Eric Morris didn’t wait around for Oklahoma State’s locker room to sort itself out.
When he arrived in Stillwater, he saw the obvious trap: a team with a heavy North Texas influx on one side and returning Cowboys on the other. That kind of split can happen naturally, especially when a coach brings a chunk of his old program with him. Morris made it clear he wanted no part of that.
“It was very important for me the first month of two to make sure we didn’t have a North Texas crowd and Oklahoma State guys that stay crowd, and then all these guys funneling in and they’re going to pick which side,” Morris said. “That was really important for me to squash.
The first team meeting [I] squashed it. … I looked up in the meeting, you know, North Texas kids are here, Oklahoma State here and I’m like before I even start this meeting, we’re not starting it off this way.
“I think trying to build everybody and bring them in together that ‘Hey this isn’t all these old teams, this is Oklahoma State ’26 team. We need everybody to come together, and winning footballs is freaking hard.'”
That message has already carried into the way the new faces talk about the season ahead. At Big 12 Media Days in Frisco this week, Oklahoma State’s newcomers shared the spotlight and gave a first look at the personalities shaping the Cowboys’ next chapter.
Drew Mestemaker and Caleb Hawkins arrived with serious production on their résumés. As freshmen at North Texas last season, Mestemaker led the nation in passing, while Hawkins scored more touchdowns than any other tailback in the FBS. But neither sounded like a player trying to cling to old habits or old labels.
Mestemaker described his offseason work as a push to improve OSU’s offense in “our weaknesses from last year.” Hawkins pointed to the blend of the roster, saying he was focused on “getting to see these new guys and especially the old guys coming back.”
For Morris, that kind of language matters. It suggests the locker room is starting to move past the easy instinct to cluster with familiar faces.
Mestemaker said the first team meeting set the tone. Morris had players sit beside someone they didn’t know and introduce themselves to the room.
“In the first team meeting, Coach Morris made us sit next to someone we didn’t know, and you’re introducing yourself to everyone,” said Mestemaker. “You have a season to play in half a year, like eight months or whatever it was.
The strides we’ve made in the past two to three months have been huge. Even since the start of spring, I think this team came together a lot, and we can be really special.”
He also said the buy-in has been real, not just talk.
“Whatever we got to do to win,” said Mestemaker. “Even those guys who have been here and been through those not great seasons here at Oklahoma State, they’ve been here for a long time, so they’ve been a part of the great seasons at Oklahoma State, too.
I feel like we have a lot of guys on our team who have played a lot of football and who have won a lot of games. I really do think that’ll help us once we get into the season in those tough games.”
On paper, Oklahoma State has plenty to like. But Morris understood from the start that talent alone wouldn’t carry a roster that had to merge quickly and adjust to the jump into the Big 12. If the Cowboys are going to reach what they think they can be, the whole group has to move together.
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