The Texas A&M coach isn’t a fan of the current college football trend. With a week and a half left in Texas A&M football’s spring practices, coach Mike Elko spoke to the media on Wednesday about the program’s status.
With teams like Colorado and Syracuse wanting to organize joint scrimmages and Texas Tech considering joint practices with nearby colleges, Elko discussed the potential of A&M participating in joint practices. Most NFL teams include joint workouts as part of their preseason practice schedule. They allow athletes to test what they’ve been working on all summer against different players and schemes than they’re used to.
Players are also encouraged to increase their energy because they don’t have to worry about injuring one of their teammates. “I think it’s extremely challenging in college football to do things like that,” Elko told the crowd.
One of the most significant issues he identified was that, at the end of the day, the athletes are still students. Taking players out of class for a week during the offseason is simply not viable. To avoid this, the only time to have a joint would be over spring break.
“I’d have a heck of a time trying to convince my kids to go to Lubbock, or Waco or anywhere during spring break,” Elko told me. “So I don’t know how fired up they would be about any of those opportunities, and that’s no disrespect to those cities, but so that part of it is a challenge.”
Another problem is finding a coach with similar philosophical beliefs. When scrimmaging, Elko underlined his desire to work with a program that shares his ideals about player protection and practice structure. He also stated that joint scrimmages and workouts shift the emphasis of spring practice from player development to competition and winning.
“The second we have to play a game, then obviously we have to win,” Elko told the crowd. “That means you got to game-plan, and you got to, like, hear, I mean, so you’re out of the mode of fundamental development, fundamental improvement because you immediately have to shift gears into game-planning.”
The Aggies will play their customary spring football game, the Maroon and White, on April 19 at Kyle Field. The intrasquad scrimmage will start at 2 p.m. and will be live on SEC Network+.
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