COLLEGE STATION — Raised on a farm and common sense, Carol Elko figures she was the least likely of her New Jersey high school’s 1,200 kids to experience her winter-of-1976 reality.
Pregnant at 16. In love with the baby’s 18-year-old father, John. Marrying. Dropping out of school. Dreams paused.
“You grow up real quick,” she said. “But when you’re handed a gift from God, you accept it, nurture it.”
Mike Elko, John and Carol’s only child, certainly flourished. From mobile home upbringing to Ivy League graduate. From earning $6,000 as a Stony Brook University grad assistant to $7 million as Texas A&M’s first-year head football coach.
From quarterbacking South Brunswick (N.J.) High to a Thanksgiving 1994 upset of rival North Brunswick that endures mostly in Elko family lore, to Saturday in Kyle Field coaching CFP No. 20 A&M against No. 3 Texas in the most anticipated clash in the Lone Star Showdown’s 118-game history.
There, of course, have been pivotal moments and people along Elko’s 12-stop coaching journey and 47-year life, but his essence was pinpointed during a sit-down with The Dallas Morning News when, for a moment, his gravelly Jersey voice and matter-of-factness softened.
“Mom and Dad are awesome,” he said. “They were young parents, trying to find their way, dropping out of school to pour everything they had into me.
“In my mind, this has all been to some degree why I’ve driven to give back to that decision in some way, shape or form.”
Mom naturally maintains the opinion that he’s a gift, but it’s premature to declare that he was heaven-sent to College Station. Boy howdy, though, has his debut season energized the Spirit of Aggieland.
Elko’s 8-3 start alone would have been endearing, given A&M’s 12-13 record the last two seasons under Jimbo Fisher. But R.C. Slocum, the winningest coach in A&M history, says he senses the accountability Elko instilled in the program has earned deeper appreciation among players and fans.
“This is not a country club atmosphere,” Slocum, 80, said.
Despite late-season stumbles at South Carolina and Auburn, an upset of Texas would vault A&M into its first Southeastern Conference title game since bolting from the Big 12 in 2012 — and a championship game win over Georgia would be the Aggies’ first since 1998, under Slocum.
The Aggies and Longhorns haven’t met in football since 2011, so Texas’ summer-of-2021 announcement that it would join the SEC triggered a crescendo of excitement that will climax Saturday night amid an electric Kyle Field setting.
“We’ve never shied away from the magnitude of that game, what it means to our fan base,” Elko said. “But once we got into the grind of the season, I don’t think we paid as much attention to it.
“I said before the season that my goal since I got here was to make sure that game means something. Now, that’s a reality.”
High IQ, no pretense
Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary of Elko’s hiring, coming 15 days after Fisher was fired with eight years left on his contract, resulting in a college football record-shattering $77.6 million buyout.
Elko was no stranger to Aggieland, having served as Fisher’s defensive coordinator from 2018 to 2021, but nationally the perception was that a lesser-known, blue collar coach was taking over one of the country’s most affluent football programs.
Exactly, perhaps, what A&M needed: A guy who didn’t become a head coach until age 44, at Duke, where all he did was take a program that was 5-18 the previous two years and go 9-4 his first season, earning ACC Coach of the Year.
He’s authentic. High IQ, but accomplished without pretense — Aggie qualities, some would say.
“What’s unique about Mike is his intelligence level is through the roof, but he was not someone who was born with a silver spoon,” said Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson, whom Elko assisted at Fordham (2002-03), Richmond (2004-05), Bowling Green (2009-13) and Wake (2014-16).
“So Mike has the ability to relate to all types of people. He can be very strategic, but because of his background he’s very relatable.”
Elko says growing up as the only child of parents who worked long hours — John initially as an Amtrak electrician, Carol as a postal service manager — probably made him more independent and mature.
That doesn’t mean his upbringing was solitary. John had eight siblings and Carol’s father, John Edly, had 13 siblings. Stands at Mike’s football, basketball and baseball games often included a sizeable Elko and Edly contingent.
“His dad changed jobs over the years, but whatever job he had, he made sure he got to every one of Mike’s games,” Carol said. “Mike and I would tease, ‘What truck will Dad show up in?’”
The Elkos’ mobile home location was a bonus. Its back gate opened to the community park, including a basketball court and room to play any conceivable outdoor sport.
