Eric Morris closes in on first signing day at Oklahoma State while preparing for championship week at North Texas

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Eric Morris is an early riser.

The North Texas coach’s day typically begins with a 4:15 workout each morning, and he’s in his chair and ready to tackle the day by around 5 a.m. So, self-admittedly, Morris usually rests pretty well every night.

But last Tuesday, Morris was hired as Oklahoma State’s head coach. He coached in the Mean Green’s game against Temple three days later, and he’s preparing them for Friday night’s American Conference championship game against Tulane while also preparing things at OSU, including Wednesday’s early signing day. It’s a busy first full week, and month, as the Cowboys’ new head coach who is still coaching elsewhere.

“It’s been a little bit tougher to sleep, just with everything going through my head,” Morris said Monday in a Zoom with reporters.

Morris will coach North Texas the remainder of the season, including if the Mean Green win their conference title and find themselves in the College Football Playoff. ESPN’s Playoff Predictor gives UNT a 47% chance to make the 12-team field, which is the 13th best odds of any team. He’s also working for a new school.

The timing of all of this is an issue that Morris is pushing through. The coaching carousel falls right in the middle of the postseason, which also happens to occur during the early signing period. He’s juggled coaching a team, interviewing with other schools and recruiting for a place both of his feet aren’t in yet.

It’s not an ideal time to be working on his first recruiting class at OSU this week, but the early signing day is arriving Wednesday regardless. The transfer portal window is open from Jan. 2-16, which falls 13 days after the first round of the College Football Playoff, and the day after the New Year’s Day quarterfinals.

“‘Isn’t ideal’ is an understatement. Somebody’s gotta get all this stuff under control,” Morris said of the college football calendar. “… “I don’t take it lightly that I’ve recruited a ton of kids that thought I was gonna be at North Texas right now, and then all of a sudden, right before signing day, things change. And it’s not anything that we did wrong or they did wrong, but they’re the guys that possibly could hurt the worst and not have a fit for them right before they’re expected to sign with a coach and a staff. At a lot of different levels, the calendar is totally jacked up right now.”

Tulane coach Jon Sumrall is in the same boat. He was hired as Florida’s head coach over the weekend and will coach the Green Wave in the American title game. Morris said he’s good friends with Sumrall, which has helped them both.

“We’ve been able to confide in each other a little bit over the course of the past month or so, really just because not a ton of people really know what we’re going through and how hard some of this stuff is and how hard the decisions are,” Morris said. “Ultimately, I think it’s really cool that we’re in the same position right now and that we’re both still able to lead these teams that have fought so hard for us.”

That doesn’t make the calendar any easier, though. In the middle of preparing his team for the program’s most important game ever, he’s already working on his first Cowboy recruiting class and setting the foundation for Year 1. OSU has six verbally committed players heading into Wednesday’s early signing period.

According to reports from CBSSports/247Sports, North Texas general manager Raj Murti is set to follow Morris to OSU. A report from The Oklahoman on Wednesday said Murti, 24, is already working “on behalf” of OSU. Morris hired Murti in April to oversee recruiting and player personnel, and Murti has been key in putting together the Mean Green’s successful roster this season. He could be beneficial during this time.

Morris has been hands-on at OSU already, too, though. Within hours of taking the OSU job, he offered Carthage, Texas four-star linebacker Carson Crawford. But Morris is still staying present at UNT.

“This has been my priority No. 1,” he said. “And, obviously, your mind starts focusing on some of the time that you spend recruiting during the week on building a roster somewhere else. So, I’ve (begun) to do that, but that has not pulled back from any of the time that I’ve spent normally on a game week of preparing this team and the play script of what we’re gonna run.”

This recruiting period is also important to Morris, though. His high-flying UNT offense, which ranks No. 1 in the country in both total offense and scoring offense, is full of players he recruited out of high school.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Drew Mestemaker didn’t even start a varsity game at Vandegrift High School in Austin, Texas, when Morris brought him to UNT as a walk-on. Mestemaker is now the nation’s leader passer.

Sophomore wide receiver Wyatt Young was a three-star from Katy, Texas, who Morris recruited out of high school and who turned into a 1,000-plus-yard receiver this season. Another one of Morris’ biggest finds was Caleb Hawkins, a true freshman running back from North Rock Creek High School in Shawnee, whose only other offers were from Division-II programs. Hawkins leads all freshmen nationally in rushing yards and is 10th in the country in rushing yards per game.

The high school signing periods are something Morris takes seriously.

“I think our high school recruiting’s always kinda been our lifeblood, and we continue to pour into it,” Morris said. “Although you have to fill some holes and some voids with the portal. I think you can see the majority of our key playmakers out there are guys that we hand-picked out of the high school ranks.”

From his days as an offensive coordinator to his first stint as a head coach at Incarnate Word, Morris said he’s continued to learn how to manage a roster. For him, recruiting at the high school level has been valuable, and he’s done well at finding big-time players there.

After every year, Morris and his staff self-evaluates and finds out what worked and what didn’t, whether that’s in recruiting or in the portal. That’s a map he plans to use at OSU.

“I think that’s why you’ve seen a progression anywhere I’ve been of us kinda getting better over the course of three to four years, because after every year we go back and evaluate everything we did, not only schematically, but recruiting-wise, our hits in the portal and, ‘Hey, what are we having success (with) here at North Texas?’” Morris said. “Obviously it changes at every stop.

“I think it’s well-documented we didn’t have a ton of resources here to build this roster. So, us finding ways to do it. I’ve always been a guy that takes pride in myself. I’m not complaining about things I don’t have, and just find ways to make those things better and solve the problems and the issues the best way you know how.”

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