Mike Elko was Duke’s fallback choice two years ago after top candidate Tony Elliott decided to take the job at Virginia.
Elko has worked out, you know, OK for Duke to this point – taking a program that had gone 3-9 in David Cutcliffe’s final season, in 2021, to a 9-4 finish in Year 1, and Duke is 6-4 this season, with all four losses to ranked teams, two in the final minute.
The early success might actually end up not working out for Duke in the long run, though.
Elko, 15-8 at Duke, is being talked about for all of the big-time coaching openings in Power 5, most notably Texas A&M, where he served as defensive coordinator before taking the Duke job, and Michigan State, which would love to have a guy with Elko’s record of turning a program around to get things back on track in East Lansing.
Elko was asked about the coaching carousel rumor mill at his weekly presser on Monday.
His response to whatever interest he may have in a high-profile job:
“I mean, it’s the same one I’ve always made. It’s a profession where people just like to put stuff out there. I’m very committed to this place. Everybody knows I’m very happy at this place. We’re doing a lot of really special things. My family’s very happy here. We love everything that this place is for,” Elko said.
Which is, of course, what you’d expect him to say, given the circumstances – Duke has two weeks left in the 2023 regular season, he wants to win those last two games, and even if he were to make himself a candidate for the A&M, Michigan State or other jobs, there’s no guarantee that he’d end up getting offered another job.
But, OK, yeah, it’s hard to figure if, say, Texas A&M, which was paying Jimbo Fisher $9.5 million a year to go 8-4, or Michigan State, which was paying Mel Tucker $9.5 million a year for having literally one winning record as a head coach in his life, would come calling, you know, that Elko would say, no, I’d prefer to stay at Duke, with a fraction of the resources, and a good bit less than half the salary.
But that’s an issue that’s a couple of weeks down the road for Elko, who is in a much different position than the guy on the other sideline on Saturday.
Elliott, who decided on Virginia because he decided that offered more upside, is 5-15 as Year 2 winds down.
While Elko is having his name attached to big-time openings, Elliott wakes up every day to message-board and social-media chatter from the UVA fanbase wondering if it’s already time to move on.
“I say this all the time when you’re doing your job, everybody thinks you’re leaving, when you’re doing your job bad, everyone thinks you’re leaving. It is literally the nature of college coaches, so you try not to pay any attention to that stuff,” Elko said.
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Chris Graham
