Ahhhhh....Seeeya! Mike Elko Bolts Duke For Texas A&M...And Plans To Tell Players By Zoom

But they may have better things to do.

Well it’s definite now: Mike Elko will be the new coach of Texas A&M. He flew out of Durham last night and, in a telling move, planned to meet with his players via Zoom.

Only, according to Adam Rowe over at The Devils Den, a lot of the players aren’t going to bother showing up because they feel they were misled, which is a nice way to say lied to. One of the best things about former coach David Cutcliffe is that he was honest and loyal. We don’t mean that he would not have taken another job. He might have. He certainly had his chances. But he would have told his players in person and explained his decision.

You wish you could say the same about Elko, but that’s not really possible now.

Not many people are going to turn down the sort of money that A&M is offering Elko, but he should have had the courage to meet with his players face to face. That’s truly disappointing. Duke Nation had built up an enormous respect for Elko over the last two. years and, like his team, that’s probably gone now. It’s one thing to take a life-changing job; quite another to Zoom the decision in to your (former) players.

He’s back in Texas now and that is football on a different, unforgiving level as Jimbo Fisher found out recently, although he’s going to be quite comfortable in retirement.

The Austin-American Statesman has a sneering article up mocking A&M for first saying it’s not an 8-4 school and then hiring a coach who won an average of eight wins a season, that A&M is “more Michigan State than Michigan” and calling A&M Texas’s little brother.

That lacks context.

Taking a team from three wins to nine with basically the same personnel is a remarkable accomplishment and Duke would have done better this past season without injuries. His colleagues understand he did a remarkable job at a school where success is not easy in football.

The second part of this is too easy.

Since Mack Brown departed, Texas has had three coaches. Charlie Strong never won more than six games. Tom Herman had one 10-win season, one eight-win season and two seven-win seasons. Steve Sarkisian is 11-1 this year but averaged six wins for his first two seasons. We’ll see how his tenure works out, but the margin of error is pretty small at either Texas A&M or UT.

And who in their right mind would want to be Michigan State or Michigan right now anyway? One school fired their coach for allegedly wanking and the other coach has an absolute wanker running things. Thanks, but no thanks.

We’ll have to see how Elko does at A&M but certainly he’ll have the resources to succeed. However, if he does fall short, A&M will presumably tell him they’re not an 8-4 team, give him a huge buyout and send him on his way.

We have a lot of respect for what he accomplished in Durham, but his exit revealed a cowardly side to his character. If things get dicey at A&M, we may see it again.