Billy Liucci, executive editor of Tex Ags, tells McElroy & Cubelic what he wants to hear from Mike Elko & what having the Texas vs. A&M rivalry means for college football
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This Chalks94.5 podcast is brought to you by Millennium Satellite and Video. Log on to MSPNOW.com. TV excellence everywhere. That's Millennium. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning starts now. Welcome back. McElroy and Kubelik in the morning. 7.46 a.m. here. Dallas, Texas. SEC Media Days, day number four. Still a good day, though. A lot of intriguing storylines surrounding the teams that will be in attendance today.

several of which near and dear to our heart with Texas A&M coming through and Auburn, of course, coming through here in a little bit as well. I want to, before we move on, to talk to Billy Lucci here in a second. I'm going to tell you about my friends at Crocker Movie Services. They're a local company owned by an Iraq War veteran, Eric Crocker. Crocker believes in hiring movies you can trust to complete full background checks and run drug tests on every single employee. These are good guys, and you can trust them in your home. They need your whole home back to move.

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Obviously a good buddy of mine, but also our resident expert as it relates to all things Texas. What's going on, buddy? I'm good. I'm great. Last day, best day, right? Isn't that what they say on Instagram? Last day, best day for sure. And it's nice for us to have teams that we really care about in the last day. That's true. Sometimes when you get, you know, I won't say the teams out loud, but you get a draw sometimes on Thursday where the teams don't have some buzz.

It's a little bit of a tough day to pull through, but we've got some action today. Cole had a great Instagram post yesterday about this group. What do we call them, the Luchitos? Somebody else said that, but yeah. I mean, your army, they're ready today. You can tell. They're just there. Everybody dressed up a little bit more. I think Uno's got kind of a similar suit. Some of the people have showered. Uno's got his glasses on today. Was it you? The purple suit there. We've got business attire for...

The photographer? I mean, it's big time. I don't know what's going on. I'm kind of nervous. Your guy's still rocking the mustache, so he can get rid of that thing. No, he's not. No, he's not. I'm trying to figure out what they're doing with the camera here. Oh, they're moving it now. Okay. I was like, why is he taking a video of the... I don't know why he was taking a video of the wall. No, no. Normally... He didn't like that. They don't... He's locked in. They get confused easily. Normally...

If it was those teams you're talking about, this group stays and I take a flight home early. You've got to get back. Since we're in Dallas, I have some plans. And Paul locked me into that 5 or 5.30. Oh, no. No, he did not. That's not cool. That is. That's a dagger right there. That's not cool. Hey, could you Thursday like 5.40-ish stop by? So the only thing that could make that worse is if you're like 5.45.

Yeah. Because if you get that hard out time, he's off the air at 54.30. Oh, yeah. So he's getting to you at 48, so you have six minutes, and you just waited around all day to do it. And lose an interest after four because it's checkout time. Checkout time, for sure. What do you want to hear from Coach Elko today? What do I want to hear? I think we're going to hear what we want to hear, which is he's going to be entertaining, I think. Not like up there –

cutting up, but he's going to be a pretty interesting listen. Here's what I want to hear is just the usual Coach Elko, which is going to be he's going to be self-deprecating. He's going to have some fun with some of the questions, but also I think if you really pay attention, I think you're going to hear a coach that

He's going to tell you where his levels of concern are, but he's not going to really dive into them and make them a bigger thing than they are. But just pay attention to what he says he's encouraged by or what parts of his team are strengths because this is a coach that's not a Lou Holtz thing, but he's going to lean more towards in that big room. I almost feel like kind of realistic, which seems –

Yeah. That's going to be very different. He is going to be very different. He's not going to go on a long. He's not going to compare every player he has to the greatest player at that position he's ever had? No, he's not. And he actually will do. I'm telling you, this Haynes Kings kid, just like Jameis. Oh, man. What? What?

The one thing I loved about Jimbo. I'm telling you, Cole, he's Willie Anderson. I was like, he could be really good, Cole, so we don't have to – that guy's going to have a jacket one day. But you're talking about a first-round pick. He did that with one of these guys that got hurt. How many tight ends, Greg? Oh, gosh, Jay Serenberger. First-second round pick. Jay Serenberger, he's going to be – I'm telling you, he's a top-half first-round guy. He's that kind of guy. Billy's a tall kid that can never stay healthy. And he looked good in the spring game one year.

