Mike Elko picked a fight he couldn't win after Texas A&M's 27-6 loss to No. 13 Missouri, and so on Monday he wisely sued for peace.
After the game, and faced with the reality that his 3-3 Aggies (1-3 SEC) have more losing ahead of them, Elko pleaded for patience from the A&M fan base by oddly targeting the most passionate and most vocal portion of said fan base.
"There is a difference between the fan base and social media. There's one group that I really don't care much about. Billy's cesspool can go be Billy's cesspool. Our fan base, be with us. Stay behind us. We are going to build something we told you we were going to build. We are in a really bad spot right now, but we are going to work our way out of it," Elko said.
On Monday, Elko apologized for the comment.
"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," Elko said, via David Ubben of The Athletic.
Though never mentioned by name, Elko was obviously talking about the message board TexAgs, owned by Billy Liucci. Even then, calling TexAgs a message board is akin to calling Godzilla an amphibian. Among the oldest and largest fan sites on the internet, TexAgs is independent and has much closer ties to the university and athletics department than any of its kind.
It's also, to Elko's misunderstanding in the heat of the moment on Saturday, indistinguishable from the Aggie fan base at large. There may have been a time when message boards and fan sites represented a minority of college football fan bases, but that time was around the turn of the century. In 2026, message boards are where the passionate and engaged fans gather. There are certainly Aggie fans who show up on Saturdays to cheer for their team and then check out Sunday through Friday, but no college football program can survive on that demographic. The people who donate to build buildings and acquire quarterbacks are also posting on TexAgs... or at least logging in to gauge the temperature.
That's true everywhere in college football, and especially true at Texas A&M. Online pressure from the Aggie fan base got Texas A&M out of the Big 12 and into the SEC. It's also the reason Elko got the A&M job in the first place; without TexAgs, Mark Stoops is Texas A&M's head coach today.
TexAgs posters have seen it all and been through a lot. They were also largely in Elko's corner, at least until Saturday. Elko won't be successful at Texas A&M longterm without TexAgs behind him -- and he's going to need TexAgs behind him because, again, this team has more losing ahead of it.