Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko has been named to the watchlist for the 2025 Dodd Trophy, a yearly award given to the best college football coach in America. This is the first year that Elko has been eligible for the award, as coaches cannot receive it in their first year with a given program.
Other coaching luminaries to grace the list include Curt Cignetti, James Franklin, Kirby Smart, Dabo Swinney, Dan Lanning, and Ryan Day. This is some elite company for coach Elko, who really turned things around for the Aggies in his first year at the head of the program.
It quickly became public knowledge after the dismissal of Jimbo Fisher that things had gone awry with the Aggie program in a pretty vital way. Elko had a massive cleanup and rebuild job to do when he arrived, and he accomplished it with aplomb— all while putting together an elite staff (that just continues to clean up on the recruiting trail, by the way).
Mike Elko named to 2025 Dodd Trophy preseason watchlist
For Elko to take home the hardware, of course, the Aggies will have to overachieve relative to their expectations. Most consider the Ags around an 8-win team this year, so if the Aggies get into double-digit wins— which should vault them into playoff consideration, given their schedule— then Elko's chances at winning this award would skyrocket.
That's not a completely unreasonable expectation, either. If the Aggies are victorious in the early-season game against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish up in South Bend (a tall task, but not out of the question), then all they need to do is win the games they're supposed to and they'll end up with ten wins.
Of course, we talked a lot about winning the games you're supposed to down the stretch of last season, and we saw how that went. You can't take anything for granted in the Southeastern Conference, but hopefully Elko and company learned a valuable lesson from that down stretch.
For now, though, this is an honor for Elko and the Aggies. Hopefully, he will remain on the radar of this award as the season begins and progresses.