Quarterback? No, tight end. He could run. Baylor Cup. Every year. Oh, he ended up at Texas Tech. Every year. He was going to. First, second round. You guys mentioned Jace, who's an All-American, and Kenyon's a first-rounder. I'm talking about the ones that never saw the field. Hey, first, second round pick. You probably got a lot more of that than we did. But imagine me early on when he came in because Florida State, so I'm like,

Damn, like this is real recruiting now. Every single guy is going to be a first. We might not lose another game. This is what it's like. Oh, man. But, no, Elko will be, if you hear him complimenting or really going in on a position, I feel really good about it. And when he said coming out of spring ball, he thought this had a chance to be his best defense he's had at A&M.

I kind of went, oh, okay. Because he didn't have – they were elite at stopping the run, but he had really strong defenses. Their corners were not good. Exactly. They haven't been good in forever. Why is that? I was talking to Roman about that actually yesterday. I said, do you know A&M's had one corner drafted since they joined the SEC, and that was Brandon Williams' corner?

who is a five-star tailback that they converted to corner for one year. You know how hard that is to do? You almost have to try. And with the level they've been recruiting at, it's almost impossible. It's hard to wrap your head around. And I think that's where Elko –

His scheme will take some of the pressure off of that. Well, but I think, too, from when he left and got back and then what he was able to do in the portal, I think he's looking at it now going, this is night and day different than what I had in the secondary when I was here last time, which I think that's where a lot of that optimism is coming from. Obviously the D-line.

But he's got some twitchy, smaller edge guys. Cole, we talked about Cassius Howell. He's got some juice, man, I'm telling you. To go with all those big, strong, you know, set the edge. Yeah. But I think his excitement level coming out of spring that maybe he'd go. All right.

Is that back end? And I actually think running backs. Running backs strong. Le'Veon Moss and Ruben Owen. It's funny. You listen to the national media. They're like, I don't know about these backs. We'll see. I'm like, really? I've seen these guys. These backs are fine. That's the least of my concerns. Billy, you got in trouble yesterday with your own fan base for being a little bit overly complimentary of Quinn Ewers. Yeah. Quinn Ewers also said yesterday that he's really looking forward to the A&M game, that his dad always thought that was a bigger game than Red River growing up. Just...

Kind of try to put into perspective that game that we're going to get in November, having it back, just what it's going to mean and what it's going to be like. Boom.

The two of us right here have a really unique perspective, particularly Greg being a high school football star in that state. Oh, I thought you were going to say when he did the horns down in a game. Did you really? I did that too. Who did you do that to? Oh, at BAM. I was thinking, like, why at Southlake would you horns down somebody? I really did. What a Texas guy. He thinks in high school terms. Well, we were, like, talking high school. But, no, I think the Red River Rivalry is great.

special it's it's badass we we all know that and it's so unique i heard sark talking about it yesterday just the way that stadium split sharing that tunnel all these things the state fair a&m texas is i know every in-state rivalry is oh families but when you're talking about two schools of that size with that alumni base that close to each other they're 90 miles away so many kids

I went to A&M. My sister went to Texas. There's a million families in the state of Texas that can say that. My mom went to, you know, I'm saying like the mom went to Texas. The dad went to A&M. The funny thing is the schools are so different.

Yeah. They are.

You have so many houses divided. Say you and I both went to the same high school. We grow up together. We're like best friends. When you're 17, 18 years old and you're picking a school, you don't really know what's best for you. I was going to study engineering. I applied to A&M Texas and Columbia.

And I went. How many did you get into? All three. No, you didn't. Wow. Greg, I think you're underestimating the brilliance that's sitting here. Well, I do kind of judge a book by its cover. You don't feel like you've gotten a haircut in about three years. That is fair. I look more like Austin. Yeah, you do have an Austin vibe. Yeah, for sure. Totally fair. But no, so that split and then the players split.

This is like Alabama. Virtually all of them visited both schools. They all grew up playing together, playing against each other. It's intense. And then with the way the last, for Texas, 15 years has gone.

You know, there's a lot of pressure on this game this year for Bo. Catch up with all things McElroy and Kublik in the morning by subscribing to the podcast. Mythically, he's grown. He's almost like a little bit bigger than a player, right? Like the myth of Bo Jackson. Like, rate, and download the show from the Jock Tap or wherever you get your podcasts.

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