Texas A&M or Notre Dame? It’s a bag of mixed emotions for Duke with Mike Elko, Riley Leonard facing off

DUKE QB GRAYSON LOFTIS is looking for a politically correct way to answer a fraught question, turning to teammate Jaylen Stinson for help. Instead, Stinson eggs him on, hoping to avoid having to answer himself.

There’s a big Week 1 showdown between his former head coach, Mike Elko, now leading Texas A&M, and Riley Leonard, the guy Loftis shared a QB room at Duke with last year, now taking snaps at Notre Dame. Who ya got?

“I don’t want to touch that one with a 10-foot pole,” Loftis says. “A zero-zero tie, I guess.”

Well, that would mean Leonard didn’t throw a TD pass, right?

Loftis changes course.

“OK, 180-180,” he says, throwing up his hands.

Right. There are no good answers here.

It’s an impossible choice for the Duke holdovers, but it’s also something of a microcosm for modern college football — a coach and a QB, once tethered by success at one school, now going head-to-head on completely different sidelines; a matchup of A&M and Notre Dame and, perhaps, between college football’s espoused values and the cold reality of its bottom line.

For Leonard, Notre Dame was a chance to play for one of college football’s most storied programs in an era in which name, image and likeness dollars and NFL prospects often require the biggest stage possible. It also meant leaving the only Power 5 school to offer him a scholarship out of high school.

For Elko, the A&M job was a chance to arm himself with every resource imaginable in an era in which cash is the key to talent acquisition at a place desperate to win big. But it also meant leaving his former team under the cloak of darkness in November, with his players left to learn of his departure on social media the next morning.

For Duke — or what’s left of a program that went from a 2-10 abyss to the brink of greatness to a transfer portal exodus in two years under Elko — it has been a time of both frustration and resilience.

So when Notre Dame and Texas A&M kick off on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET on ABC), plenty of folks at Duke will be watching with mixed emotions.

And while Leonard and Elko won’t be conflicted about their preferred outcome, even they won’t be immune to the feelings that come with facing an old friend.

“Who he is as a person, the respect and admiration I have for him,” Elko said, “I would pick any other quarterback on the planet to be on the other side of the field for that game.”

IT ACTUALLY TOOK another month before Leonard’s career at Duke was truly over, but it effectively came to a blunt ending in the final seconds of a 21-14 loss to, of all teams, Notre Dame.

A few minutes earlier might’ve been the apex of the Elko-Leonard partnership. Duke was 4-0. ESPN’s “College GameDay” had come to campus for the showdown with Notre Dame, a first in program history. Leonard was getting Heisman Trophy buzz, and though the offense had been anything but pretty that night, he’d willed the Blue Devils to a 14-13 lead late in the fourth quarter.

But Notre Dame converted a fourth-and-16 by mere inches, scored two plays later, then kicked off to Leonard and the Blue Devils with just 27 seconds to play. Leonard was desperate, scrambled in a collapsing pocket and took a merciless hit that awkwardly bent one of his legs.

Pain shot from Leonard’s ankle as he lay in a heap on the field. Meanwhile, Notre Dame recovered the loose ball and went on to win 21-14.

Leonard completed just 16 more passes in a Blue Devils jersey in two losses to Florida State and Louisville before opting for surgery and, ultimately, the transfer portal.

His destination: Notre Dame.

“It’s an ongoing joke,” Leonard said. “I was just talking trash today, saying they got lucky.”

It’s impossible to say what might’ve happened had Duke won that game, had Leonard not been helped off the field with his right leg dangling and his ankle aching. What Leonard is certain of is that he never considered the transfer portal before the injury.

“Absolutely not for a second did I have a thought of ending up here after that game,” Leonard said. “But God’s got a funny plan for my life. It’s just crazy to think about, but it’s something I really appreciate and I’m not taking any day for granted.”

In high school in Fairhope, Alabama, Leonard was a basketball star. It wasn’t until his senior season that football became his priority, and by that point, he had garnered few suitors on the recruiting trail. But a high school coach was pals with then-Duke coach David Cutcliffe, whom he saw enough from Leonard to offer a scholarship.

Cutcliffe was fired after Leonard’s first year at Duke, however, and it was Elko who really gave the QB his shot. The decision paid immediate dividends, with Duke winning nine games in 2022, largely buoyed by Leonard’s success.

It all felt like a perfect story until Leonard was tethered to a hospital bed, recovering from ankle surgery in November 2023.

By then, rumors were swirling that Elko would leave. The vultures were circling as portal season approached. The word in certain circles was that Leonard had already decided he was leaving, too, though multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation argued otherwise, noting Elko and Leonard were still discussing a possible return as late as Nov. 26, the day Elko ultimately left for Texas A&M.

Truth is, Leonard said, he wasn’t eager to leave the only college that had given him a chance, but he said he ultimately had to make “a selfish” decision. Not the wrong decision, he said, just not the choice that might’ve been best for everyone around him.

