‘Our Type of People’: Eric Morris Embracing Smalltown Living with Oklahoma State Move
BY Marshall Scott | Pistols Firing Blog
STILLWATER — The term “fit” gets thrown around in coaching searches about as much as football coaches talk about “culture.”
Ahead of introducing Eric Morris as Oklahoma State’s next head coach on Monday, OSU athletic director Chad Weiberg described fit as something that is “difficult to define but more of a gut feeling or instinct.”
Over the next 30 or so minutes, it became rather evident to the about 1,000 people in attendance at Morris’ introduction that he definitely fits in Stillwater.
“When I’m approached by any potential job, I always like to start with two questions,” Morris told the audience. “The first one is personal. Does this align with my values and who I am as a person, and ultimately is it a place where I want to live? And No. 2 is professionally, and professionally for me it’s as simple as this: can we win a championships there? Those are the only two questions that I ask myself.
“As it relates to personal, there perhaps is not a better place than Stillwater, Oklahoma for me wanting to raise my family right now. When Chad and I started talking, it was so important to me to get this smalltown feel and the culture and all the things that my kids will gain from growing up surrounded by a community like yourself. And also be able to play primetime football on a national level in the best conference there is in America. This is absolutely the most perfect fit for me and my family we could ever thing about. So, No. 1, big check mark on that.
“As it relates to the professional: can we win a championship? Sorry, Chad — my answer to that is hell yes, we can win a damn championship around here.”
Morris hails from the town of Shallowater, Texas, which has a population of about 3,000 people. The water is a little bit deeper in Stillwater, with a population of about 50,000, but ask someone from Dallas and they’d tell you Stillwater is a small town.
Morris’ wife, Maggie, is from Rector, Arkansas — a town of less than 2,000.
It turns out, Stillwater just so happens to be placed right in the middle of those two small towns.
“The way we grew up, like, I want to be a normal person and hang out with people that I enjoy to be around in town,” Morris told a group of reporters after the introduction. “Extremely, extremely excited to just embrace ourself in this community and become a part of it and really just develop relationships with the people.
“This is our type of people. My wife, as we got through the process, it gets pretty crazy toward the end of it. It was pretty evident that she felt really comfortable with moving to Stillwater. It’s exactly six hours from her parents and exactly six hours from my parents. She wanted to be here in Stillwater.”
With Stillwater’s size and location, there’s always a question about the potential difficulties of getting players willing to move to Payne County, but Morris also has an answer to that.
He hadn’t seen OSU’s facilities in person until he got into town Sunday. Morris said there was a point in the interview process where Weiberg sent him a file of photos of some of the different spaces.
“I said, ‘Listen, with all due respect, have you ever been to Incarnate Word before?’” Morris said. “He started chucking. He said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Maybe the worst facility in all of college football.’ I said, ‘Listen, I sold a dream to parents in the worst facility ever.’”
Before this job at Oklahoma State, Morris had only left the state of Texas once during his coaching career — two stints at Washington State.
The Pacific Northwest might sound like a fish-out-of-water spot for the Shallowater native, but it’s almost the most comparable to this move to Stillwater.
“Pullman’s really similar,” Morris said. “For Pullman, they always thought that Washington was the uppity people, and then Pullman’s way out east. It’s a rural town and there’s a buncha farmers and stuff like that. That’s the way I grew up, and that’s where I’m comfortable in those environments.”
When discussing his time at Wazzu, Morris mentioned another thing that will hit home with Cowboy fans — being an underdog.
In his senior season at Texas Tech, Morris was listed at 5-foot-8, 177 pounds. He said Monday that it took a whole year to convince Mike Leach to give him a scholarship. He was an undersized West Texas kid who made it on the field as a Red Raider.
There’s some similarities in attitude of Oklahoma State people, the feeling of having to outwork others to get the slightest bit of acknowledgment.
“I was never the biggest, strongest — the odds weren’t stacked in up for me to play college football and be super successful,” Morris said. “I think having to overcome and persevere and do all those things. …
“People tell me I can’t do something is one of the greatest motivators I have. I’m one of those kids that say, ‘Alright, watch me. Watch me work.’”