Elko aims to get Duke back to recent run of football success

Updated Dec. 13, 2021 3:30 p.m. ET

Associated Press

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — New Duke coach Mike Elko is focused on the recent run of football success that he believes indicates Duke can win again, along with the school committing more financial investments for the program.

“We’re going to win with this group as fast as we possibly can,” Elko said Monday at his introductory news conference. “We don’t have a vision of the future. We don’t have a vision of this long-term rebuild. We have a vision of what this program looked like not too long ago, when they went to six bowls in seven years and they played in the ACC championship game.”

Duke

Elko, 44, has worked as a defensive coordinator at multiple schools, most recently at Texas A&M but also Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Bowling Green in the past decade.

His news conference came roughly two weeks after the school announced

“We want to have the ability to be a developmental program and take kids and make them everything that we can become,” Elko said. “But I also think we have a very strong national brand. I think we want to go beat down doors and knock down doors across this country to find elite-level athletes who want elite-level academics. They’re out there and they exist.”

Elko is also working to build a coaching staff but has no timetable on when that will be complete. But part of the hiring process for athletics director Nina King – whose

She also pointed to upgrades for the Yoh Football Center, which opened in 2002 to hold football offices, locker rooms and training facilities.

“We know that we need to renovate Yoh, it hasn’t been touched since it’s been built,” King said after the news conference. “It’s on the radar, it’s on the wish list, and it always has been frankly. But I was up front with Coach Elko, it’s going to take significant philanthropic support to do some renovations there.

“So we’re going to hit the ground and eat a lot of chicken dinners with donors and get some folks to help us there. But we’re ready. We’re ready to look and see where we can renovate and what we can do.”

Still, Elko is inheriting a program with better infrascruture than when Cutcliffe arrived in December 2007. That includes renovations to Wallace Wade Stadium that added the Blue Devil Tower of suites, meeting space and media areas, as well as the construction of an indoor practice facility – which housed the stage where Elko held his news conference Monday.

He sees those as examples of how things can change at Duke, again.

“I’m not naïve to what Duke football may have been in the past," he said. "But this indoor wasn’t there. There was a track around the football field. We didn’t have that great tower. We didn’t have this great practice complex. So there’s a lot of things about Duke right now that are not the same as Duke 15 years ago.”

___

Follow Aaron Beard on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aaronbeardap

___

More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25