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Who was Texas A&M coach Mike Elko dissing — Jimbo Fisher or Brian Kelly?

Andy Staples head shotby:Andy Staples•10/27/24•

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NCAA Football: Louisiana State at Texas A&M
Oct 26, 2024; College Station, Texas, USA; .LSU Tigers head coach Brian Kelly, left, and Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko, right, greet prior to the game at Kyle Field. Mandatory Credit: Maria Lysaker-Imagn Images.

When Mike Elko’s words caught fire across social media late Saturday night, they seemed familiar. When I consulted the video of the Texas A&M coach’s press conference after the Aggies’ 38-23 win against LSU, I knew exactly where I’d seen this speech before.

The 1995 Source Awards.

Elko was channeling former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight — minus the criminal record and rumored dangling of Vanilla Ice from a balcony — dissing Bad Boy Records impresario Sean “Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddy/Inmate No. 540369” Combs for ruining some of the Notorious B.I.G.’s best songs by attempting to rap in them.

Elko fired a salvo at someone. I initially thought the target was former Aggies coach Jimbo Fisher, but co-host Ari Wasserman quickly pointed out that Elko might have been aiming at the coach in the other locker room. So who did Elko diss: Jimbo Fisher or LSU coach Brian Kelly?

Let’s investigate.

Here’s what Elko said…

“This is a real program. It is not fake. It is not a politician running this program, talking fast and BSing everybody.”

The “talking fast” part is what initially pointed to Fisher, who talks faster than anyone except Busta Rhymes and the Micro Machine Man.

But some parts of this theory don’t make sense. Elko worked for Fisher at Texas A&M as the defensive coordinator, and there was little evidence the two had any beef. (Elko also worked for Kelly at Notre Dame as the defensive coordinator, so he knows both coaches very well.) Perhaps months of cleaning up the mess left behind by Fisher could have soured Elko on the man, but if Fisher hadn’t gotten himself fired at Texas A&M, then the job wouldn’t have been open for Elko to get. Plus, Elko doesn’t have to recruit against Fisher. He does, however, have to recruit against Kelly — just as Knight had to recruit against Combs.

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So let’s examine the other potential target. Kelly’s vocal cadence doesn’t reach Fisher-level speed, but the Everett, Mass., native can talk fast at times. But it’s the first part of that sentence that is more telling. It is not a politician running this program. Kelly was a political science major at Assumption College who interned in the office of Massachusetts state Sen. Gerry D’Amico and who worked on Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign. (Not the much more interesting 1988 Hart campaign.) 

No other current SEC coach spent any time working on a presidential campaign. The pieces are starting to fit together.

So let’s use the words of Suge Knight to guide our investigation. Elko was about to start his freshman year at Penn in 1995 when Knight took the stage at the Source Awards. Elko almost certainly would have been aware of this speech, and if he was, then what he said Saturday night was almost certainly a perfect parody.

“Any artist out there want to be a artist, and want to stay a star, and don’t want to – and won’t have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the video, all on the record, dancin’ – come to Death Row!”

There is only one coach Elko recruits against with a documented history of trying to be all in the video dancing — Brian Kelly.

Case closed.

Mike Elko was dissing Brian Kelly.

College football remains undefeated.