Mike Elko breaks silence on SEC fake injury sham with stoic and brief comment

Texas A&M was slapped with a huge fine by the SEC recently for Tyreek Chappell allegedly "feigning" an injury against Arkansas— a decision that is a complete joke, given the circumstances and some of the shenanigans that have gone on elsewhere since this rule was adopted. That it is completely beyond the pale for Texas A&M to be the first team held to account for this rule is obvious to any impartial observer, so you had to know the head man would be asked about it.

That's exactly what happened on the SEC coaches' teleconference call this afternoon, where Elko was a participant. The Aggies put out a statement registering their disagreement with the decision yesterday, but Elko himself had yet to comment publicly.

Of course, since the athletic department had already spoken out and said they would cooperate with the decision, there's not a whole lot that Elko could say. What he did choose to say, though, shows his perspective on the situation.

Mike Elko speaks on Tyreek Chappell's allegedly "feigned" injury: 'Massive difference'

Here is Elko's brief comment on the situation from today's teleconference:

This elucidates just what Elko believes about the situation, and it is a pretty reasonable take. What happened with Tyreek, whether it was feigned or not, by no means impacted the integrity of the game. It's not as if Arkansas was rushing to the line to get a play off and Tyreek went down to prevent it and get a free time out— also, he's one of the players the Aggies would most want on the field in that situation!

This simply does not add up, and given some of the other examples we've seen from around the league of teams taking advantage of injury timeouts, it's completely laughable that this is the first opportunity they've taken to make an example of things. It's like with targeting: there are intentional hits that the rule was meant to take out of the game, but if you decide to not enforce it until there is a slight, glancing blow off a helmet caused by an offensive player lowering his own head, then you've lose the plot completely.