FRISCO, Texas - Eric Morris isn’t planning to hand off the headset anytime soon.
As he gets ready for his first season as Oklahoma State’s head coach, Morris said at Big 12 Media Days that calling plays is still the part of the job that pulls him in the most. He’s 40, stepping into the Big 12 for the first time as a head coach, and he doesn’t sound like a man eager to let someone else handle the offense.
“It’s still my favorite thing to do,” Morris said at Big 12 Media Days. “There’s nothing that still motivates me, keeps me involved in the game-planning, keeps my brain activated trying to come up with different ways to attack people on the offensive side of the ball.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, calling people. There’s not a ton of people (head coaches who call plays) left.
That’s probably what Lincoln (Riley) and I talk about the most is are we saving enough time for all these different parts of the organization when you’re spending so much time calling the plays? I think you gotta hire good people that you trust to do some other things, but yeah, it’s what I love the most.”
That puts Morris in a familiar lane for Oklahoma State fans, even if the names have changed. Mike Gundy once lived that same life, back when he was the kind of head coach who could be seen on equipment crates during games, flipping through his offensive play sheet while his defense was on the field.
That image became part of the story of Oklahoma State’s 2008 win at No. 3 Missouri, one of the defining moments of the Gundy era.
Two years after that win, Gundy gave play-calling duties to Dana Holgorsen and never took them back. Now, with Gundy in his first season away from the program, the Cowboys again have a head coach who wants to stay directly involved on offense.
Gundy was 43 when he stepped away from play-calling. Morris is younger, and he’s making it clear that he sees value in staying in that role.
There’s no single right answer, of course. Some head coaches thrive without calling plays, and plenty have built successful programs that way.
Others want to stay in the thick of it.
That approach has also become more common in the NFL, where teams have leaned into the idea of the young offensive-minded head coach who runs the show on that side of the ball.
Morris pointed to Lincoln Riley as someone he talks with about the demands of being a play-calling head coach. That connection goes back to Texas Tech, where Morris was a player while Riley climbed from student assistant to inside receivers coach overseeing him.
Riley’s name still carries weight in Big 12 circles, even if he’s not exactly beloved in Payne County. But the résumé is there: four Big 12 titles in five seasons at Oklahoma. For Morris, that’s proof the model can work in this league.
Gundy, too, came around to the idea that the job had changed. When Holgorsen was hired, he said the transition wasn’t something he expected to love, but he understood what the role required.
“I don’t know that it’ll ever be easy to accept because I just like to do that,” Gundy said after Holgorsen’s hiring. “But I understand the role that I’m gonna play now.”
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