Duke found a football coach who was part of the same kind of revival the Blue Devils need
If Duke after David Cutcliffe is truly equivalent to Wake Forest after Jim Grobe — a temporary and awkward dip for a newly competitive football program — the Blue Devils’ new coach would know better than anyone.
Mike Elko checks a lot of boxes for Duke. He has been a defensive coordinator at elite programs like Notre Dame and Texas A&M, where he was the third highest-paid assistant coach in the country. He played safety at Penn, one of the very few schools that Duke would consider an academic peer, during an unprecedented and unmatched run of Ivy League success.
(Presumably Elko had the immediate approval of Duke president Vincent Price, a former Penn provost. And like Price, he’ll have to adjust to being at a university with an inferior basketball arena and football stadium. Alas.)
Elko also worked his way up the ladder at Penn and Stony Brook and Merchant Marine and Fordham, places where cash isn’t exactly tumbling out of the ceiling tiles and football isn’t always the first, second or even third priority on campus.
More important, Elko was part of Dave Clawson’s revival in Wake Forest, arriving with Clawson from Bowling Green and spending three sometimes difficult seasons running the Demon Deacons defense. But those rough seasons — 3-9, 3-9 then finally 7-6 before Elko left for South Bend — were the launch platform for what is once again a consistently competitive program that more than punches its weight in the Atlantic Division.
That’s all Duke wants. That’s what it had under Cutcliffe, when things were good. Pick up where Cutcliffe left off in the middle of the 2019 season, and everything will be fine. It took Clawson two long seasons to get Wake back to where Grobe had it. It may take Elko at least that long to rebuild a talent pool that has slipped well below ACC standards.
But Elko doesn’t have to rebuild from the ground up. Not only does he personally know what it takes to win in the ACC, so does Duke, thanks to Cutcliffe. There’s an infrastructure there now: Expectations, standards, an indoor practice facility, tales of success that aren’t older than the players. Or some coaches.
He’ll get the blank check any new coach gets to address Duke’s ongoing facility issues, whether that’s the dated locker room or insufficient meeting space. He’ll have more resources to assemble a staff than Cutcliffe had to hold one together. That’s how it always works.
The one negative on Elko is his lack of head-coaching experience, at any level. But Duke’s entreaties to successful, sitting head coaches like East Carolina’s Mike Houston went nowhere — Houston at least got a contract extension out of it — and in the end Elko rose to the top.
Elko makes more sense than Jason Garrett, an interesting option but too big a risk without any college experience at a place where football relevance is — all too clearly! — a very fragile thing. Under more dire circumstances, Garrett might have been an intriguing Hail Mary.
Elko makes more sense than Tony Elliott, who has been living the high life at Clemson. It’s better for both him and Duke he ended up at Virginia, where he’ll have more of the resources at his disposal to which he is accustomed. Duke needs a coach who isn’t used to his pick of recruits.
And Elko makes more sense than triple-option head coaches like Army’s Jeff Monken or Air Force’s Troy Calhoun, because Cutcliffe proved, once and for all, that Duke can compete in the ACC on its own terms — maybe not for a division title every year, but the days of Duke going generations between bowl wins should be over for good.
Someone like Elko, who has his pick of coordinator jobs, wouldn’t be tempted to leave such a cushy spot otherwise.
He knows the playbook. He knows what it takes to get a small, academic school up to ACC football standards. And like Clawson and unlike Cutcliffe, he’ll benefit from not having to start from zero. That may not speed up the process, but it does give him a better chance at eventual success.
This story was originally published December 10, 2021 at 6:49 PM with the headline "Duke found a football coach who was part of the same kind of revival the Blue Devils need."
