Texas A&M is off to another incredible start to the season, just like last year. However, the Aggies faltered in a big way in the month of November and second-year head coach Mike Elko is looking to avoid that outcome.
He joined The Hardline on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM) to discuss A&M’s start to the season, its success in close games, previewed the Aggies’ showdown at LSU and gave his thoughts and the NCAA’s peculiar ruling on athletes and sports betting.
Below are highlights from the interview, edited lightly for clarity.
I know it’s a forever pursuit, but it does appear you guys are getting better in close games. There’s no recipe for it, but what are your thoughts on that topic?
Sports Roundup
Mike Elko: I mean, this is becoming more and more like the NFL every year. I think NIL has really leveled the playing field. And so you’re seeing more and more close games in college football every single week, and the ability to make plays, manage the game, manage the clock in the fourth quarter is becoming a much bigger piece of the game. And so it’s something you work on a lot, emphasize a lot. Obviously, I’m sure everybody does, and we’re fortunate we’ve had some playmakers make the plays we needed down the stretch to win us some games.
What are your thoughts going into your matchup with LSU?
Elko: I think they’re a really talented team. They’ve got a lot of NFL players on there. They’re the best defense that we’ve seen this year. They’ve got multiple players who are going to be first-round draft picks. And so when you’re looking at it through my lens, I would say it’s going to be a really daunting challenge in Baton Rouge on Saturday.
Every week in the SEC is something, but do you do anything differently to make sure everyone’s ready to go right away?
Elko: Yeah, I think it’s consistency. I think the thing that you learn in this conference is you’re going to have to go on the road and play in some really challenging environments, and that’s just part of SEC football, and that’s every single week. And certainly, this one’s on the high end, for sure. LSU is a great team, and it’s a great atmosphere, and it’s going to be a great environment, but that’s life in this league. We knew that coming into the year that our success was going to be driven by how we did in some of these big road matchups, and it’s just another opportunity.
Do you use last year at all? Things fell apart a bit in November last year, so how do you climb the hill in a different way? I’m curious what goes into your thought as you build through a season like this.
Elko: Yeah, I think two things on that. I think one is, at this time last year, we beat LSU to go 5-0 in the SEC. Hopefully that happens again. That’d be a good way to start the month of November. I said this a lot in the offseason, we got into a position that I’m not sure our program was ready to be in last year. I don’t think anyone thought we were a potential SEC champion coming off of the two years that we had coming off of the offseason turnover on the roster, and it was a credit to our kids that we had gotten into that position, but we certainly didn’t handle it the right way down the stretch. You live, you learn. I think this year, we came in expecting to be a team to compete for this championship all the way through. And so from that perspective, we’re in exactly the position we hoped to be in. And now it’s just finishing it the right way over these next five games.
Right on the heels of the NBA gambling scandal, you see that the NCAA allows college athletes now to bet on pro games like you guys don’t have enough to worry about. As head coaches, is that something you sit down and you just hope they ease up on stuff like this?
Elko: I think somewhere in this whole thing, there needs to be an overriding support system that looks at what we’re really doing to some of these 18-to-21-year olds. They’re getting their NIL earnings, and that’s great for them, but maybe not the right time to introduce a new way to spend it all, right? You just kind of wish there was somebody out there who realized what we were asking of these 18-to-21-year olds from a maturity standpoint, and we can maybe create a little bit of guardrail around them and protect them from from kind of themselves, a little bit.
Marcel Reed, Garrett Nussmeier represent opposing ends of college football’s QB spectrumNCAA will allow college athletes to bet on professional sports
Find more college sports coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.
Find more Texas A&M coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.