Mike Elko
The numbers
$7.00M
$7,000,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
$7.00M
$7,000,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
$3.80M
$3,800,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
$21.88M
$21,875,000
USA TODAY salary database, FY2025
These are school-reported contract terms, not realized compensation, and the buyout is a contractual maximum rather than money paid. Source ↗
The fine print
Reported at 40 guaranteed flight hours; the 2025 personal-use cost was reported at $493,000.
“his contract guarantees him 40 hours of flight time”
Reported by media; primary document not held. This figure has not been read off a contract we hold.
Every clause here is quoted from the document it cites. A clause that cannot be re-checked against the scan is not published.
The flights
Contract grants 40 personal flight hours a year (reported) → Published reporting on Texas A&M Aggies aircraft during this tenure:
A jet clause is eligibility; a tracked flight is evidence; the join is presented as contract-next-to-reporting, never as proof the coach was aboard.
How this page is sourced
Where a contract for this coach is in the corpus, the headline figures are read off that document at the page each card cites, and USA TODAY's figure runs alongside as a cross-check. Where no contract is held, the figures are school-reported contract terms from USA TODAY's coaches salary database for the most recent fiscal year on file. Neither is W-2 compensation, and neither is comparable to Form 990 totals for private schools.
Clause text is transcribed verbatim from the cited document at the cited page. Where a term is attributed to published reporting rather than a document we hold, the card says so explicitly.
Flight reports linked here are attributed to the program and the date, not to a passenger. Nothing on this page claims a coach exercised a clause or was aboard an aircraft.