Ray Morris farmed on the side while he was the head basketball coach and assistant football coach in Shallowater, Texas, population 2,084, back during the 2000 census. He’d take his three sons – Aaron, Eric, and Andrew – to the farm and put them to work as he drove the tractor. 

One day on the farm, Ray looked behind him to check on his three sons and found the middle one, Eric, trying to kill the oldest, Aaron, with a hoe. The old ball coach jumped down from the trailer, snatched up his misbehaving kids, and drove straight home and told Eric to grab the paddle he kept behind the master bedroom’s door. 

“I told him that he was getting three swats and that this was never going to happen again,” Ray remembered from a cabin in Aspen, Colorado while watching a bear hang out in a tree over coffee with his wife, Roxann. “After I gave him the first swat, he stood up, ran out the front door, and was screaming at the top of his lungs as he ran down the street. We had to go get him.” 

Ray and Roxann went and received their crying son. Ray, true to form, reminded Eric that he had two swats left as the trio walked back through the house door. Roxann, ever the momma bear, shut that idea now and told Ray that her ornery son had had enough and learned his lesson. 

She was wrong, of course. Anyone with three boys knows that the fights would persist. Eventually, Ray purchased boxing gloves and told his sons to duke it out in the yard until someone won or gave up if they truly had a problem with each other. 

Eric’s exploits weren’t limited to brotherly wars. He was once called for a technical foul as a freshman during a varsity basketball game for taunting and Ray, the head coach, made him run stadiums for the next three practices. That was after he was woken up at 5:30 a.m. for the week to run “Sweet 16s” inside the gym by himself.  

“I’ve met the paddle a lot of different times, both at school and at home. And I deserved it, too, quite frankly. I was a little bit mischievous as a young child,” Eric admitted. “It was good for me. It was good for my personality. It was good for me to learn the hard way and I think it put me and my brothers on track to be successful in our journeys.” 

Morris’ journey was all about sports all the time. The elementary, junior high, and high school in Shallowater are separated by roughly 100 yards. From elementary on, a young Morris would grab his backpack at the end of the school day and walk to wherever his dad was coaching – the basketball court, the football field, the track, or even the tennis courts. He was a ballboy, a waterboy, and retrieved the tee on kickoffs during varsity games. During his dad’s basketball practices, Morris could be found on the other side of the gym working on ball handling and shooting. 

Morris became a star athlete in Shallowater, famously hitting a game-winning shot in overtime to win a state championship with his dad. A moment Morris still says is his favorite sports memory. He was also the quarterback of the football team as a senior. And that’s where his acumen for play calling began, although not in an official capacity. It was more of that mischievousness he described in himself. 

On occasion, Morris would run over to the sideline to get the play and then run back to the huddle and call his own. And it was usually a play call that kept the ball in his hands. He scored a touchdown on one of the first times he did it and could feel the glare and frustration from the offensive coordinator when he returned the sidelines. There wasn’t a paddle or even a punishment at the end of this bit of misbehaving, however. 

“I remember the head coach laughing it off and chuckling because my answer to why I called that specific play was spot on,” Morris said. “I just always wanted to win. That’s all I cared about.” 

That giant chip on his shoulder traveled with Morris to Lubbock when he became a slot receiver for the Red Raiders. So much so that head coach Mike Leach began calling Morris “The Angry Elf” by the end of his career. He became a gym rat and was in a position room led by Dana Holgorsen, Sonny Dykes, and a young Lincoln Riley. 

Morris was never the biggest, strongest, or fastest so his advantage was with his mind. He was always fascinated with why Tech called a certain play against a specific coverage or went to a certain formation at a given time in the game. He’d sit in Holgorsen’s office and bug him about specific details and ask a zillion questions, not always to Holgorsen’s amusement.

But Morris’ hypercompetitive drive and “Angry Elf” persona never disappeared behind his analytical approach. He scored a touchdown in the “Crabtree Catch” victory over Texas and that win set up the biggest game in Texas Tech football history – a showdown with Oklahoma three weeks later. 

Win and the only thing standing in the way of a national championship opportunity was a game against Baylor. Instead, the Sooners pounced on Texas Tech early and that triggered frustration in Morris. He hated to lose, probably as much if not more than he loved to win. While blocking on a screen pass that Crabtree took to the house and scored, Morris was flagged for punching an Oklahoma defender. The touchdown was called back and when he went to the sideline, Leach asked if he had thrown a punch. Morris lied. 

The truth came out in film on Sunday and after the practice, Leach made Morris log-roll for three hours as strength coach Bennie Wylie watched a movie on his portable DVD player. 

“Leach told him to pick out the longest movie he had,” Morris laughed. “I had to learn how to handle my emotions.” 

The obvious step for Morris was coaching after his playing career ended. But he wouldn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps on the high school side. Instead, he’d join the ranks as one of Leach’s disciples in the college game. He became a GA in Houston in 2010 on a staff that was led by head coach Kevin Sumlin, and co-OCs Jason Phillips and Kliff Kingsbury. He’d become the offensive coordinator at Texas Tech by 2014, almost a year before his 30th birthday. 

His success calling plays landed him the head coaching job at Incarnate Word in 2018. He’d coached at Houston, Washington State, and Texas Tech prior to arriving at the FCS program in San Antonio. He had been surrounded by great coaches his whole life, but he was admittedly unprepared for the resource challenges that faced him. 

Morris asked the UIW equipment staff about mouthguards prior to the first practice and was met with a puzzled look. There weren’t any. He sent assistant coach Clint Killough, who is now the head coach at UIW, to his old high school – MacArthur – to snag some mouthpieces, which he did. The only problem? They were blue and the Cardinals were red. UIW had to rely on local high school connections again when they reached the FCS playoffs in 2018. It was required at that time to play with Wilson footballs and UIW only had Adidas. And they didn’t have the money to go buy new balls for the game. 

“It was a place with no expectations which I think was good at the time because it allowed me to be me and I wasn’t looking over my shoulder and worrying about what people thought of how we were doing,” Morris said. “We weren’t under a microscope. We didn’t have a big fan base that was blowing me up on Twitter. I could just put my own spin on things without worrying about the outside noise.” 

Morris built a reputation as a quarterback whisperer during his time as a college coach. He found gems like Cam Ward and John Mateer. He’s worked with Patrick Mahomes and Chandler Morris and has found a new hidden gem in Drew Mestemaker. But his eye for talent exists beyond quarterbacks. Like Leach, Morris is becoming known for mentoring the next crop of offensive wizards. That includes Mack Leftwich at Texas Tech, Killough, Jordan Davis, and Jordan Shoemaker. 

“He is very Leach-esque in that sense,” Sean Brophy, North Texas’ quarterbacks coach and a former player at UIW said about Morris’ emerging coaching tree. “He’s not overly concerned with the resumé or the references, it is much more of a feel for him and him getting around those people and trusting his gut.”

Morris is the next hot name in college coaching. His Mean Green are 5-0 for the first time since 1959 and host No. 24-ranked South Florida on Friday night in a game with College Football Playoff stakes. He’s not just a quarterback whisperer or an excellent play caller. He’s a bona fide head coach who learned how to harness his competitive nature and gritty personality. 

Leach would be proud. Just like Ray. 

“When he was playing for me and having success, I couldn’t really enjoy it like a dad,” Ray admits. “But as a player and now a coach, I get to be a dad. Just a proud dad watching his kid do what he’s always wanted to do.”