It soon became clear that Mike not only loved playing, but studying nuances and statistics. His parents say that by 4 he learned chess and Monopoly and by first grade was navigating directions on family trips.
“I swear I’ve never seen anybody multitask like him,” Carol said.
Soon, if another kid blurted that he had 13 hits in 28 at-bats in Little League, Mike could instantly respond that the kid was hitting .464.
“I guess, to some degree, I knew things came easily for me from an intelligence standpoint, not to be arrogant about that statement,” Elko said. “But it was never in the world of anything intellectual. I would read Sports Illustrated, never high classic economic welfare or anything like that.”
Bruce Shang was a high school teammate of Elko’s and best man in his wedding — but long before that, while attending separate elementary schools, they met academically.
They were in the same advanced math curriculum, which during elementary school meant taking a bus to the middle school, and during middle school busing to South Brunswick High.
“He was strong, he was smart and he was easily the most competitive kid in school,” Shang said, adding with a laugh: “He’s a crazy good bowler, too.”
Elko was the only one in his high school class to play four years of football, basketball and baseball and as a senior he captained all three teams.
With Elko starting at quarterback and safety, the Vikings finished his senior year 3-6, but his final game was poignant. The 24-19 victory was South Brunswick’s first over North Brunswick in 18 years.
“The announcer kept saying, ‘And another quarterback draw,’” Shang recalled. “But it wasn’t a quarterback draw. He was running for his life.”
The surreal part was that the annual Thanksgiving Brunswick South-North game was played on Mike Elko Field and the winner hoisted the Elko Trophy — named not for Texas A&M’s Elko, but his great uncle, beloved South Brunswick coach Michael “Mikey” Elko.
Four months before his great nephew’s birth, 42-year-old Mikey died of a heart attack while leading JV baseball practice at South Brunswick. Elko wasn’t named after his great uncle, but when he hoisted that Elko Trophy there weren’t any dry eyes among the many Elkos in the stands.
Today, many of those same aunts, uncles and cousins take turns attending A&M home and road games. Other times they gather in John and Carol’s Florida home to watch the Aggies on TV.
“His grandparents are no longer here; they were the staple of getting everybody together,” Carol said. “It’s weird how it worked out, whether it was God’s reasons or not, that Mike having the job he has keeps the family together. He’s been the staple.”
Finding his calling
In 1995, though, not even Elko could have foreseen this future. After all, he was destined for the University of Pennsylvania, where, sure, he planned to play football, but mostly to enroll in the acclaimed Wharton School of business.
“I had to find a calling,” he said. “How was I going to be an earner? A husband? A father? Where was it all gonna come for me?”
He loved playing safety and special teams for the Quakers football team, but business classes didn’t hold his interest. Nor did communications classes or a potential career in sports journalism.
Halfway through his sophomore year he decided to transfer to a college in New Jersey and focus on football.
“I was done with Penn,” he said, “but some family members were like, ‘Yeah, I don’t care what you do, but you’re gonna get a Penn degree.’”
Fortunately common sense, football and love kept him at Penn.
Two weeks before his junior-year classes began, Elko and some of his teammates attended a campus party that happened to include some incoming freshman nursing school students.
“Yes,” Michelle Elko admits with a laugh, “at my first college party, I met my husband.”
She, too, was a New Jerseyan, growing up about 90 minutes from South Brunswick, in Franklinville. Her older brother played college football but she didn’t closely follow the sport.
She had no idea how profoundly that would change, even as she watched Mike as a senior help the Quakers earn the 1998 Ivy League title, culminating with a win at Cornell five days before Thanksgiving.
Days later Elko walked into Penn coach Al Bagnoli’s office, informed him that he wanted to coach and asked for his help.
“No,” Bagnoli said.
“What do you mean, ‘No?’” Elko said.
“You’re about to be a Penn grad. Go home, and if you come back in 24 hours and still want to do this, I’ll help you.”
Carol, who forged a 30-year career with the Postal Service, acknowledges she was taken aback when informed by Mike that his idea of furthering his Penn degree was to be a Stony Brook grad assistant and pursue a master’s in education.
“Listen, I never get mad at him,” she said. “The only thing I’d ever told him was to choose something you enjoy and do the best you can at it.”
Football acumen
In 2002, Dave Clawson, three seasons into his first head coaching tenure at Fordham, lost defensive coordinator Dave Cohen to Delaware.
