The Texas A&M Aggies hired Mike Elko as their new head coach following the firing of Jimbo Fisher in November.
However, it was unclear as to whether or not Elko was the program's first choice.
Just a couple of days before Elko was hired, reports began to surface that the Aggies would be hiring Kentucky's Mark Stoops - a move that was panned by the fan base.
Eventually, Stoops released a statement saying he would be remaining at Kentucky, while the world began to wonder if the Aggies got cold feet after seeing the reaction of the fans.
Whatever the case, former Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork - who recently left College Station to accept the job at Ohio State - opened up about what happened with Stoops, explaining the process.
“Here’s what people, they don’t really realize about the process,” Bjork said. “The athletic director and the team — whatever that may look like — we run a search process. We make recommendations to the president. ‘I would like to hire this person,’ or ‘I think this is the No. 1 candidate.’"
"That’s how it works in every institution. No athletic director has the full autonomy to say, ‘I’m absolutely going to hire this person and no one else is involved.’ That’s where it goes back to alignment, that’s where it goes back to process and communication."
Communication is certainly of paramount importance in this type of situation.
In fact, it appears that, in some form or fashion, it had been communicated to Stoops that he was getting the job with Texas A&M, with the coach even reportedly going so far as to tell some staff and boosters that he planned to leave for College Station.
Then, the A&M board of regents reportedly stepped in, Elko was hired, and the rest is history.
“So how (Stoops’) name got out there, of course, he was a candidate," Bjork said. But we didn’t hire him. We hired Mike Elko, Mike Elko is a great coach and we’re gonna meet them in the playoffs because he’s going to build it."
"So at the end of the day, who did you hire and how did you get there? That’s what matters the most. So searches in today’s world are really, really probably unrealistic because of social media, plane tracking, or whatever. And so that’s what you have to do is just go through a process and pick the right person, and that’s what we did.”
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