“You can give him some grace, but you’ve got to call a spade a spade,” said DeWayne Carter, a former Blue Devils defensive tackle and one of Leonard’s closest confidants. “You’ve got to be selfish in that world, and Riley is the farthest thing from selfish in this universe. He did all he could to come back for us [from the ankle injury], and he had a right to make a decision for himself. It was never a secretive thing. He had conversations with us, and I told him I supported him.”

Another voice of support came from Notre Dame’s last starting QB, Sam Hartman — a player who had left an ACC school where he carved out a legendary career in favor of one last ride with the Irish.

Hartman’s transfer had its own critics, and when the Irish honored him at their 2023 Senior Day festivities, Wake Forest coach Dave Clawson lamented the situation, suggesting Notre Dame was just a flirtation, while Wake was home. It was, perhaps, a reasonable take. Clawson noted that, when Hartman posted images to his social media playing the new EA Sports College Football game, he was playing with Wake, not Notre Dame.

But when Leonard reached out for advice, Hartman gave him the hard sell. No, it wasn’t easy to leave a place he loved. Yes, Notre Dame was still the right decision.

And so Leonard said goodbye to Duke, and went to a play for the team that had delivered the most punishing blow to his career thus far.

Like Hartman, he said, there are no regrets.

“Everybody here is the biggest Notre Dame supporter. Everywhere you go we feel the love. You’re in the middle of nowhere Indiana, but it’s such a special place,” he said. “I feel like I’ve become a better person spiritually, mentally, as a football player, a student. It’s been a great experience so far.”

ELKO MET WITH his team at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 26. He had been offered the head-coaching job at Texas A&M, a place where he spent three years (2018-21) as defensive coordinator, and he was seriously considering accepting.

This wasn’t the first time Duke’s players had heard some version of this story. Elko had been a hot name on the coaching carousel after his stellar debut season with the Blue Devils, but at every other turn, he demurred.

He loved Duke. Elko has two kids in high school in Durham, and if he took the A&M job, he’d be leaving them behind. Athletic director Nina King had given him his first opportunity as a head coach, and he wanted to be loyal.

But offers like Texas A&M don’t come around often. He had gone home to talk with his family about it, and in the meantime, then-Texas A&M athletic director Ross Bjork — who would leave for a new job himself less than two months later — and the head of the board of regents flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, to await his response.

Hours passed as Elko, his wife and his kids debated the job. It wasn’t until nearly midnight they came to a decision, and by that time, Bjork & Co. had been waiting on a tarmac at the Raleigh airport for three hours.

Elko called King around 11:55 p.m. and told her he was taking A&M’s offer and promptly left for Texas.

The next morning, the news was everywhere.

“There were a lot of hard feelings for me and the school and the staff,” Carter said. “You wake up and are learning stuff from Twitter. I was mad. I was definitely mad.”

Former Duke defensive tackle Aeneas Peebles, now at Virginia Tech, called it “a messy time.”

“Going through a coaching change and hearing the rumors on Twitter, even weeks before it actually happened, especially an amazing coach like Elko,” Peebles said, “hearing rumors that brought life back to this place, it hurt.”

Elko scheduled a videoconference meeting with the team for the afternoon of Nov. 27, and a report quickly surfaced suggesting a number of players planned to boycott.

Ultimately, the whole team joined the meeting, however, which Elko said was brief. What was left to say?

“When you leave for a lateral job, everything you say is bulls—,” Elko said. “You make a public statement, but we broke up. There’s no good way to do that. I certainly regret not being there Monday morning to talk to people, but it was a really unique station. If I could change anything, I’d have somebody stop that plane.”

Peebles said he has come to understand why Elko made the decision. Leonard, too. In the end, they all made the same choice.

The game is about the team, Peebles said. The business is about the individual. The freedom to leave is both a lifeline and a dagger.

“At the end of the day, this is an unforgiving game,” Peebles said. “It’s not a game that caters to people. It brings people together, but it for sure doesn’t cater to an individual or an individual’s feelings, and there have been a whole lot of great players who got stuck in terrible situations.”

IF ANGER WAS the first emotion for Carter, that quickly shifted into something more resolute. He had been at Duke for five years, and he didn’t want his story to end on this note.

“My immediate thought,” Carter said, “was, ‘How do we finish this the right way?'”

The math suggested there would be no happy ending. Initially, more than 20 Duke players entered the transfer portal — though several ultimately chose to stay. It took 13 days for Duke to hire Elko’s replacement, Manny Diaz. A host of stars who had helped rebuild the Duke program were on their way out, including Leonard, tailback Jordan Waters, defensive end R.J. Oben (who joined Leonard at Notre Dame) and defensive back Brandon Johnson.

Carter could’ve walked away, too, and started training for the combine. His legacy at Duke was secure. Instead, he marched into a splintered, chaotic locker room and restored order. There was a bowl game to win, and no amount of turmoil would be excuse enough to walk away from one last chance to play together.

