COLLEGE STATION, TX – The first time Mike Elko saw a gun safe in a Texas home, he didn't know what he was looking at.
This came in 2018. Elko was Jimbo Fisher's defensive coordinator, and he got a taste of Texas lifestyle while house hunting.
"I'm like, 'What the heck is that?' They're like, 'That's where you store your guns,'" Elko says, recalling the house-buying process. "I'm like, 'Oh, people do that?'"
It gets better.
When Elko stepped into the garages of these homes, this Ivy League graduate learned about deer fridges.
"Two things that just blew me away were gun lockers and deer fridges," Elko, 48, said. "You had these fridges in the garages for deer meat, and then you had this little area built in the house somewhere, which was your gun safe. First time I've ever seen anything like that."
Elko tells me this story, because I've asked him why a New Jersey native suits Texas A&M so neatly.
Elko doesn't hunt. He's never owned a ranch. He doesn't drink whiskey. He doesn't wear cowboy boots.
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So, if you tell him he fits this place, he'll tell you he doesn't. Not organically, anyway.
"I don't know that I fit Texas at all, honestly," Elko says. "I used to say all the time, I thought Jimbo was a Texan. He's from West Virginia, but he was very comfortable hunting."
Jimbo owned a ranch, too, but he didn't win enough, especially during the two seasons after Elko left his staff to coach Duke .
It's not that Elko is a natural Texan, so why do we think he fits so well?
Elko's got a theory on that. Goes like this. He knows how to build a team that suits Texas A&M and fulfills a fanbase's craving for a pragmatic winner, how to cultivate a hard-nosed program that reflects the image of a university that was called the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas the last time Aggies football won a national championship.
"I just think maybe the program we're trying to build" Elko says, "is a little different, and maybe people appreciate the program I'm building."
Good theory. Probably something to it.
The appreciation, though, stretches beyond the team and to what Elko himself represents.
"You don't have to be country to be tough. You don't have to be Texan to be tough," says Billy Liucci , executive editor and co-owner of TexAgs.com, "but A&M wants their football coach to be blue collar. They want him to be a tough guy. They want him to be no-nonsense. And, I think that's a big part of" why Elko fits.
Success looks good on Aggieland, too.
When Elko's Aggies played in a College Football Playoff game for the first time in program history on a windy morning last December, Kyle Field filled with 104,122 fans who trembled along with the stadium when "POWER" played and painted a tableau that could've convinced you such a thing as Football Heaven existed.
"For a place who has been starved for that level of success, yeah, it was awesome," Elko says of the scene.
The Aggies came up one play and five yards short. Their season ended on an interception in a 10-3 loss to Miami.
Year 2 of the Elko era showed program growth, but not a pinnacle.
"The donor mood is really, really sky high, particularly the needle movers," says Liucci, who's covered the program for decades and is plugged into the soul of Aggieland.
"The fanbase," Liucci adds, "I think they're as optimistic as they'll allow themselves to be as Aggies. I think there are still scars (from the past)."
Those scars include Kevin Sumlin winning 11 games in the Aggies' first season in the SEC, when Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy. Sumlin never again had a season so good.
Fisher delivered a 9-1 record in 2020, his third season. If a 12-team playoff had existed, the Aggies would've made it in 2012 and '20. The Aggies fattened Fisher's salary and buyout. Fisher fizzled.
So, you can understand if, after last year's breakthrough, a sense of prove-it-again exists within the more skeptical corners of Texas.
Every sign says Elko can prove it again.
"I think the majority of the fanbase knows this looks, feels and is different," Liucci said. "There's just more of a foundation."
I hit Aggies linebacker Daymion Sanford with a pop-quiz trivia question:
When did Texas A&M last win a national championship?
"Coach says it all the time, and I keep forgetting," Sanford says, as he racks his brain. "Is it 1938?"
Close. It's 1939.
And, yes, Elko reminds his players of that. He wants them to understand the program's past, as they try to create a more decorated future.
One more trivia question for Sanford: When did Texas A&M last win the SEC championship?
This one stumps him. It's a trick question. Since joining the SEC in 2012, the Aggies haven't played for a conference championship, let alone won it.
"Texas A&M hasn't really won anything since I don't know when," says Sanford, a cog in the defense when he's healthy. He injured his leg in the spring game and is expected to miss the start of the season.
"Everybody has a big goal now, and they really want to put some trophies in the cases, fill some trophies up. I feel like that's a big change (from the past)."
