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Dave Wilson
THE TIMING SHOULD have been perfect.
It was the bye week, just four days after one of the biggest wins in Texas A&M history, a 41-40 comeback win over No. 8 Notre Dame in South Bend. Marcel Reed marched the Aggies down the field on a 13-play, 74-yard drive that ended with an 11-yard fourth-down touchdown pass to Nate Boerkircher with 13 seconds left.
The methodical game-winning drive defied not only Touchdown Jesus, but years of Texas A&M history, marking its first win in a ranked nonconference matchup since 1979 and the first road win over a ranked opponent in 13 tries over more than a decade.
Now, coach Mike Elko was at a lectern to talk about the state of the Aggies. Time for a victory lap, right?
Not quite. When Elko entered that Marriott ballroom in Houston, where fans had paid as much as $2,500 for a table, to a standing ovation, he joked that nobody would be standing if Reed hadn’t completed that pass. On the drive over, he had pondered what the event would have been like if the Aggies hadn’t scored. All of seven minutes later, he got a question from the back of the room. He seemed to know what was coming. «Uh-oh,» he said with a bemused look. «I’m ready.»
There’s a condition that has developed around Aggieland, the fan said, and she admitted they’ve got it bad. The fans have been burned so many times after getting their hopes up that they can only see futures in which things go wrong. So coming off this historic win, Elko was asked how they can believe the bottom’s not going to drop out any day again.
he made a 760 on the math portion of the SAT — and earned a scholarship to Penn.
The coach who recruited him, Al Bagnoli, was the Quakers’ coach for 23 years. He coached plenty of overachievers — future doctors, lawyers, financiers — but said Elko, who played safety for him from 1995 to 1998, was the smartest player he has ever had.
«We noticed that he had a tremendous amount of intellectual ability to comprehend things and understand concepts of not only what he was doing within a scheme, but also what the guy next to him was doing and the guy next to that guy was doing,» Bagnoli said. «He had a rare ability. The only other guy like that I could really think of that I’ve coached was Kevin Stefanski, with the Browns now.»
When Elko went to Bagnoli to tell him he wanted to go into coaching, Bagnoli refused to help him, saying it’s a hard life and he’s smart enough to do something else. But he eventually relented. Elko’s first step was a graduate assistant job at Stony Brook. He worked his way up to places like the Merchant Marine Academy and Hofstra. At each stop, his teams were better than they’d ever been before or since.
In 2022, in his first year of his first head coaching job, he took over a Duke team coming off a 3-9 season, including going 0-8 in the ACC. After the media poll picked the Blue Devils to finish last in the league, they finished 8-4 — the four losses were by a total of 16 points — and 5-3 in the conference, including a win at Miami. He has done more with less for decades. Now he has a chance to do more with more. In November, when Elko signed a six-year contract extension that will pay him an average of over $11 million a year, he said as much.
«When I was a [graduate assistant] at Stony Brook, they were redoing the stadium, we were in trailers, that was our office,» Elko said. «Because I was the GA, my desk happened to be right next to the bathroom. As I was sitting at that desk next to the bathroom, no, I did not envision signing an extension like I just signed or being the head football coach at Texas A&M. No, that wasn’t on the radar.»
Still, Elko’s success does not surprise Dave Clawson. The former Wake Forest coach hired 23-year-old Elko at Fordham, then rehired him at each of his next three stops: Richmond, Bowling Green and Wake. The two worked together for 12 years.
«Mike is a very interesting combination of a guy that grew up in a trailer park and has an Ivy League education,» Clawson said. «Mike is extremely intelligent — very, very smart — don’t let him always wearing sweats and a ball cap fool you. He is one of the smartest coaches, one of the smartest human beings, I’ve ever worked with. But I also think because of where he grew up and where he was raised, that he’s very, very pragmatic. He’s aware of the big picture but also operates very well in the here and now. He lives in the present.»
So, last year, ESPN asked Elko why he believes he’s the guy to dispatch with decades of 8-5 finishes.
«I have confidence in my ability to maximize this place, OK?» Elko said. «When you see what the ceiling of this place truly is and what it can be — maybe delusionally and maybe accurately — I believe I can get it there. If we can get it right, it can be really special, and we can be the group that does it.»
Elko has never been fired in his career. His trajectory has only been upward. He believes he knows what it takes to be successful, and he lets his players know. He says in every conversation, he’s clear: Ask him to choose between the individual and the program, you’re not going to like his answer. Elko is the ultimate overachiever and this program is the ultimate underachiever. He’s going to impose his will.
