Political talk in sports is heating up ahead of the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election. The latest example of that is with Texas A&M football coach Mike Elko following the No. 14 Aggies’ 38-23 comeback win over the No. 8 LSU Tigers Saturday. There, Elko made quite the statement about the coaching staff of Texas A&M under his tenure:
Full comment here: pic.twitter.com/zT8WbVtNVH
— Carter Karels (@CarterKarels) October 27, 2024
“I think it’s the way we talk to the young people and the things we talk about, the messaging, how we bring really good people into the building. We talk about doing things together, we talk about culture. And everyone talks about it, but we go out and live it every day. And I think we back up our actions, we’re very honest, we’re very open.
“This is a real program. It is not fake. It is not a politician running this program, talking fast and BSing everybody. This is a real program. And for all the recruits out there, this is a real place. And if you want to be really good at football…”
A lot of people interpreted that as a shot at Elko’s predecessor, Jimbo Fisher. Fisher coached the Aggies from 2018 to last November, and is still getting more than $77.5 million after his firing. (He’s now also working for SiriusXM.) And he certainly has been known for fast talking, and some have accused him of making claims he didn’t live up to.
However, it’s not clear that Elko specifically intended to put Fisher in his crosshairs here. Elko worked as Fisher’s defensive coordinator at Texas A&M from 2018-21 before leaving to take the head coaching job at Duke. And as Sam Khan Jr. wrote in a piece on this at The Athletic, Elko has previously been quite circumspect in any discussions of Fisher’s failings:
Elko rarely makes headlines with his news conferences. You won’t find him trading barbs with his SEC counterparts, as Fisher did when responding to accusations from Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin. In more than two decades as a defensive assistant, mostly at places far off the casual fan’s radar, Elko has perfected the art of keeping his head down, doing the work and letting the results tell the story.
…Whether [the politician comments were] intended as a shot at Fisher, who famously speaks at a rapid pace, is unclear. It came in response to a question to Elko about how he has found success so quickly, both in Year 1 at Duke and A&M. It’s hard to ignore the connection, but Elko has been careful and measured when speaking about A&M’s recent past, choosing not to take veiled shots at his predecessor and his former boss, making it less likely that he was directly pointing the finger here.
Elko pointed to his messaging to players, the culture they’ve built and the time he and his staff have put in to form relationships with players.
“I’m not one of those guys who’s a hugger and pat them on the back,” Elko said, “but I’m with them all the time, and I think they appreciate that.”
But, as Khan also notes, Elko went on to discuss changing the narrative around the Aggies from NIL payments (which Fisher famously railed about around inaccurate stories that started with message board posts):
“From where we were when I got here and the whole rhetoric around this program was NIL and mercenaries and selfishness and all of those things, to see where we are now … that’s a credit to those kids in the locker room,” Elko said. “It’s a credit to their character. It’s a credit to who they are.”
Regardless of if Elko was specifically criticizing Fisher or not, he does seem to be emphasizing that he and his staff are taking a “real” approach, and hinting that others are or have not been (whether that’s Texas A&M in the past or other schools currently), and throwing in shots at politicians along the way (although, unlike, say, Gregg Popovich, he didn’t specify any particular politician). And his approach does seem to be working so far, with the Aggies 6-1 on the year (their only loss came against current No. 12 Notre Dame on Aug. 31) and making some noise in the SEC. But that noise definitely now has extended to this press conference, even if Elko didn’t necessarily mean for all the interpretations of it that have come out so far.
[Carter Karels on X, The Athletic]
