Duke football is in a better position to replace Mike Elko than it was when it found him

Mike Elko, in his very brief and very successful time at Duke, proved a very important point.

Duke doesn’t need a program builder.

Duke doesn’t need a miracle worker.

Duke doesn’t need a gimmick or a showman or a big name.

Duke just needs a good, old-fashioned, Xs-and-Os football coach who has a sense of what it takes to win at every level: On the field, in the weight room, out on the recruiting trail.

That’s what Duke got when it hired Elko two years ago, and it’s what Duke needs again now that Elko has chosen to return to Texas A&M, where he can fill his new swimming pool with crude oil.

The miracle work’s already been done at Duke. David Cutcliffe took a laughingstock and built a foundation for success. When things slipped, Elko came in and shored up that crumbling foundation and built upon it, but he certainly benefited from its latent presence. And while there’s still more work to be done, Elko’s successor will be in an even stronger position than Elko was when he arrived.

Which makes the job even more attractive now than it was when Elko took it.

That doesn’t remove any of the pressure to get this hire as correct as the last one. Cutcliffe’s final years showed just how fragile Duke’s position on the ACC pantheon can be, and it took new eyes and new investment to restore what can now be considered normal service. (A little exposure to the ACC, as Elko had at Wake Forest, didn’t hurt.)

Elko did that, and while it seemed like he was content to wait at Duke for one of the truly good jobs in college football, the kind where the national championship banners are already hanging — with his Jersey roots, Penn State was a perfect fit — it’s hard to argue with the multigenerational wealth that comes with being willing to live in College Station. Elko’s kids, and their kids, and their kids’ kids, will all benefit from the zillions they’re going to pay him.

Having come to Duke from A&M, where he was most recently defensive coordinator, he’ll be aware of all the palace intrigue and politics that come with the job, the very heavy strings attached to the oil money that fuels the Aggies’ ambition. His coordinators will make about as much there as his replacement at Duke will here. With all that money to throw at the problem, playing in the SEC, in the heart of one of the most fertile recruiting areas in the country, it sure seems like the kind of place where you can win a national title.

But no one’s crossed the velvet rope and cracked that club since Florida State in 1993. Over the past 80 years, all but 12 champions have been repeat winners, and Washington was the last to win its first and not another since in 1991. College football in this era is as stratified as Gilded Age society. There are places you can win a title over and over again (even Auburn, as nasty a pit of vipers as Texas A&M, has tacked on another in the past 15 years) and everywhere else still hasn’t — including West Virginia, the only school to win more games than Texas A&M and not win a national championship. Elko will still be flying into those headwinds, same as he was at Duke.

In that respect, Texas A&M and Duke aren’t that different, relatively speaking. (To apply the famous Hemingway-Fitzgerald epigram to the differences between Duke and Texas A&M: “Yes, they have more money.”) They’re both programs that aspire to better than their station in the football world; they’ve both found it difficult, historically, to compete with their conference peers; they both have a foundation for future success but need the right kind of coach to make it happen. The academics and NIL operations are different, the relative ambition is not.

Elko was that guy for Duke two years ago and he’s that guy for Texas A&M now.

Duke’s mandate hasn’t changed. It doesn’t need a personality like Lane Kiffin to raise its profile. It doesn’t need to switch to the triple option to compete. It doesn’t need to build something from nothing to avoid embarrassment. It just needs a football coach who can share a vision for the program, recruit the right kids and hire the right coordinators and strength coach.

In that respect, Duke’s no different than anywhere else. For a program that once won a lawsuit by arguing it was the single worst football team in the country, and not all that long ago, that’s progress. Elko’s successor has plenty to build upon.

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