«He’s not for, let me see the right word, saving people’s feelings,» said Cashius Howell, the Aggies’ star pass rusher. «He lays it onto the table: This is how you win. If it’s not aligning with those morals … it’s kind of for the birds. He doesn’t really have much patience.»
Izaiah Williams, the freshman’s first career scoring catch. The defense didn’t allow a single scoring drive the rest of the way, and A&M scored 28 straight points to win 31-30, the first time in 287 games that an SEC team won when trailing by at least 27 points.
«The vibes were good,» Elko said after the game about the locker room at halftime. «I think that they’re going to have confidence and a belief that no matter what the situation in the game is, they’re going to have a chance to win.»
There was no anhedonia at Kyle Field. The biggest comeback in school history had the Aggies off to a 10-0 start for the first time since 1992, and all but assured the Aggies a spot in the playoff.
But there was one game left. A big one. When Texas A&M, now ranked No. 3, ventured to Austin on Black Friday, it had a chance to clinch an appearance in the SEC championship game, something it had never done. The Aggies hadn’t beaten Texas since 2010 — the series had been on hiatus from 2011 to 2024 and Texas won in College Station last year. A&M took a 10-7 lead into the half. Then Texas broke away. It outgained A&M 189 yards to 35 in the third quarter alone, then Arch Manning broke off a 35-yard touchdown run to go up 27-17 with 7:04 left. The Aggies needed another rally, but this one ended as Reed threw an interception at the Texas 3, his second of the fourth quarter. Texas outscored A&M 24-7 in the second half. The party was on in Austin.
That was the roller coaster that Elko warned fans about. After the Texas game, he wasn’t pleased, and he snapped at reporters who kept opening the door in his news conference. He apologized immediately afterward. But it was the culmination of an awful night for the Aggies, the worst half of football they had played all year, according to Elko. The Longhorns flew drones over the stadium that spelled lyrics from «Texas Fight»: AND IT’S GOODBYE TO A&M. It was a bitter loss to their fiercest rival. But, for once, it didn’t spell disaster.
The difference for the Aggies was that comeback against South Carolina, the one triggered by Reed’s big play. It may have been the difference between another bullet point in the Aggies’ disappointing history of frustrating finishes and a chance at new life.
It’s what Reed meant when he said the team has embraced Elko’s G.R.I.N.D. acronym: Grit, Relentless Effort, Integrity, Now and Dependability during a video interview in the Aggies’ team room with the slogan on the wall behind him. He pointed up to the N over his head: Now.
«[Elko] talks about that all the time,» Reed said. «It’s one of the bigger words we talked about in the offseason and going into the season. We focus on the now. I wasn’t here years back when A&M wasn’t necessarily winning all the time, but I know I’m here now and I’m doing my best to make these fans happy and keep wins on the board for us.»
UNTIL A NEW ending is written for Texas A&M, the Burden of History will remain Elko’s least favorite thing to discuss. That’s why he’s here. He didn’t need to be the next guy to win at some program. He can be the guy to do it at a place where no one else could.
«I think if you focus on the past, you’re not going to get anywhere in life. You’ve got to have hope, you’ve got to have faith,» Reed said. «So believe in the Aggies for once.»
In Aggie Park across the street from Kyle Field, there’s a group tailgate by the name of «Maroon Kool-Aid.» The friends behind it were in South Bend this year and decided it was time to create an homage to their leader. They fired up ChatGPT and created an image of the Kool-Aid Man. The pitcher is filled with maroon instead of red, and he’s got glasses and a face that looks notably like Elko’s. The joke is a nod, one of the hosts, Joel Moore, said, to the Aggies’ reputation as a rather, uh, devoted collective.
«It kind of goes along with a tongue-in-cheek cult deal,» Moore said. «We’re drinking the Kool-Aid.»
Jeannie Able is part of the Kool-Aid crew and has had a little bit of a window inside Elko’s makeover of the program. She’s in an all-A&M family, which includes her husband Trey and their son Connor, who was a walk-on long-snapper under Fisher, then Elko last season. She’s ready for future glory. But she’s still an Aggie who knows the drill.
«We always believe,» she said. «But we can’t voice it too much, because then it might jinx it. So I’m staying quiet.»
Mum’s the word. And nobody tell Mike Elko about this story.
