Eric Morris is going to be Oklahoma State’s next football coach, and the North Texas coach checks a lot of boxes.
Winning big at a non-blueblood program?
Yep.
Finding hidden gems in recruiting?
You bet.
Building great offenses by developing players? Convincing donors to write big checks? Having a quarterback and a tailback who he might be able to bring along with him to Stillwater?
Check. Check. Check.
But when OSU announced Tuesday afternoon that Morris was the man to replace Mike Gundy — I’m sure there’s a “He’s a man! He’s 40!” joke to be made here about Morris, but we’ll leave it for later — there may well have been one non-negotiable, one box that every candidate who athletic director Chad Weiberg considered seriously had to tick.
Current or very recent major-college-football head-coaching experience.
In only the second paragraph of OSU’s official announcement of Morris’ hiring, OSU mentioned that the last time a sitting head coach was hired to lead Cowboy football was 1969. His hiring also marks the first time that OSU has ever hired a head football coach who was a head coach at an FBS school.
Doesn’t feel like an accident that OSU brought up those facts early in the announcement.
This era of major-college football is a minefield. A head coach has to be able to maneuver through revenue sharing and name, image and likeness and the transfer portal. Make a misstep on any of those, and it can blow up in a school’s face and set a school back for years.
The best way to know how to handle all of that is to have done it already.
Weiberg gave a nod toward all of that on the September day he fired Gundy.
“I think football, the game, has changed,” Weiberg said then. “So I think as we have discussions with potential candidates in our football coaching search, I’m going to be interested in seeing how they see building the program, building the vision for how they establish a winning program.”
No doubt he could see it with Morris.
When Morris arrived at North Texas before the 2023 season, the Mean Green hadn’t finished above .500 over the previous four seasons. Now in his third season in Denton, North Texas is 10-1 with a chance to make the American Conference’s title game.
Win, and the Mean Green might be bound for the College Football Playoff.
Morris clearly knows how to navigate this era of college football.
Not to say someone who’s never been an FBS head coach wouldn’t be able to do it. Sure, there are FBS coordinators or FCS coaches or even NFL types who would figure it out.
But there are no guarantees.
That’s why OSU couldn’t hire Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson. I say this as someone who would love to have the former Cowboy quarterback back in Stillwater. He was a joy to cover, easy to work with, whip smart and super insightful.
If us media types could’ve picked the next Cowboy head coach, Robinson would be packing up his office at Falcons HQ and heading for Payne County.
But the inner workings and the behind the scenes of coaching in the NFL are way different than FBS football. There have always been differences — drafting vs. recruiting, for instance — but nowadays, the differences are more pronounced than ever.
Frankly, things have changed so much in FBS football over the past few years that I’m not even sure someone like Todd Monken could’ve been hired. He became the head coach at Southern Miss after he was the OSU offensive coordinator, but his time in Hattiesburg ended in 2015.
College football circa 2015 looks like a different world compared to today.
So even though Monken has coached at high levels since leaving Southern Miss, coordinating offenses in the NFL, then at Georgia, then again in the NFL where he’s now with the Ravens, hiring him as the OSU head coach would’ve been a risk.
That’s what hiring an FBS coach who doesn’t have recent head coaching experience at the major-college level is — a risk.
Now, most Group of Five and lower-tier programs that need head coaches are going to have to take that risk. They just don’t have the leverage, clout or money to hire sitting head coaches.
But Power Four programs?
Don’t be surprised if every Power Four team who hires a head coach in this cycle taps someone who either is an FBS head coach or has been in the past few years. The cycle is young, but already Virginia Tech hired James Franklin, fresh off 12 seasons at Penn State, and OSU hired Morris from North Texas.
Being an FBS head coach isn’t the only reason Morris got hired by OSU, but it’s one of the first boxes he had to check.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at jcarlson@oklahoman.com. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at @jennicarlsonok.bsky.social and twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok, and support her work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Eric Morris checks most important box as Oklahoma State football coach
