For SMU coach Chad Morris, home is where the start is

Paul Myerberg | USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS — Two or three times each season while coaching at Clemson, Chad Morris would send personalized emails to his friends in Texas.

He'd send emails to Hank Carter, the head football coach and athletics director at Lake Travis High School, to Joey McGuire at Cedar Hill, to Joseph Gillespie at Stephenville — in all, to dozens and dozens of the state's many high school coaches.

We're doing great, Morris would write. We beat those guys last week; we've got these guys next. Here's how we're doing on offense. Let me know how you're doing.

The message itself was never as important as its deeper meaning: Morris, himself a former coach at five different in-state high schools from 1994-2009, wanted to maintain the ties that bind together one of the most unique fraternities in the entire profession — that of the Texas high school coach, a group that can be as kind to its members as it can be unforgiving to those outside the circle.

"As a high school coach, this is one of the most unique fraternities — because it is a fraternity — and you're either one of them in this state or you're not," Morris told USA TODAY Sports.

"If you're not one of them, you better try to be one of them. If you don't, you won't survive. You just won't. I've lived it. I've seen it. I know it. If you don't embrace them or you embrace them the wrong way, they'll kill you. Career-wise, they won't help you."

After a long courtship, Morris was officially named SMU's next coach on Dec. 1. By Dec. 4, he had accumulated 980 unread emails and 680 unanswered text messages, most — if not nearly all — from his friends and former colleagues within the state's borders.

Morris made his name with an up-tempo offense, one developed on the state's high school level and finely tuned during successful stints as the offensive coordinator at Tulsa and Clemson. The offense put Morris' name on the map, but his connections to coaches across Texas got him to SMU. Those same connections, Morris hopes, will lift SMU to new heights.

The University of Texas, home of the state's flagship football program, hired an outsider in Charlie Strong to turn around its flagging championship hopes. Even as local coaches praise Strong's character and blueprint, one thing has become clear: It's not easy to hit the ground running among local coaches when you're starting at square one.

SMU, which has wallowed at or near the depths of the Football Bowl Subdivision since being handed stringent NCAA penalties in 1986, opted for a different route.

"He's one of us," Carter said of Morris. "He's a high school coach. More importantly, he's from Texas. That's going to help him."

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It's safe to call the team Morris inherits one of the worst in college football — just as it's safe, in turn, to say that he will need all the help he can get.

"I know there's a lot of work to do," he said, "and I'm not a very patient person. I may have to learn some patience along the way.

"There's fixing to be some tough love. There's fixing to be some guys who won't end up in this room. I will remind them that through the course of the spring many times."

Last year's team won just a single game, in its finale against Connecticut, and lost its coach, June Jones, just two games into the regular season. With an interim coach in tow, the program struggled through a year painfully recognizable to those familiar with its post-sanctions malaise.

The immediate impact is seen in the Mustangs' shattered mentality, a natural byproduct of a season that quickly ran aground and then, with near-equal speed, fell apart at the seams.

"I don't want to sound ugly when I say this, but these kids have been told all year long they're 1-11, they're no good … 'You're one of the worst teams in college football,' " Morris said. "The worst this, the worst that, your coach left, you're bad. 'The grass on the field is actually higher than you really are.' They've been told they're nothing."

Yet the team Morris inherits also lacks depth, for one; the Mustangs are missing the bodies needed to compete with the top half of the American Athletic Conference. The Mustangs also lack another must-have quality: talent.

It's an issue Morris began tackling in the early morning of Dec. 2. After being introduced to his new team by SMU athletics director Rick Hart, Morris flew back to Clemson to see his family and pick up a handful of newly hired assistant coaches.

After returning to Dallas, the group convened at a hotel within range of SMU's football stadium. Morris gave his assistants a district-by-district list of Texas high schools, dictating to each the day's destination — one district for offensive line coach Dustin Fry, another for wide receivers coach Justin Stepp, another for Morris himself. At the end of each day's travel, the group would meet back at the hotel, break down their trips and plan tomorrow.

By Morris' count, the coaching staff has visited more than 200 high schools since the start of December.

"He knows what football coaches in the state of Texas go through," McGuire said. "He's always kept up with us. Especially with where we're at in the Metroplex, in such a hotbed of recruiting, we get the best of the best to come through our area. I think somebody like Chad, he has an idea of how to recruit it."

There are no shortcuts, Morris said. "Those guys who think there are shortcuts to it, they don't last."

But the process is clear — and it begins and ends with a frenetic recruiting effort spurred by Morris' in-place inroads throughout the state.

This year's class includes many verbal commitments who joined under the previous staff; each such commitment will be honored, Morris said: "In this state? With these high school coaches? You've got to."

It's not a great class as of now, he admits — but it will be, he adds.

"You do what a high school would do," said Morris. "You'll adapt to what you've got. We're going to have 25 (players) coming in. Look, help's on the way."

The process was outlined at Morris' first meeting with his new team. After telling the entire team to sit up in their chairs — taking the group by surprise — Morris told the Mustangs to focus on today, saving any worries about tomorrow for, well, tomorrow.

It's the windshield and the rearview mirror theory, Morris said. "The windshield is a lot bigger than your rearview. It's more important where you're going than where you came from."

We want to be one of the top teams in our conference, he said. We want to be one of the top teams in the country. We want to win a national championship.

National championship?

"If your way worked I wouldn't be here," he told the team. "You've got to get someone to believe in your belief."

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Two floors and one winding set of stairs down from Morris' temporary office — the coaching staff is using luxury suites inside SMU's Gerald J. Ford Stadium while the school renovates the football offices — is an empty trophy case.

It will remain empty, Morris said, until it can be filled by a national championship trophy.

At first blush, it's a laughable concept: SMU was the last FBS team to win a game last fall, for one, and hasn't sniffed championship contention for decades — and even then did so by flouting NCAA rules and bylaws, leading to a two-year participation ban.

But there's something to be said for Morris' track record as an offensive coordinator. Tulsa added five wins to its total in 2010, his lone season with the program, and ranked in the top six nationally in yards and points per game. Clemson notched double-digit wins in each of his four years, posting three of the top scoring seasons in program history and setting 127 offensive records.

He lost just 38 games during 16 seasons as a Texas high school coach, winning his final 32 games and back-to-back state titles during two seasons at Lake Travis from 2008-9.

"No matter where he's been he's won," McGuire said. "From lower class to middle class to upper class, country kids or city kids, no matter where Chad's been he's always won."

There's no doubt Morris will be successful, said Carter.

"Golly, I don't know if there's a whole better situations for a guy to start out his first head coaching job than right there in his home state, an hour from where he grew up, in a state where he was highly respected."

It may be this simple: With friends like these — high school coaches from Odessa to the west and Beaumont to the east, the lifeblood of any in-state program looking to build from the bottom up — Morris can't lose.

"We can get this right," he said. "All we've ever done is win. We're going to win. It's going to happen. We're going to win with you or we're going to win without you."