Press Conference: Elko, Ags grinding through final week of spring ball

On Thursday afternoon, Texas A&M will hold its 13th spring practice, and on Saturday, the Aggies will take to Kyle Field for the 2024 Maroon & White Game. On Wednesday, Mike Elko, Taurean York and Trey Zuhn III addressed the media to provide another spring update.

The following are live, paraphrased notes from the Wednesday afternoon media availability:

• What a weekend at Blue Bell. Congrats to coach Jim Schlossnagle and Trisha Ford. Our track teams are #1 and #2 in the country. I don't know why you guys are here with me.
   
• We just had our second scrimmage. We made strides from scrimmage #1 to #2. We executed on offense a lot better. We looked like a much cleaner operation. We are still mixing around a lot of offensive line and the secondary. We are figuring out the best way to utilize our WR group. I am excited for Saturday. Hopefully, the weather holds up enough for us to play. 
   
• Success breeds success. When you see other teams doing it at an elite level, that only builds optimism around athletics. 
   
• The captain's vote is 100 percent of the players. Based on their years in the program, they get X amount of votes. They have 100 percent control of it. They amount of votes Taurean York got, you don’t often see that. He got votes from WRs from Florida and OL from Washington. He commands the locker room. That part of it is phenomenal. He is a great example of maximizing what he is capable of doing. He is an extremely talented NFL football player who has made himself everything he can be. You want as many of those kids in your football program as possible.
   
• People have to look at “mixing and matching” differently. Leadership has to set the standard so when new people come in, they know what they are getting into. College football is not the same. We figure out how to create a program that has standards. When kids buy into what you are doing, that helps. 
   
• You can look across the country and see new coaches having success, but the old ones are adapting and shaping their programs around the changing landscape of college athletics. 
   
• When you are a head coach, there is always a “bad play” because you are looking at offense and defense. The result of the play can be a new blitz that the protection had not worked enough on yet. Your demeanor, the operation, you want that to grow every time. 
   
• It's very much a work in progress. Everyone takes that as negative, but it's not. 
   
• That environment at Blue Bell Park, when it gets going on an SEC weekend, is a showcase of what Aggieland spirit looks like to recruits. It’s like, “Look at this and multiply it by 12.” That’s Kyle Field on Saturday. 
   
• When you are new, and you make your program player-led, it comes out a lot of different ways. When you let the players do it, they speak loudly. 
   
• It’s a shame because Jabre Barber was stepping into the punt return role. We will see the return time on him. Cryus Allen and Moose Muhammad have those abilities. Rueben Owens, too. We have some young guys there too. 
   
• What defines a successful spring game? That Texas A&M wins. I will be happy if people walk away saying, “I’m proud of what that looked like.” We want it to look clean. We want to put enthusiasm into the fanbase. 
   
• The hardest thing about adjusting to college is having more free time than you have ever had in your life. Not every 17- or 18-year-old is ready for that. 
   
• I was a three-sport kid in high school. It's a structured routine. In college, you have more time. There were times I was good at it, and times I was not.  
   
• For us, our kids deserve an opportunity to play a game. It's hard to have 14 practices and just have another scrimmage at the end. We want to make it game-like. We had a draft for the captains to pick players, coaches, what they will wear, etc.
   
• We will be able to put on a good product, and there will be opportunities for guys to go out there. For the most part, the overall health at practice has been better than I hoped for. We have been able to get quality reps. 
   
• I think we are at a good spot with kickoffs. You don't want to react just because other leagues do. There are parts of the kickoff game that would go away if you changed things. I would like to see it stay the same. 
   
• We are in a much better place to handle the portal stuff now. We have had four months to prepare for the hurricane. In some ways, the spring portal is slightly less chaotic, especially in the SEC. You have to prepare yourself for these things. That is why football staffs have grown so large because there are so many things happening at once.