Mike Elko shares heartfelt message to Texas A&M fans after Week 1 loss: 'You deserve better'

The tenure of Mike Elko at Texas A&M got off to an exciting start yesterday in his debut. However, it just didn’t end with a victory in their Top-20 matchup against Notre Dame.

Elko opened his postgame press conference following the 23-13 loss to the Fighting Irish by giving credit to their opponent. Simply put, they got themselves the road win at Kyle Field in primetime on Saturday.

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“First off, hats off to Notre Dame,” said Elko. “They came in here and they beat us. You know, there’s really no two ways around it.”

From there, though, Elko shared his appreciation for their fanbase in College Station yesterday. Thousands of people were present throughout the day for the kickoff to their year. That started with those present for the broadcast of College GameDay there in the morning. There was then over 107,000 people attending the game for the fourth-largest crowd in school history. Even more watched from home too with the matchup averaging 8.2 million viewers while peaking at 9.3 million on ABC per the release by ESPN.

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Still, since the Aggies didn’t win the opener, Elko apologized for not rewarding their dedication and attendance with the victory.

“To the Aggie fans, I thank you. Thank you for showing up tonight. Thank you for making this a really special day,” said Elko. “You deserve better and we didn’t give it to you.”

Texas A&M was competitive throughout the low-scoring start game with it tied at the half and it locked again at 13 in the fourth quarter. Even so, Notre Dame took the lead back with under two to play with a touchdown and then closed it with a field goal with 30 seconds left after the Aggies were unable to answer with a four-and-out to turn it over on downs.

There’s certainly a lot of football left to go this season in Aggieland and hopefully in Elko’s time there as head coach of the team. That means making up for this moving forward with their second game next weekend against McNeese.

“We’ll go back to work. We’ll continue to drive this thing to become the product that you guys want this and deserve for this program to be.”