Clawson interviewed multiple potential replacements who were in their 30s and 40s, but Cohen had recommended 24-year-old Elko. Why? Elko, by then a defensive assistant at the Merchant Marines Academy, had impressed Stony Brook’s staff, including Cohen’s brother, Andrew.
Clawson figured he would interview Elko and perhaps keep him in mind for future openings.
“It turned out to be one of those ‘Wow,’ interviews,” he said. “It was obvious that his football acumen was ahead of guys that were 10 and 15 years more experienced.”
It’s no accident Elko is the only assistant to work under Clawson at all four of his head coaching stops for a combined 12 seasons.
Clawson says Elko has an uncanny ability to study opposing offenses and anticipate how they will attack. Clawson cited a practice at Bowling Green. Clawson knew the favorite play of that week’s opponent was a counter run to the boundary. Elko, though, didn’t include the play in that week’s practice script.
“Mike, when are you going to run the counter?”
“I’m not.”
“Mike, it’s their No. 1 play.”
“They love that play to a backside shade versus two-deep. We’re going to put the three-technique into the boundary and roll a weak safety. The second they see we’re doing that, they’re not gonna run the play at all.”
Clawson’s only teasing quibble about Elko concerns their weekly staff pickup basketball games at Fordham, Richmond and Bowling Green.
“For a big guy he’s pretty athletic, but he never met a shot that he didn’t like,” Clawson said. “I’d never, ever want to be on Mike’s team because I knew I wouldn’t get enough shots. He never understood the concept of ‘Feed the boss.’”
Elko says he is thankful to Clawson, not only for helping to pave his winding career path but for showing him that a head coach must be the CEO of all aspects of a program — including relationships with school administration — always from a wider lens.
As for his basketball skills, Elko notes that shortly after becoming Duke’s head football coach he was introduced at halftime of a Blue Devils game in sold-out Cameron Indoor Stadium. He then made a foul shot for charity.
“That was a proud moment for me.”
From a mobile home to Texas A&M
His coaching rise mirrors his mobile-home-to-Ivy League climb.
The 4-2-5 defensive scheme for which he’s best known was molded from years of trial and error and “talking ball” among staffs at Richmond and Hofstra from 2004-08.
He’s not part of the Nick Saban coaching tree. His rise was forged by results and reputation. Before Brian Kelly phoned him about becoming Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator in 2017, they’d never met in person, unless you count Elko’s 2015 Wake defense holding the Fighting Irish to 282 yards.
The same thing happened at Texas A&M in late December 2017. Fisher interviewed and hired Elko by telephone, then traveled to New Orleans to do TV analysis for the Jan. 1 Alabama-Clemson CFP semifinal game.
“I came in and worked Sunday and Monday,” Elko recalled. “Tuesday afternoon [Fisher] got back and, I still remember, walking out of my office and bumping into each other in the hallway. I was like, ‘Oh, hey, Coach. Mike Elko, nice to meet you.’”
Now, of course, Elko occupies Fisher’s old office in the Bright-Slocum Center.
“I got some breaks in my career, and so I’m here,” he said.
On a shelf behind his desk are photos from his time as A&M’s defensive coordinator and family photos from the day he was hired, almost exactly a year ago.
“Walking down the tunnel into Kyle Field was overwhelming,” Michelle said. “For Texas A&M to call, knowing what Mike could do for them, really took our breath away.”
After the news conference, Mike, Michelle, sons Michael and Andrew and daughter Kaitlyn made a point of driving past the College Station home in which they’d spent perhaps the happiest four years of Mike’s coaching career.
Until this season, of course.
“We are very blessed to be in this position,” Michelle said. “It’s a dream come true, but we do not come from that. We decided long ago we’re not changing who we are.”
Visitors to Elko’s immaculate office, adjacent to Kyle Field, might not notice the housewarming gift that Carol brought from Florida.
It’s a small palm tree in a planter with the A&M logo.
“Really, Mom?” he asked that day. “Me, with plants?”
His nurturing is focused on family and football. As for John and Carol, their gift from God — and that Ivy League tuition — has indeed flourished, in ways they couldn’t have fathomed in the winter of 1976.
“I got a happy son, a wonderful daughter-in-law and three beautiful grandkids in return,” Carol said.
Find more Texas A&M coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.