Mike Elko gets real about CFP expansion talk: ‘None of us are answering for the good of the sport’

Mike Elko gets real about CFP expansion talk: ‘None of us are answering for the good of the sport’

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Mike Elko gets real about CFP expansion talk: ‘None of us are answering for the good of the sport’
Mike Elko
Credit: SEC, via Andy Staples

Even though SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has come out against a 24-team College Football Playoff expansion, the word on the street is that many coaches in the league would be happy to do so.

And when you couple that with the many coaches and ADs on the record around the country wanting a 24-team playoff, you start to wonder what motivates that thinking. Is it about the betterment of the sport and athletes, or is it about giving themselves a better chance to keep their jobs?

Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko thinks it’s much more the latter.

“I don’t know why you ask us. It doesn’t matter what we think. I don’t know why we’re trying to become a trophy sport. What does Mike Elko want? 40. Then I won’t get fired,” Elko told reporters Tuesday at the SEC Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla.“… We don’t have to find a number that allows everyone to get in. It’s OK for it to be hard to get into the Playoff. None of us are answering for the good of the sport. We are answering for the good of ourselves.”

Elko added that he thinks the much more important topic of conversation should be regulation and enforcement of rules regarding excessive NIL and revenue-sharing spending.

“If we don’t find a way to create some level of regulation in the market, a lot of people are going to go bankrupt pretty quick,” Elko told On3’s Pete Nakos. “We’re two and a half years away from having an NIL budget that’s greater than the TV revenue for our entire university.”

The Aggies head coach wants to see the massive profits that college football brings in trickle down a bit more to schools like his.

“College football has become very profitable, and certainly the players deserve a big piece of that,” Elko said, via TexAgs. “Unlike professional sports, though, it’s not profitable without the university. I don’t think Texas A&M football is as profitable as it is without the alumni base of Texas A&M University that shows up at games, that supports it, that buys merchandise.

“So it’s a little bit of a unique give-and-take in that regard, because we can’t go all-in to the business side of college football at the expense of the university, because if the university isn’t there, college football isn’t there.”

Elko said that he looks to Sankey and the rest of the SEC’s leaders to get something done in that regard. He stopped short of going where Georgia’s Kirby Smart went, in saying that if the NCAA or Congress can’t figure it out, the league needs to “break away” and do it themselves.

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