Penn State writer thinks Nittany Lions will turn CFB upside down with this hire

Once James Franklin was fired midseason, everyone connected the dots between his time as a player in Happy Valley and his tenure as the head coach at Temple with current Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft and highlighted Matt Rhule as the obvious candidate to take over his alma mater. Rhule has since signed an extension to stay put in Nebraska, but he’s not the only current college football head coach with ties to the area. 

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko, who has the Aggies at No. 3 in the country with a 9-0 start, is a New Jersey native who played his college football at Penn University. While he’s thriving in the SEC, there are some who believe that Penn State can pry him away from College Station and turn the college football world on its head. 

While Elko’s name has popped up from time to time as a potential James Franklin replacement, including a few years ago when he left Duke to become the head coach of Texas A&M, Jon Sauber of the Centre Daily Times is one of the first to predict that Elko will be the hire in Happy Valley. 

Penn State doesn’t have the firepower to pry Mike Elko away from College Station

Rhule and Curt Cignetti have leveraged the Penn State opening, and others at LSU, Florida, and Auburn, into contract extensions, and now it appears that Jeff Brohm is doing the same at Louisville. Elko has yet to get that major payday from Texas A&M, but that’s not because the program is strapped for cash or unwilling to give him a deal. 

Texas A&M is starved for success, and Elko is delivering it. With one of the most robust NIL budgets in the country, Elko is on the verge of leading the Aggies to their first-ever SEC Championship Game and first-ever College Football Playoff appearance. 

This is a program that paid a record-breaking $77 million buyout to move on from Jimbo Fisher and bring in Elko, a program that has poured millions of dollars into Kyle Field over the last decade or so, and a school and donor base that spent over $50 million on NIL deals from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025 (not all on football). That’s not a school that’s going to let the 48-year-old head coach who is leading their team to unprecedented levels of success walk out the door. 

Sure, maybe Elko would prefer a return to the Northeast over a career spent in Texas, but that’s nothing a few extra million dollars won’t change. No matter what amount of money Penn State can wrassle up to throw at Elko, Texas A&M can pay more, and that warchest of resources isn’t just for lining Elko’s pockets; it's how he’ll put championship rings on his fingers. 

Like it or not, money is everything in college sports. If you can outspend your competition, more often than not, you’re going to win. Texas Tech proved that empirically this offseason, throwing a boatload of money at the nation’s top transfer portal class, and slingshotting itself to the top of the Big 12. It took A&M much longer because it didn’t have the right coach to take advantage of those resources, but right now, Elko is, and he’s not going to give up that advantage to go to Penn State, where he’ll be outspent by Ohio State, Michigan, and Oregon every year. 

Mike Elko would be a home run hire for Penn State. Unfortunately, the Nittany Lions are two years too late to make it.