Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko has apologized after causing outrage by referring to a section of the fanbase as a ‘cesspool’ after Saturday’s loss to Missouri.
The Aggies are now 3-3 after a miserable start to the season worsened in a 27-6 defeat at No.14 Missouri and ramped up pressure on Elko in his third season in charge in College Station.
Asked after the game about his message to worried fans, Elko took aim at Billy Liucci, executive editor and co-owner of TexAgs, the largest entity covering Texas A&M athletics.
The independent fan site was founded in 1997 and hosts a message board for thousands of subscribers, becoming a massive part of the fanbase and program.
‘There’s one group that I really don’t care much about. Billy’s cesspool can go be Billy’s cesspool,’ Elko said.
‘Our fanbase: Stay with us, be behind us, we’re going to build something that we told you we were going to build. We’re in a really bad spot right now, but we’ll work our way out of it.’
Texas A&M coach Mike Elko has apologized after ‘cesspool’ comments aimed at some fans
The Aggies suffered another miserable loss at Missouri on Saturday, their third loss of the year
Elko apologized for those comments at his weekly news conference on Monday, with Liucci in attendance, saying his viral comment came across in a ‘way that I certainly regret’ and came in the heat of the moment.
‘I think everybody knows I have a tremendous relationship with Billy,’ Elko said. ‘I appreciate Billy. I appreciate him being here today.
‘There’s nothing about him and I that have ever been off since 2018. I think everybody knows I appreciate our fanbase and everything that they’re about and everything that they mean to Texas A&M. Outside of that, I’ll leave it alone.
‘I regret the way it was taken. I regret the way it came out. I regret the way it ran. That certainly was never my intention.
‘And certainly, throughout the course of that interview, at no point ever did I lend any blame to anything other than myself.
‘I am the reason why this team is struggling. I have owned that since this has started. I continue to own that. It’s my job to figure out how to get it better.’
Liucci responded to Elko’s comments on Saturday on X, writing that ‘calling out an incredibly large portion of the loyal but also understandably frustrated fan base was a wildly unnecessary misstep.’
The Aggies entered the season No.8 in the preseason AP Top 25 but are now unranked and have lost all three SEC games to Kentucky, LSU and Missouri.
It marks a major backwards step after going 11-2 last season in Elko’s second year to reach the College Football Playoff for the first time.
