Three Things Eric Morris Said in His First Sit Down with Dave Hunziker

It’s Eric Morris introduction day, but before the Cowboys’ new coach meets with fans at the OSU Alumni Center on Monday, he sat down with Dave Hunziker on Sunday.

Oklahoma State posted about a 14-minute sit down between Morris and Hunziker to its YouTube channel on Monday morning. You can watch the full video below, but here are three things that stood out.

1. A Smalltown Fit

There are some obvious reasons a coach would want to run the Cowboys program from all the winning Mike Gundy did over his tenure to the excellent facilities.

But another reason Morris said the job was to attractive to him was the town.

Depending on your views of smalltown living, Stillwater’s near 50,000 population has been used against OSU in the past. But Morris hails from Shallowater, Texas (northwest of Lubbock), a town of about 3,000.

“This day and age, for me to be able raise my family in a small town like this was something that was really important to me and still be able to have all the resources to win a national championship,” Morris said. “I think back to my memories playing in this place against Oklahoma State and seeing Boone Pickens on fire and the atmosphere.

“I think I really relate to the alumni here — just a bunch of blue-collar people that have had to earn things the hard way. I take great pride in the way I had to kinda navigate college football. I’ve been at some really good places, but then I’ve started at the bottom of some FCS programs and had to work my way up. I like the tough, gritty people to go hand and hand and work with every day. Then I think Chad Weiberg, obviously the leadership under him is something, as I got into the process and the connection between him and I was something that was important to me.”

2. The Most Important Thing in Building a Program

When Morris took his first head coaching gig at Incarnate Word in 2018, the Cardinals hadn’t won more than six games in a season.

With Cam Ward running the show, Morris led the Cardinals to a 10-3 record in 2021 and just their second appearance in the FCS playoffs (Morris’ 2018 UIW team was the first).

North Texas hadn’t ever achieved double-digit wins in a season until this year, where Morris’ bunch sit at 11-2 with a bowl game to go.

So, Morris has taken the two programs he’s coached to heights they hadn’t achieved. What’s the most important thing to building a program?

“We have to build it with the right type of people,” Morris said. “Character is something that’s super important to me. I want to surround myself with great men. I think that’s important for our staff right now is for me to bring guys that’ll come in here and do things the right way. It takes time right now to build these rosters. I think for us right now then is to really form relationships with the guys on our current roster, to get to know these guys. Then once we get into spring ball is when the work’s gonna happen. I’m still a huge believer in the weight room, in the offseason program. That’s how you build those relationships. I believe in doing hard things together.

“It’s not gonna be easy, and neither is winning football in the Big 12 right now. We know what we’re up against. I think starting to put in the work with these guys as we put a lot of great men around them to really pour into them — to love them, to really support them and to be there for them.”

3. Roster ‘Gonna Be a Nice Mix’ on High School, Portal Recruiting

While prepping the Mean Green for the American title game last week, Morris signed his first high school class as the Cowboys’ coach.

Given the chaos of coaching two teams at once, it couldn’t have been easy to sign 15 players last week, many of whom weren’t publicly committed to OSU going into Signing Day, but Morris said high school recruiting would be the “lifeblood” of the program.

It’s a similar message that UNT GM Raj Murti (who is coming with Morris to OSU) shared in an interview when he said you build the boat with high school players and patch it with the portal.

Here’s what Morris said on roster building.

“I think it’ll change year to year,” Morris said. “Obviously I think high school recruiting is gonna be the lifeblood of this program. I think that’s where you get the guys that are glue. Obviously we want to dominate the state of Oklahoma in recruiting. We want to keep talent home. Then our border states — I think my relationships in the state of Texas and just knowing this program over the course of the last 30 years, there’s been a lot of Texas high school products that have come up here and had great success on the national level and then on to the NFL.

“Then I think nowadays with the portal, you can actually get some guys in with some game experience right now. I think that’s gonna be important for us to go out and find guys that are ready to step in and play Day 1 for us some key roles. It’s gonna be a nice mix here. Obviously my job the next week or so is to really evaluate the current roster and see what we have, and then after that I can formulate a plan to see what we need to go out and attack in the transfer portal.”