College Football Coach Hire Grades: Texas A&M

Texas A&M Aggies: Mike Elko

Why the job was open: Texas A&M is a program with an insane amount of resources in this NIL era, money is pretty much fake to the donors they have. As a result, they’ve run out of patience with not winning. Jimbo Fisher brought some bright spots, their 2020 season and an upset win over Alabama in 2021, but those moments were too few and far between, the Aggies underachieved and Jimbo’s buyout in excess of 77 MILLION dollars was not enough to deter them from a change. Once they made that move, Mark Stoops’ name was briefly floated out as a replacement and it was quickly rejected.

Coach Profile: Mike Elko spent a lot of his early career on staff with Dave Clawson, but his first DC job was actually for the now defunct Hofstra program. He rejoined Clawson at Bowling Green in 2009 and Hofstra’s football program ended later that year. He remained at BG until 2013, a time that ended with a Mac championship win over a ranked NIU team, one of my favorite games I’ve ever attended. Clawson got the Wake Forest job, and what do you know? Elko went with him! In 2017 Elko moved to Notre Dame as their DC, and after a strong year there he joined Jimbo’s staff at Texas A&M. That would be his final stop before he finally became the HC at Duke in 2022, he took over a program that had struggled miserably for a few years and found instant success with an incredible 9-4 season that ended with a bowl win. Elko’s run with Duke hit a fever pitch to open the 2023 season with a stunning 28-7 home win over Clemson on the opening Monday night. Duke spent a lot of time in the top 25 and had a great team, unfortunately injuries became their undoing late and a promising season stumbled to a 7-5 finish.

Why he will succeed: Mike Elko has succeeded everywhere he’s been, including Duke. Duke football is a tough job and he made it look easy. If you can succeed there you can succeed just about anywhere. There is also no reason why this program can’t succeed, they literally have everything needed to become a powerhouse. More money than anyone, more NIL funds than anyone, all that’s been missing is the right coach.

What obstacles are in the way of success: All that money coming in can also lead to power trips. Often times there’s too many cooks in the kitchen, a lot of boosters have different ideas how they want things to go. There’s historically been a lot of dysfunction with the administration that holds the Aggies program back as well. Finally, it’s just the fact that things haven’t gone well, even when it feels like things are in place.

Grade: A – I think Texas A&M may have finally gotten it right with this hire. No it isn’t a huge headline move like Jimbo was, but it also is a move where they simply brought in a great coach who’s been here before and understands this program. Fair or not this will always be compared to hiring Mark Stoops. I didn’t think Stoops was that bad, he’s sustained success over a very long period at Kentucky, with a lot of seasons at or near the ceiling for that program. The concern with Stoops is he seems out of touch with his OC hires, his track record hasn’t been good with those and considering offense has been the problem here, it was a risk A&M couldn’t take. Elko is not a flashy hire, but this is a program that’s had just about enough of those as it is.