“They’re the reason guys played in that game, even guys who were transferring out,” said Duke strength coach David Feeley. “They wanted to win that game. That was one of the most special experiences I’ll ever get is watching the power of that locker room keep it all together for a bowl win.”

It’s not that the hard feelings simply vanished amid a desire to win a bowl game — “Trust me, it wasn’t 100 percent perfect every day,” Carter said — but there was unity in the approach to those few weeks in December when it was clear the end was near, but it hadn’t quite arrived.

A handful of players who had already entered the transfer portal insisted on playing in the bowl game, including Peebles. Leonard was still recovering from surgery, but he was at every practice, cheering on his teammates and coaching from the sideline. Guys were taking calls and planning their futures, but when it came time to focus on Troy — Duke’s 76 Birmingham Bowl opponent — the team was uniformly focused.

“That was the shining light that reinforced that Duke’s all about good people,” Peebles said. “We all thought about the good stuff and the good this place had done for us, so it almost felt wrong not to finish it together.”

When Diaz was finally hired on Dec. 7, he was initially a bit surprised at the mood of his locker room. It was turbulent, to say the least, but also strangely engaged. Diaz had been a part of coaching changes before, but he had never seen anything like this.

It was a team that knew the end was near, but refused to rush toward the exit.

“Those couple weeks were tough,” said Loftis, who started Duke’s 17-10 win over Troy. “You look around and you’re like, ‘What the heck?’ But I think what stuck out was just looking inside the locker room and banding together as brothers.”

When it was over, the business of football became real once again with dozens of players going separate ways.

Looking back, it ended the way it had to, but also with a reminder that all the days between business decisions still matter, too.

“At the core, that’s just who we were at Duke,” Carter said. “I’d bet they’re still the same way. We were always friends first.”

ELKO HAS BEEN thinking a lot of the first game he coached against Wake Forest in 2017. He was defensive coordinator for the Deacs for three years (2014-16) before Notre Dame came calling for him, too, and in November of that year, he faced off against his former players.

It made him sick.

“It was the worst feeling on the planet,” Elko said. “I was with all those kids and now I’m on the other side. I hated that feeling. And I imagine it will be the same with Riley [on Saturday].”

Leonard has thought about what it will be like to see his former coach on the sideline across from him.

“I love Coach Elko,” Leonard said. “I know saying something scandalous would be good for a story, but that’s just not how it is.

Elko has also thought about what he’d say if they bumped into each other during warm-ups. In a perfect world, he said, it’d be best to share hugs afterward.

At Duke, there’s a feeling of nostalgia. It’s not anger anymore. Just perhaps a little sadness thinking about what was and what might’ve been.

During the draft process, Carter said teams asked him about Elko’s departure — perhaps hoping to rattle him or egg him into saying something negative about a former coach. He never hesitated.

Peebles seriously considered returning to Duke after Diaz was hired, but it wouldn’t have been the same. Still, he looks back on his time there — and his time with Elko — as a blessing.

“I love Coach Elko, and he did a great job,” Peebles said. “He had to make a hard decision the same as I did, but he did a lot for me.”

Elko, too, acknowledges the paradox of his situation: He’s at Texas A&M, in large part, because of all the work his players at Duke did to achieve success.

It took a while for the tide to turn inside the Duke locker room. For a number of the veterans, they remembered that 2-10 season in 2021 and the videoconference announcing Cutcliffe had been fired. They remembered trusting Elko and having that belief rewarded with immediate success. They faced another fork in the road with Elko’s departure and wondered where the next path might lead.

“When you lose your head coach and your starting quarterback in short order, guys are going to be unsure where the future of the program lies,” Diaz said. “This is one of the new challenges of our sport, is you’ve got to win your locker room right away. Ten years ago, nobody had a choice but to buy in. Now that buy-in has to happen right off the bat, which is hard.”

It’s hard to pin down the exact moment the holdovers bought into Diaz’s vision for the program’s future. There were many small moments, Feeley said, though Diaz credits retaining the team’s strength coach as a pivotal starting point. But Diaz also believes the arrival of quarterback Maalik Murphy was another. Murphy was a blue-chip recruit coming out of high school, but he found himself sandwiched between Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning on the Texas depth chart, and so he, too, hit the transfer portal in search of a new opportunity. He found it at Duke, a place where blue-chip recruits rarely call home.

“They believe their superpower comes from work,” Diaz said, “and not just being anointed by the recruiting gods.”

But Murphy had been anointed, then he chose Duke. It was a reminder the portal works both ways, and Duke could be a destination as much as a launching bad.

And it’s Murphy, too, who finds the right words to help Loftis answer that impossible question about the proper rooting interest when Elko and Leonard face off, because if there’s still one undeniable echo of college football’s deepest roots it’s this: Rivals stay rivals.

“I want Notre Dame to win,” said Murphy, a former Texas Longhorn. “I don’t like A&M.”

Andrea Adelson contributed to this story.