Dave Clawson's relationship with Mike Elko dates back 20-plus years

Texas A&M's Mike Elko spent time on recently retired Dave Clawson's staffs at Fordham, Richmond, Bowling Green and Wake Forest. On Friday, the former Demon Deacon head man joined TexAgs Live to discuss his relationship with Elko and his protégé's future at A&M.

Key notes from Dave Clawson interview

• Fordham was my first head job, and we finally had a winning season. Then my defensive coordinator left to go to Delaware. I had interviewed guys with 10-15 years of coaching experience, and I interviewed Mike Elko. He came over for the interview, and quite honestly, he was more knowledgeable and had a better presence than guys who had coached for far longer than him. Because of how impressive he was, I decided to promote from within and felt he was too good of a coach to pass up on, and over the years, that has proven to be correct.
   
• In any profession, the people who are elite at it have many skill sets. To say that a good football coach isn’t bright or smart, I wouldn’t say that as someone who coached for 36 years, but Elko is on the high end of both those skill sets. He’s extremely intelligent and very instinctive. He has the ability to see what’s around the corner. He understands that whatever this decision makes, there will be ramifications for it, whether positive or negative. You combine that with his personality, work ethic and ability to relate to people, that’s why he’s one of the elite coaches in the country. He was one of the best defensive coordinators in the country for many years. Again, I think he’s one of the very best coaches in college football today.
   
• I hired Elko four times. Part of it was when he was with me, I was a younger head coach and climbing the ranks. He saw it as progressing through the profession together. Any head coach job I got, Elko followed along. I took him to Richmond and made him the special teams coordinator and recruiting coordinator. When I got to Bowling Green, I hired him as my defensive coordinator. Elko was very instrumental in building our MAC championship program there. A half hour after I got the Wake Forest job, I offered him the defensive coordinator job there. I’ve hired him four times and gave him as many promotions and raises to try and hold onto him.
   
• Again, Elko is somebody that I always had a lot of respect for, even when he was a 23-year-old coach. I knew he was bright, and I would have side conversations on not only how the offense or defense was playing, but his thoughts on what we were doing program-wise, whether it’s in the weight room, discipline or practice.
   
• He has always been able to see the big picture, and he was so good at his job and ability to focus on the defense while never losing perspective of what was best for the program. When he got to Duke, it was a little hard because we were rivals. We didn’t talk as much then, but when the Texas A&M job opened, I called the athletic director and said, “Please hire him. Get him out of our league.” I told R.C. Slocum that if you hire him, he’ll be a great fit, and I think you guys will be happy with him. It has been easier to have a closer relationship with him again now that we’re not competing against each other.
   
• I can give you all the cliches. He’s good at teaching the fundamentals. He’s well prepared. What made Elko unique is his ability to anticipate the ways we'd be attacked. There would be times in practice where we didn't practice their No. 1 play. Say that play was counter. I’d go, “Mike, why don’t I see counter on the scripts?” He’d go, “Well, they aren’t going to run it against us.” He say’d, “It's their No. 1 play because they played three teams with that are in over front and are in single high. We are in an under front with two high. The way we invert the safety, we won't see that play once.” I’m not going to tell you he was right every time, but the amount of times he was correct…
   
• He is very smart, and he wouldn't want to waste practice time defending something he was pretty sure we weren’t going to see. He would go, “This is how we are going to be attacked, and this is the way the other coordinator thinks, therefore this is what we are going to work on.” I thought that was such a unique ability and part of what set him apart by understanding time on task.
   
• I would say Elko has vision, and he knows what he wants it to look like. Taking those incremental steps with the big picture in mind. He was part of the rebuild at Richmond, at Bowling Green, at Wake Forest. Then he went to Notre Dame and flipped their defense in one year. At Duke, he had one of the best coaching jobs in the ACC in the past decade. There is a history of success and building programs.
   
• All of us want to win every game every year, but I think Elko knows how to fit the different pieces together to not just have success short-term but to have long-term success. I know that’s what he wants to build at A&M. He believes it's a place that can win national championships and be in the playoffs, and that’s not to say you’ll do that every year, but one of the reasons he was so attracted to the A&M job is he knew the job with Jimbo Fisher. He knows what the commitment level is, and he also embraces the expectations rather than shying away.
   
• Being retired is different. This is the first time in 47 years I haven’t been a part of football as a player or a coach, and it’s the first time in 36 or 37 years I haven’t been a college football coach. I enjoy the time away. I’ve visited six different programs. I’ve still been around the sport and plan on continuing to be around it in some capacity, whether it's next season or next year in another way. I’ve enjoyed the time. When you coach, it's 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, with very little time off. I’ve loved the time off with my family and the chance to enjoy some things I haven’t been able to do, but by the same token, if you’re a coach, you’re a coach. It’s in your blood. There’s no question I definitely miss being around the team and the staff and being around football people.