does texags ever acknowledge or quote graham? does billy have an embargo on urls for graham's stuff, or his name, like he used to do to prevent mention of the shag?
way to go graham
now elk is going to get grilled on this ad infinitum
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https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/college/article/texas-aggies-texas-longhorns-rivalry-18661302.php
240211
Texas A&M football: New coach Mike Elko sparks UT rivalry
Brent Zwerneman
6–8 minutes
Sam Craft/Associated Press
COLLEGE STATION — Mike Elko pushed the right buttons in keeping five-star playmaker Terry Bussey of Timpson on board in Texas A&M’s class of 2024. Then Elko, the Aggies’ new coach who’s also new to the state’s grandest rivalry, pushed one more button for fun Wednesday.
“We’re the flagship program in this state, right?” Elko said during the traditional signing day.
In unexpectedly opining on an oh-so serious subject in Texas, the Ivy League graduate and history major used the most common word in English to fuel the hype of this state’s collegiate version of the Super Bowl.
To wit: Though minuscule via vocabulary, the difference between “the” and “a” in Elko’s sentiment is wider than Big Bend National Park. Take what then-A&M athletic director Ross Bjork said when he first adopted the stance that A&M did not want Texas and Oklahoma to join the Southeastern Conference from the Big 12.
“A&M is a flagship university, and with the size and scale of our place, we should have our own stand-alone identity in our own conference,” Bjork said in July 2021.
Bjork and much of the rest of the Aggie brass got in line with the rest of the SEC, however, when league commissioner Greg Sankey informed A&M it didn’t really have any say in the matter. UT and OU are now set to enter the SEC in July, and A&M and UT are finally scheduled to play football again for the first time since 2011.
The Aggies’ consolation prize in the whole deal is hosting the first game of the reunion on Nov. 30, despite also hosting the last one 13 years ago. Elko, who was A&M’s defensive coordinator from 2018-2021 under now deposed coach Jimbo Fisher, has never been a part of A&M vs. UT.
Neither has fourth-year UT coach Steve Sarkisian, although his personal rivalry with A&M runs much deeper than Elko’s with Texas. Sarkisian set the single-game passing yards record by an A&M opponent as BYU’s quarterback in 1996.
“I didn’t know that was still true,” Sarkisian said with a grin during an appearance last year at the Touchdown Club of Houston. “But thanks for the reminder.”
The “flagship” volley of Elko, hired from Duke to try to lead the Aggies to their first SEC title as the Longhorns and Sooners give the powerful league 16 programs, quickly received backing from his new employer.
“Texas A&M is the state’s oldest public institution of higher learning, the only land-, sea- and space-grant university in Texas, and educates more people every day than any other school in the Lone Star State,” A&M boasted via social media not long after Elko’s signing day press conference.
The responses to the A&M post were colorful from both sides, with one UT fan chiming in, “Awww that’s cool, now let’s talk championships.”
That is indeed the part where A&M has some serious catching up to do in coming years, particularly in football. The Aggies last won a national title in 1939 and haven’t played for a national championship since. Their highest finish since ’39 came under Fisher — No. 4 four years ago.
Fisher’s A&M program peaked at that point and was a combined 12-13 over the last two seasons, leading to his firing in November. UT won national titles in 1963, 1969 and 2005 and played for a championship in 2009.
The Longhorns also made the four-team College Football Playoff this past season for the first time, something the Aggies have not accomplished (although they were a debatable fifth following the 2020 regular season). The CFP is expanding from four to 12 teams this coming season.
In a prime example of an offseason topic as fans already are missing college football, there was some social media debate on Elko’s exact wording on the flagship front, but there is no mistaking his “the” instead of “a.” Elko was speaking at the time about the importance of building relationships with Texas high school coaches.
“If we’re one of those (flagship) programs, there’s a certain relationship we need to have with the high schools in this state, right?” Elko explained. “And a part of that — and I’ve said this to all these (coaches) — a part of it is recruiting, but a part of it is just being a resource for high school coaches in the state of Texas, right? It’s part of our obligation to pay it forward.”
Webster’s Dictionary defines “flagship” as “the best, largest or most important one of a group of things.”
Writers across the state for decades have described UT and A&M as Texas’s “two flagship universities” in sidestepping any unwanted missives from either side via snail mail, e-mail and, for the past 15 years or so, social media.
Elko chose a more singular route by ignoring the other “flagship” altogether, along the way helping add a little offseason spice to the overdue return of a rousing rivalry — one that includes the dissecting of two words totaling four letters.