Trev Alberts opens up on football coach Mike Elko: 'He's a first-class individual'

As Texas A&M hosts its annual spring game on Saturday, it’s the first chance for fans to get a real look at the changes new coach Mike Elko has made with the program. It’s the first chance for athletics director Trev Alberts to see it in a game-like setting, too.

One thing immediately stood out: Elko’s a defensive guy.

“This is a defensive mind and I’ve been to several practices and watched coach Elko, very much involved in the defense,” Alberts said. “And I think one of the things we will have this year is you’re going to have a defense that’s fundamentally sound and gets to the football, and that’ll be fun to watch.”

Elko’s calling card is defense, and it’s one of the primary reasons he’s now the head coach at Texas A&M. He previously served a stint as the program’s defensive coordinator before taking over as the head coach at Duke.

He had instant success at Duke, not traditionally an easy place to win games.

That’s what’s impressed Trev Alberts so far in getting to know his new head coach, who he did not hire.

“I’ve really enjoyed it. I didn’t know Mike well, I sort of watched him from afar, watched him as a head coach,” Alberts said. “I knew he was a defensive coordinator here. But everything that I sort of thought in watching video after video, he’s a first-class individual, not only a great football coach.

“We’re really fortunate he’s our coach. What I love about his path, when you look back at his journey to become the head coach at Texas A&M, nothing was given to him. He worked hard at every level to grow his career, to learn, to go through the fire, to find himself here now. Pretty remarkable trajectory and journey for him.”

The Aggies will be looking for more sustained success at a high level after coming off the Jimbo Fisher era. Texas A&M flashed at times under the former coach but couldn’t sustain anything at a high level.

Elko’s task won’t be easy. But he does have the backing of his new athletics director.

“It’s obviously, at this level, the relationship between the athletic director and the head football coach is really, really important, and you really look at it more as a partnership,” Trev Alberts said. “Football’s success at schools like Texas A&M, in a sense, is sort of non-negotiable. You have to have a football program that is making progress given the importance of it in terms of the rest of the athletic department.”

Those are the stakes for Elko. How well he fares remains to be seen, but optimism is high in College Station.