The narrative is shifting regarding Texas A&M football, and it's mostly thanks to head coach Mike Elko and the way he has turned around the culture in College Station. There were some halcyon years under Jimbo Fisher, but it became clear that the program was a ticking time bomb under his regime— Elko has done a lot to turn that around.
Accordingly, he's been getting some love from national media types as a result. One recent interview posed the question of whether Elko is a better coach than Sarkisian, and that question was answered with an unequivocal yes— driving Longhorn fans crazy in the process.
Turns out that wasn't just an opinion— it holds up under scrutiny. ESPN released a list of the best coaches of the 2020s, and it revealed that it's been a mistake to even compare Sark to Elko— the Texas coach's resume is in far more ignominious company.
Data shows Sarkisian belongs in Jimbo Fisher conversations while Mike Elko is a cut above
The coach rating comes from a combination of that coach's performance compared against a school's long-term baseline— how good they have been, on average, over the last 20 years— and the raw rating of how good that coach's teams actually are. In other words, it adjusts for how hard a given job is; it's more honed and exact than just counting up wins and losses.
The results may shock and dismay Longhorn fans, but they're all too expected for the Aggies. Since 2020, Mike Elko is listed as the 13th-best coach in the country, right behind Marcus Freeman and Josh Heupel, while Steve Sarkisian is down at 22nd— one spot behind Jimbo Fisher.
This makes a lot of sense, on the face of things. It took Sark several seasons to turn Texas around, and they were absolutely horrible in his first year. Elko got the Aggies to the College Football Playoff in year two.
Sarkisian is barely better than the 20-year baseline rating at Texas, while Elko has turned everything he touches to gold— both at Duke and in College Station. That makes sense, intuitively, as well— if you put Sark in Durham, I think very few people would expect him to have near the level of success that Elko did there, for example.
This will fall on deaf ears in Austin, of course, but you can't argue with the data. Mike Elko will continue to ascend above Sarkisian in the coming years, and at the end of the latter's tenure, it's not even very clear that he'll be above a guy like Jimbo.