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At the time, Morris was already the head basketball coach after his first year at Eustace. By adding the head football coaching duties, he bumped his salary from about $22,000 to $33,000. He also considered leaving coaching altogether. Morris, who had married his school- teacher wife Paula early in his time at Eustace, had a couple of other careers in mind. He took three tests in preparation for becoming an actuary and also took exams to work in the fire departments in Dallas and Irving. "Coaching was not the path he was taking," Paula Morris told the Dallas Morning News in 2015. "I joke with him and tell him, 'I never would have married you if I thought you'd be a coach.'" Yet the challenge of leading young men, and the infinite possibilities of putting numbers and angles and spatial relationships into play on that 300-by- 160-foot grass field, kept Morris fired up for football. "We were sitting in an old junior high office, and Chad said, 'I want to be a head coach in college,'" Jeff Brown, an assis- tant coach at Eustace, told the Dallas Morning News in 2015. "That was a long way off. "He wasn't afraid to do things differ- ently. He was never the unapproachable Bear Bryant type so many high school coaches think they have to be. He could be intense. But he could connect." Morris, already a respected play de- signer in his early 20s, took a playbook as thick as a brick into his first summer as a head coach. "When I first got into high school coaching, I thought I was going to run anywhere from the Wishbone to the Sin- gle Wing to the Shotgun to the Spread," Morris said. "I was going to be the guy that runs it all. Then you realize you don't have time to practice it all, so you better get good at a few things." Bethea, who was raised in Camden, Ark., would have kept Morris on the pay- roll for perpetuity, but he only got four years before Chad and Paula moved to Elysian Fields. "When you get a good one, you just ride him hard and put him up wet," Bet- hea said. "I had him as head football coach, head basketball coach, athletic director, and I still talked him into teach- ing a couple of math classes. So he was busy." Bethea said he had parting advice for Morris, who was 5-5 in each of his first three seasons at Eustace before an 11-1 breakthrough mark his final season. "I told him, 'Chad, I hate to see you go, but I wish you'd had a couple of years experience under a good, expe- rienced high school coach, because I think it would have reduced your learn- ing curve.'" Bethea said. "I laugh a lot at that. Obviously he didn't need no … help from an old coach. He handled his learning curve very well." The run of playoff appearances, state championship games and titles Morris racked up at Elysian Fields (1998-99), Bay City (2000-02), Stephenville (2003- 07) and Lake Travis (2008-09) came as no surprise to his mentors. "I could see Chad being successful in whatever he did," Shellnutt said. "He worked too hard not to. He worked in the classroom as hard as he did in ath- letics." A first-year struggle at Stephenville High School, a 6-4 season with no play- off bid at a school used to winning titles under Art Briles, led Morris to question his career choice. But instead of bowing out, he targeted Malzahn's attack as the direction he wanted to take and made multiple trips to Northwest Arkansas. The Spread principles and hurry-up approach Morris gleaned after winning Malzahn's confidence catapulted his ca- reer. Whiting said Morris' approach and his success in the prep ranks proved he could coach at any level. "I really felt like Chad was the type of kid who would be straight, and whatever he did would be honestly done," Whiting said. "That's a trademark for what I see with all of his teams. "You can tell he loves his kids, but he demands a lot out of them. That gives him the opportunity to succeed. "A lot of coaches just like to take that credit on his own, and Chad never has … even when he was in high school. He's not laid back, but yet he's not sticking his Fruits & Vegetables %HHI3RUN3RXOWU\ Fresh Fresh Cut No Solution Injected No Sodium Added HARPS H O M E T O W N F R E S H TM Sunday, August 26, 2018 11 Arkansas Football The chatter on Chad Morris "He's a great person. He's a wonderful coach. He's an old high school football coach like me, and he's worked hard and he's been successful everywhere he's been." — Gus Malzahn, Auburn coach to Clemson's Dabo Swinney in 2011 "He was the first one to offer me. The rela- tionship was bigger than football and getting me on campus. Chad Morris has had a huge impact on my life." — Deshaun Watson, Houston Texans quarterback "#WoooPig congrats @coachchadmorris on this opportunity at a very special place for you and your family. Well deserved & earned. #WoooPig" — Bret Bielema, former Arkansas coach on Twitter after Morris was hired in December "I've been to a couple of his practices during August and during spring in his first and sec - ond year and was really impressed. Very en- gaging with his team. Offensively, he's going to be hands-on. I think Arkansas will enjoy his offense once they get the personnel in the right slots. They'll be fun to watch." — Houston Nutt, former Arkansas coach in a WholeHogSports.com interview v Continued from preceding page See COACH, Page 12