UNT Head Football Coach Eric Morris was a guest speaker at the monthly San Antonio Quarterback Club luncheon on Tuesday September 19th at the beautiful Quarry Golf Club. Here is Part 1 of excerpts from his informative and interesting segment from the event.
How did you feel after the big win against La. Tech?
It was big, we had been working hard all week and sticking to our mission, day out and doing the right things on the field and off. The kids are getting their act in order and our GPA went up over two points the first semester. I was like, those are all things that mean a lot. Our kids were doing the right things on and off and it translated into success against La. Tech.
Talk about your journey from UIW to North Texas
We had some real success there (at UIW) and felt like it was time to take a shot at playing a little bit bigger brand of football, so we went back up to Washington. State and took our quarterback with us, who I think will be a great player in the NFL here in a couple of years, Cam Ward.
I knew it was going to be a struggle, you know, talking to those guys up there that didn't feel like they were where they were before offensively, since coach Leach left. And really, I got the job because of Coach Leach. The AD at Pullman was the same guy that hired him at Washington State, and he called Mike and said, “hey, if you're gonna let anybody run their offense who would you want to run it? And so, he sent me in. So, I just thought it was good for me, at that time in my career, to make that move and so we went there, and I signed a three-year contract, extremely happy about the move. I took my wife and my two young boys up to Pullman, Washington. We traded our water skis in for snow skis. They love the snow. You know, we really wanted to be there. I was telling Robert earlier we built a beautiful house there and we lived in that house. My wife did a phenomenal job decorating it. I lived in the house for two months before I got the call to come back to North Texas. And so, my wife wasn't very happy. She spent a lot of time in Pullman to build that beautiful home. But then how could I pass it up? Texas kind of got me where I am today and I am thrilled to be at North Texas.
Tell us your thoughts and experience with the Portal and NIL
It has been an interesting, you know, case study for the future in my opinion. I've never been a huge believer in the transfer portal. That's not how I want to build a program. I think it's hard to build them to last that way and to sustain a great culture. And so, you know, hindsight is 20/20, as we go through it. You know we formed great relationships I felt with the kids that we had there (at UNT). But with the money that some of these schools are paying them like it's become a little bit ridiculous. So, we did a good job with retention, although once these kids graduate, they have the freedom to go where they want. They could transfer as many times as they wanted, and so we had six key starters that left after spring ball that went to the SEC for money and whatnot.
And so, you know, I took over a team that that had been to the C-USA conference championship and played Boise tough in a bowl game. They played UTSA last year in Conference USA, so I didn't want to come in and just blow the whole thing up and you know, because these guys have had some success, I wanted to be respectful of that. And so, to be honest. With you, I didn't do a lot of things my way. Or should I say the way that we did it at Incarnate Word and now in hindsight it it's kind of bitten me in the tail a little bit, to be honest with you because, at the end of the day those kids I had built great relationships with, I mean they left for bigger and better places. We have great case studies now and I really think this will all even out at some point. I mean, so we're tracking them every week, right? So, there's six guys that all transferred out via the portal and NIL and only one of them is a backup and the rest are on the bench and he's playing just a few minutes, so the data has been pretty compelling. All these guys that left were all Conference USA players. Now they're going and they're on the bench and their backups, right? Maybe that's what they want. Maybe it's not, but it's pretty remarkable. Just the transformation of this and what is taking place in the portal.
But for us to be able to build a roster has been challenging. You know, for me, we felt some challenges the first year in this thing because we just lost so much production, we lost our two best linebackers. We both lost both of our best tight ends, our top receiver. And this is all post spring and so it put us in a little bit of a predicament. But at the same time, I think, you know, I kind of I went away from some of the things that I truly believed in. I think momentum is like one of the key words in all of college football and to gain positive momentum is tough in any corporation or organization. Gaining positive momentum is also so hard initially - like it takes so much time, so much effort, so many things to happen right. And when I'm taking over as the leader of a conference championship caliber team. And initially you have positive momentum like. I mean, it's such a joy to go to work every day. Everybody listens to what you're saying. They believe in it. But on the contrary, like when you get negative momentum, especially in a football building or a program, like it really takes the life out of you. I mean, for three weeks we had the worst start to the season that we could have had imagined and for three weeks I didn't sleep a wink; my wife's worried about me. I'm young and I'm going through these moments of doubt wondering what am I not doing right? And so finally, just after we ended up losing to Florida International, I just totally reset the vision that I had for the program. And I told the guys, and it was clear what my vision was, and they were going to be with us or they're going to be out. And they're going to be part of the problem or part of the solution? No more excuses. 
How did you overcome the rough start to the season?
And so, I just took a chapter from you know my mentor, Michael Leach. Which, you know there were so many things that Mike taught me, on how to build a program from the ground up. But we went all in on it and over the last two weeks I've suspended 12 guys and 7 other starters they didn't play against Florida International. We suspended our starting corner and middle linebacker last week because they didn't get their study hours and one of them was 17 minutes short of it so we've kinda gone back to drawing a line in the sand and just doing it the way that we've done it in the past now. We have built this sense of accountability which it was hard for me to, like, do those things at first because they had so much success and I didn't want to come in and act like we just needed something completely different.
And then you just don't know until you know, right? And so, it was such a big learning lesson for me and then even last week we went to La. Tech and played extremely well on offense and let them back in it. I think they scored 23 points and got a couple on-sidekicks to tie it in the in the fourth quarter. We had a minute left, and we went on a great two-minute drive, kicked the field goal, and won the game just as time expired. But it's just been so refreshing like to me and it's like I will forever remember this for the rest of my life as, for as long as I'm coaching. It is sort of like I let my guard down. And we spent the whole spring establishing a culture and a vision of it. But I did a bad job of really day in day out of telling these kids we're doing right and I let too many things slide to be honest with you and it showed up and our discipline, our penalties, I mean all the little things were showing up on film of the accountability piece to it right? And everybody knows that that football is one of the toughest sports out there? And I think that you know me at the at the helm of this thing allowing these things to just be brushed to the side and not enforcing you know any kind of accountability on the kids really took a step back and caused us to probably lose a game that we shouldn't have and so it was a very big learning lesson for me and the staff.
Talk about your mentor Mike Leach
Just another cool story I brought up about Mike earlier but, you know, it's been a very emotional year for me. Just because everything was Leach and he's been my guy and I missed him so much especially my phone calls with him all the time. But I was actually sitting so in the staff room at Washington state, exactly where Mike always sat at the head of the table. That was my seat as the offensive coordinator in our staff room and so the day he died, I got a phone call from Sharon, his wife, to tell me that he had just passed and I was actually sitting in his seat, that I remembered him sitting in the last time I was on staff with him. So, it was a super emotional day for me. Obviously to be there, and to remember all those great memories I had. And the very next morning at 6:00 AM, we're about to get on a plane to go to a bowl game and I got a phone call that I would be the next head coach at North Texas. And I was sitting in this seat again when I got the call. And so, another surreal moment for me that someone that was looking down on me and you know, I know he'd be super proud of me, and I know a bunch of people in here have fond memories of Mike but… I am sorry to end this whole thing on a note like that but that's all I got.
Editors note: We were treated very kindly from the San Antonio Quarterback Club staff who rolled out the red carpet and we wanted to share a link to their charity whose mission is to promote, support and financially assist the Gridiron Heroes Spinal Cord Injury Foundation, which provides acute and long term resources to individuals who have sustained a spinal cord injury in a high school football-related event. San Antonio Quarterback Club Link
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