The Texas A&M football program is a big winner even before Saturday night’s season opener against seventh-ranked Notre Dame. Things have been on the upswing for the Aggies since hiring Mike Elko nine months ago. He’s revamped just about everything about the program, including the image.
For more than a decade the bad outweighed the good with the Aggies regarding national news, but it’s been pretty much all positive since Elko’s arrival. The former Aggie defensive coordinator has instilled discipline and accountability. While Elko and his assistants were improving the players, others were telling the fans.
“I think you could market your program and substance,” Elko said. “I think if you look at what we’re doing on social media right now, we’ve been significantly more active. There’s been more posts.
I think there has been more creative content going out that’s all intentional.” Good news sells. “I think marketing our program is something you have to do in this day and age of college football, because your recruiting is still the lifeblood of what you're doing, and recruits live on social media, and so that’s a very intentional piece of our program,” Elko said.
“I don’t know if that goes in line with substance. It’s just what you’re marketing, and what we’re marketing this program to be about.” Social media has been busy with A&M ranked 20th in both the Associated Press and American Football Coaches Association’s Top preseason 25 polls.
The best news is ESPN College GameDay coming to Aggieland for the first time since 2018. “I think you’re talking about significant eyes turning to College Station,” Elko said. “They’re going to see Aggie Park for the first time.
You know there’s going to be millions of people looking at Kyle Field in their living room on Saturday morning as they get ready for the first weekend of college football. That’s a tremendous opportunity for our program and for the marketing of our program.” It doesn’t get much bigger than this for a season opener, especially with the expanded College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams.
“It’s a great opportunity to face a great opponent to see how good your program is in week one,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. “But no matter what the outcome of this game is, it doesn’t dictate what the season’s going to be.” Win or lose, the Irish must be ready to play Northern Illinois in the home opener next week.
“This is just game one and we need to understand that,” Freeman said. Irish fans would argue this game has added weight. Notre Dame has a very favorable schedule.
The only opponents in the AP Top 25 preseason poll besides A&M are 10th-ranked Florida State and 23rd-ranked Southern California, and Florida State lost its opener to unranked Georgia Tech. An Irish loss to the Aggies would make Notre Dame’s path to the CFP much tougher. A&M also has a favorable schedule by playing four ranked teams, with fourth-ranked Texas, 11th-ranked Missouri and 13th-ranked LSU also all at home.
“When you have an opener and you’re playing a game that’s going to be very competitive, there’s not tremendous margins [for errors],” Elko said. “You’re going to have to come out of the tunnel and execute at a really high level. You’re going to have to play penalty-free football [and] you have to play turnover-free football.
” Elko won both of his season openers at Duke, which were at home. He had the luxury of playing Temple in his first game as a head coach, grabbing a 30-0 victory over an Owls team that was 3-9 that season, including 1-7 in the American Athletic Conference. Last year, the Blue Devils opened with a 28-7 victory over ninth-ranked Clemson.
Duke won the turnover battle 3-2, scoring after all those mistakes as the Blue Devils outscored Clemson 22-0 in the second half in winning the Labor Day primetime game. Elko will try for a repeat performance with a revamped roster. A&M’s 60-player depth chart for the offense and defense has 24 newcomers.
Opening the season with Notre Dame has helped the group’s focus, though playing outmanned McNeese State, which is next week’s opponent, would have been a good opponent to work out the kinks. “You’re not going to have a lot of time to ease into this new program, these new systems that we’re running, you’re going to have to go out there opening night, and they’re going to be firing on all cylinders,” Elko said. “That’s obviously the challenge we had to take on and I think we’ve done it to the best of our ability.
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