Here the Aggies sit in familiar terrain, getting a dose of preseason hype. For many of the first 25 seasons of this century, Texas A&M ran a hamster wheel of being the toast of the offseason and a flop by November. Elko admits as much.
"We haven't been consistently a top-10 program," Elko said. "We were a one-in-five-years top-10 program. So, we have to elevate to that, and that's what we are in the process of doing."
We could talk recruiting — it's going brilliantly — but strong recruiting isn't new for the Aggies. Elko would rather point out Texas A&M had 13 players invited to the NFL combine and a program-record 10 players drafted.
Recruiting rankings can fall under the category of hype. Draft production shows real progress.
"There's so many indicators telling you that this program is in a much different space than it's ever been," Elko said.
Elko made waves in 2024 when he said after beating LSU he's creating a real program , and it's not fake.
He insists he didn't mean that quote as a barb aimed at any of his peers or predecessors, even if some took it that way, but instead a sweeping statement of what he aims to build.
Ahead of Elko's third season, this much is real: The Aggies have a veteran quarterback, Marcel Reed, with ample talent and a surplus of swagger. Take it from Reed, the weapons around him "are crazy good." Veterans fill what looks like a sufficient defense. The Aggies rebuilt their lines of scrimmage with portal plunders deep on experience.
So, what of it?
Bring on the hype?
To answer that, let's give Reed the floor. A more confident SEC quarterback, you won't find.
"Our name is Texas A&M. We're always known for having good recruiting classes but not doing anything with them," Reed said, "but these past two years have been different than what it has been before. I think people should start noticing that, because we're tired of it, obviously.
"We think we should have as much recognition as anybody else, because we're up-and-coming, and we've proved it."
They proved it for 11 games last season, then stopped. A season that accelerated after a Week 3 win against Notre Dame ended with losses to Texas and Miami.
For his part, Reed says he must reduce his turnovers. He's a brilliant playmaker, but his 12 interceptions tied for second-most in the SEC. On his final pass of 2025, he made the right read, but a pass that needed to fit into a tight window missed the mark. Interception.
How do the Aggies change the answer to trivia questions I posed?
Sanford knows the answer to this one.
"Consistency," he says. Plus, "we need to finish."
Sanford wanted Texas A&M to hire Elko after it fired Fisher in 2023.
"I was praying and praying and praying that he got it," he says.
But, as a player, you're usually on the outside looking in during coaching searches.
So, Sanford did what many fans and media types do amid the coaching carousel. He kept an eye on social media. His scrolling a couple of days after Thanksgiving told him Mark Stoops stood in line for the job.
"Stoops was going to be the head coach, and … I don't know what happened," Sanford said.
That pretty well sums it up.
Someday, someone will write a book about who pulled the plug. Stoops stood at the 2-yard line of becoming Texas A&M's coach. He didn't punch it in. Stoops to Aggieland encountered blowback. His candidacy lost momentum.
By Sunday morning, the deal was off. Stoops tweeted in the wee hours Sunday he was staying at Kentucky, because where else could he go?
The Aggies' search pivoted to Elko.
"I woke up Sunday morning, to a disaster situation at Texas A&M," Elko said, "and them trying to get in touch, trying to get me here."
They got him. As Sunday turned into Monday, Elko flew on an Aggies plane and arrived in Texas in the dark.
Reed never planned to transfer, no matter the hire, but he liked his new coach's credentials.
"I was astounded by what Elko did to the Duke program," Reed said of a coach who went 16-9 with the Blue Devils. Elko spent two seasons at Duke, one fewer than Steve Spurrier, who parlayed Duke into Florida and changed that program forever.
Elko hasn't forever changed Texas A&M yet. He calls what's happening "elevation."
How high does the elevator go?
This program has been a chronic underachiever, when you consider its enviable resources and prime location. Maybe, finally, Texas A&M is positioned to step into being the type of program many industry insiders long thought it could become.
"We have a path to go be very successful. We have to execute the path… but we have the resources, the fanbase, the facilities, the location to be anything that we want to be," Elko said.
Who does Elko want to be? Himself.
Elko attended the Houston Rodeo in March and opened the gate for the calf scramble.
This wasn't Elko's first rodeo. He knows standard rodeo attire includes boots and a cowboy hat, but, he says, "that's just not me."
Elko wore sneakers and a ballcap.
He's not interested in fake.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas A&M football didn't need a cowboy. It needed Mike Elko | Exclusive
