Why Texas A&M fans should be fired up for Mike Elko hire

Texas A&M officially tapped Mike Elko as its replacement for Jimbo Fisher, who was fired before his sixth season in charge of the program had ended.

And according to Texas A&M insider Billy Liucci, the reception in College Station has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Pretty fired up. I think over the last couple weeks Aggie fans have been kind of all over the map, not really knowing what was coming,” Liucci said on the Andy Staples On3 show. “And Mike Elko was a guy that I think from the very beginning if you asked A&M fans they’d say, ‘That would be a really nice hire.’ I’m talking about the fans.”

Mike Elko returns to College Station after spending four years there as the defensive coordinator from 2018-21. He followed that up with a head coaching stint at Duke, where he was wildly successful by that program’s standards.

Now he’ll look to transition to Texas A&M and the much more rigorous SEC.

Liucci went more into the details on the coaching hire and some other coaches that the Aggies might have tapped the tires on briefly.

“They wanted to see what the interest was nationally with some of the biggest names in coaching,” Liucci said. “Were they able to do that swing and do that Jimbo Fisher type hire again or what LSU did with Brian Kelly, USC Lincoln Riley. That wasn’t ever going to happen. It’s a hard hire to make. I don’t think A&M intended to swim in those waters.”

That’s not to say the coaching search didn’t take some odd twists and turns at various points. Late Saturday night there were rumors that Kentucky‘s Mark Stoops was on the verge of being hired, only for that to fall through.

Others had gotten mention earlier, only for the noise to die out and the program to land back on Mike Elko.

“There were some rumors about Ryan Day late, Dan Lanning early,” Liucci said. “Never real things. I think A&M stayed a pretty steady course in what they were looking for, and Elko ended up being the last guy standing.”