Former longtime LSU S&C coach Tommy Moffit talks about A&M job

When we got let go at LSU, one of my assistant coaches went to work to coach Mike Elko and his strength coach, David Feeley, at Duke. After Jeremy Jacobs took the job, he called me and talked about how much he loved working for Elko, how organized he was and how good he was at supporting the strength and conditioning staff.

I became a fan of Duke and coach Elko. All you had to do was turn the TV on and watch how hard they played and how well they were coached. I knew, when this job first opened, and I found out coach Feeley wasn't coming, then I did everything possible to get him on the phone and talk to Elko.

I did make the first calls. I went after it. I was telling my friends in Baton Rouge about Duke. Everybody wondered where it came from. Duke started beating people. I was a Mike Elko fan long before this job ever became available.

Chad Klunder called me back first. I had to convince him that this was a job that I wanted. After that, I spoke to coach Elko.




I think with every person, inherently, it's a case of fight or flight. Human nature is to run. In college football, you encounter that on every play in the game.

It has to do with how you build confidence in a young man so that he believes in himself enough that he can stand and fight vs. flight. That is the first thing. Your team has to have confidence in their ability to stand up and face another man in this conference, which is the premier conference in college football.

Every school recruits. Every school has a strength coach. It's like building calluses on your hand, but you build them in your personality and your ability when you don't think you can take another step, perform another rep or whatever the drill might be. It's a matter of building up calluses over time and stacking those experiences on top of one another until the guy feels like he is invincible. That's as good as I can explain it without going into a 48-hour dissertation about what we do in the weight rooms.