expectations, Oklahoma Sooners, LHN
Elko frequently travels with no entourage while Fisher’s was, uh, crowded. Elko very early showed up alone before the Texas High School Coaches Association board to repair any relationship issues and remind them that their solid relationship is “critical,” adding that as Aggies coach he has “an obligation to be a resource to them.”
He offered to drive to Dallas for Wednesday’s coach’s night event to address more than 1,300 Aggies where a silent auction of 180 items of A&M merchandise hoped to raise up to $350,000 to the school’s NIL coffers. But organizers insisted on bringing him via private jet. Elko’s not about pretense.
He’s no Jimbo Fisher, the speed-talking West Virginian who was more flop than flash in six very uneven seasons. While neither is Elko a native Texan, he does embody a lot of the same qualities Texans admire like accountability and responsibility and hard work. Some devoted Aggies have taken to calling themselves “Elko-holics,” and it may take 12 steps or more to rebuild this franchise.
Just don’t call Elko an old-school coach. He doesn’t care for the negative connotations some attach to that label.
“I certainly wouldn’t use that term,” he said. “You think of ‘old school’ as unapproachable, rough, someone who doesn’t talk to kids. I don’t think any of that is me.”
More: Texas ex Adonai Mitchell will use his NFL draft slight to become a Colts star | Golden
Staying humble, preaching accountability
Elko has very few rules. He doesn’t forbid players from wearing earrings or bandanas, doesn’t search dorm rooms, doesn’t encroach on players’ privacy. He’s not into a strict dress code. He’s fine with music in the locker room. He is, however, no-nonsense and all about firm discipline and stern, honest talk when necessary. He doesn’t tolerate lazy steps or lack of effort, which frequently cropped up in the Fisher era.
“We’re more, ‘Do what you’re supposed to do and be a man of your word,’“ Elko said. “There is a level of accountability.”
At his first team meeting with his players, he locked the entry to the room at the designated starting time while a couple of late-comers banged on the wrong side of the door. “It was a transition for sure,” Elko said. “We wanted to set a cultural tone that things are going to be changing.”
That said, he declined to be drawn into any conversation about his predecessor — who hired Elko from Notre Dame to begin his Aggies regime — and a perceived lack of discipline and organization. “I’m not going to get into that.”
Who’d blame him? Save for its bank account, A&M has disconnected from Fisher, who took the football program to the brink of its first College Football Playoff berth, beat his nemesis Nick Saban and once signed the best recruiting class in history, yet splintered with a breakdown of any form of team chemistry or cohesion and an inability to win close games or on the road. The school owed Fisher $77.6 million and still is on the tab for almost $7.3 million a year for the next eight years.
More: Five softball teams that could stand in the way of a Texas-Oklahoma WCWS rematch
Even Elko would have been awestruck if someone had told him decades ago that this Ivy Leaguer from New Jersey would be hired to lead a program in the deep South and eventually evolve into one of the top 20 highest-paid coaches in the premier conference of college football after just two brief seasons at Duke. A&M signed him to a six-year deal totaling $42 million with more incentives like $3.5 million if he wins the CFP than the fully guaranteed $95 million extension for Fisher.
“I grew up in a very humble upbringing and my wife did the same,” said Elko, whose mother worked at the post office and dad was a third-rail technician for Amtrak. “My first defensive coordinator job paid me $27,000. I never knew what this was what life would become, but I’m very confident in who I am as a football coach.”
Looking to make history in College Station
Elko had studied history at Penn and hopes to make some at A&M, a place that hasn’t won a football national championship since 1939 or a conference title since 1997.
“History was my backup plan,” Elko said. “After my sophomore year, I knew I wanted to do the coaching thing. I became a U.S. history major if I had to fall back on high school coaching.”
He never needed it.
Elko’s first job was as a wide receiver grad assistant at Stony Brook, but this Penn safety quickly found his niche and became a defensive coordinator at the tender age of 23. He was once a high school quarterback and counts his time with offensive-minded head coaches like Fisher, Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson and then-Irish coach Brian Kelly as a great tutorial on that side of the ball.
He’s got a talented quarterback in Conner Weigman, who started four games before injuring a foot that still isn’t fully healed, as well as a stout defensive line with added Purdue edge rusher Nic Scourton and several centers and defensive backs. But A&M has to bolster its secondary and offensive line and find some impact receivers. “Conner’s upside is through the roof,” he said.
More: It took awhile to get here, but Hutto's Gage Boehm is starring on the Texas baseball team
But immediate results could be anyone’s guess this season.
At best, a 9-3 record might be A&M’s highest ceiling unless Elko and what the Aggie insider said is the school’s $12 million NIL football payroll works even bigger magic. But Elko was a strong hire.
“Honestly, everyone wants to be in the SEC. We all know that,” Elko said. “But my family and I thought it was a good fit. It’s a blue-collar town.”
He and his wife liked the local high schools, the livability of the area and the quality of life. He isn’t a big hobby guy but calls his family “lake people” and spends his off hours with his three children’s activities like baseball for his oldest son, football and lacrosse for his youngest and cheerleading for his daughter.
The Elkos were more than familiar with the place after he spent four seasons as Fisher’s very competent defensive coordinator from 2018 to 2021.
During his previous stay in College Station, the Aggies posted a 34-14 record along with three bowl wins and a pair of second-place finishes in the grueling SEC West. They’re comfortable there.
As to the state of the program he has inherited, Elko is only looking in one direction.
“What we focus on is less on what we haven’t done and more on what we have to do,” he said. “We want to be a blue-collar team, a team that’s willing to work and grind, a team that buys in and plays the right way, and ultimately that wins.”
And if it doesn’t happen right away, well, he’ll be up long before sunrise tomorrow to make more progress.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Mike Elko ready to take on early sunrise and SEC at Texas A&M
