GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Texas A&M football coach Mike Elko is from South Brunswick, New Jersey, and spent his entire coaching career out of the Deep South until his stint as the Aggies’ defensive coordinator from 2018-21. So, he likely does not know much about crawfish, or crawfishing.
But on Monday during his weekly press conference, he crawfished big time, meaning he tried to walk back some previous peppery comments. But his back flip landed him flat on his face.
Elko tried to say that his blistering comments about an unnamed head coach on Saturday night after his 38-23 win over LSU in College Station, Texas, were not about former Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher, whom he replaced after last season. In the process of his clean-up spin, though, Elko rivaled the BS-ing ability of Fisher himself.
Here is the question Elko fielded Saturday night at his postgame press conference following his 14th-ranked team’s watershed victory over the No. 8 Tigers in his first year as the Aggies’ coach:
“What do you think it is about what you guys do that has been able to lead to such effective results?”
Elko gave a long, involved answer.
“I think it’s the way we talk to the young people,” he said. “The things that we talk about, the messaging, how we bring really good people into the program. We talk about doing things together. We talk about culture. And everyone talks about it, but we go out and we live it every day. And I think we back up our actions. We’re very honest. We’re very open.”
He could have stopped there, but he kept going. And this is where it turned.
“And this is a real program,” he said. “It’s not fake. It’s not a politician running this program, talking fast and BS-ing everybody. This is a real program. For all the recruits out there, this is a real place. And if you want to be really good at football, this is a really good place to be.”
Wow. That can be no one else than Fisher.
For context, the question was about Elko’s results at Texas A&M. And Elko was talking about Texas A&M, obviously, he said “this program.”
And Elko was at “this program” under Fisher for four seasons. The Aggies were not great, but they won under Fisher when Elko was there – 9-4 and 5-3 in the SEC in 2018, then 8-5 and 4-4, 9-1 and 8-1, and 8-4 and 4-4 in 2021 before Elko became Duke’s head coach. But there were disciplinary issues.
And sources close to Texas A&M football told Tiger Rag after the game Saturday that Elko disagreed significantly with how Fisher handled – or didn’t handle – the discipline of some of Elko’s players on the defensive side. Those sources say that Elko was unquestionably talking about Fisher in the above comments.
At first, it crossed my mind that Elko may have been talking about LSU coach Brian Kelly, who as a young man once considered getting into politics like his father before him before coaching. But Elko worked for only one season under Kelly in 2017, and sources close to Notre Dame told Tiger Rag Monday that they had no significant issues.
MIKE ELKO WAS BRIAN KELLY’S DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR AT NOTRE DAME
The clear tell that Elko was talking about Fisher was the “talking fast” comment. As LSU fans and media will remember when Fisher was the Tigers’ vastly successful offensive coordinator from 2000-04, few talk faster than Fisher in or out of football. The “BS-ing everybody” could be a comment about 90 percent of college football head coaches who recruit. Fisher was not that way at LSU, but he wasn’t a head coach yet, either.
Those comments were not followed up on at the press conference, likely because reporters’ attentions were more on the Aggies’ huge win, their comeback from a 17-7 halftime deficit, and the critical third quarter benching of starting quarterback Conner Weigman for Marcel Reed, who completely changed the game.
But the comments were written about and exploded on social media. So much so that Elko felt he needed to spin his way out of it. Or maybe Fisher called him.
It was Fisher, by the way, who made Elko one of the highest paid assistant coaches in all of college football at $1.8 million a year when Elko left Notre Dame for Texas A&M after the 2017 season. The fact that Elko was a successful and popular DC at A&M also got him the Duke job, and then got him the Texas A&M head coaching job. So, Elko should be thanking Fisher every day for hiring him and for losing at A&M – 5-7 and 2-6 in 2022 and 6-4 and 4-3 in 2023 – and for leaving him quite a few very good players.
In other words, it was pretty cheap of Elko to take such a shot at Fisher, regardless of how accurate Elko’s comments were or may have been. He was also hitting Fisher while he was down. Fisher never needs to work again as he walked away from A&M’s firing with $75 million with eight year left on his contract. But he is out of coaching, and did not want to be.
So, on Monday, Elko broke out his bucket and mop and tried to clean up his mess, instead of leaving bad enough alone. Or well enough. Many loved the comments. But the same people who did saw their BS meters chirp like mad on Monday.
“In the postgame, I was asked to kind of give a synopsis on how we sell culture to our program,” Elko said Monday, which was close. But the question, as you can read above, only asked how he got such effective results. A synopsis was not asked for, and the word culture was not used.
“In doing so, I made a statement that seemed like a very benign statement that somehow managed to be taken as a shot directly at people,” Elko continued.
Uh, wrong. Benign means gentle and kindly in the Oxford Dictionary, pal. Elko’s comments were anything but. He referred to said coach (Fisher) as a “politician,” which is a dirtier word today than probably ever. He also used the term “BS-ing.” If Elko thinks that term is benign than he is full of BS himself. And on Monday, he tried to be a politician.
Elko should’ve just quit after taking a shot at a former boss, which is always fun.
And how could that statement NOT be “taken as a shot directly at people,” Coach Elko? Or should I say, Coach Bilko?
“You guys gave me multiple opportunities in nine months to take shots at people, and I’ve never done it,” he said to the media.
Until Saturday night, that is.
“I have nothing but respect for Coach Fisher,” he said. “I’ve said nothing but positive things about Coach Fisher. I’m the head coach at Texas A&M because of Coach Fisher.”
Now, you’re starting to be accurate.
“I appreciate who he is and everything that he’s done,” he said.
But then Coach Bilko returned.
“And for anybody in the media to think that that’s what I was doing post LSU is, I mean it’s asinine,” he said. “And for it to be about any other head coach who gave me an opportunity and hired me, that’s not who I am. I’ve never been that person. It’s ridiculous, but it is what it is. So, I wanted to make sure that everybody knows I wasn’t talking to anybody directly.”
From virtually all accounts, Elko is and has been a class guy. But in this isolated example, only he was asinine.
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