Mike Leach loved magic tricks. 

A teenage Eric Morris learned about this affinity for the first time as a teenager while sitting in the Texas Tech head coach’s office two weeks before signing day. Morris, a multiple-sport standout at nearby Shallowater, was on an official visit with his parents and was hoping Leach was about to extend a scholarship offer. 

The scholarship came, of course, but not before Leach had his fun. He put Morris through two tricks. The first was a phone trick called “The Wizard.” Leach would force a prospective recruit or neighbor or unsuspecting passenger on a plane to pick a card. He’d then call a wizard on the phone – a lot of times this was assistant coach Dana Holgorsen – and the two had a system for how The Wizard would guess the card. 

“As he was talking to the person in the room who had picked the card, I’d start with hearts and count up – 2, 3, 4 – and so on,” Holgorsen explained. “I’d move on to the next suit if he didn’t stop me. When I hit the number and the suit, he’d stop his spiel and pass the phone to the mark and then I’d tell that person their card.” 

The next was a card trick. Leach would take a deck of cards and do an elaborate shuffling and reshuffling routine and eventually laid the cards out in two stacks. He told Morris that if all the cards in one stack were red and all the cards in the other stack were black, he had a scholarship to Texas Tech. Luckily, Morris never found out what happened if the stacks weren’t shuffled correctly and a mixture of red and black appeared in either stack. 

“Little did I know that the people in that building would become my future mentors,” Morris said. “I just wanted a scholarship and loved competing.” 

All Morris wanted to do was play college sports. His first route was basketball. He starred on the hardwood at Shallowater High School where his father, Ray, was the head boys’ basketball coach. Morris surveyed college basketball courts and couldn’t find many 5-foot-8 stars, so he began to pursue a scholarship in football. His mother drove him around the state in the summer between his junior and senior year they visited camps at SMU, Texas A&M, Texas, TCU and Texas Tech. 

Morris stayed persistent when the season started. His state-wide journey placed him on radars, but the miles didn’t translate to offers. A routine began to form for Morris as a senior. He’d dominate competition on Friday nights, create a highlight tape with his father on Saturday, and then drive 11 miles from his house to Tech's campus and hand deliver that tape to Holgorsen, the inside receivers coach for the Red Raiders. 

“I’d drop it off and say, ‘hey, I only scored six touchdowns last night,’ or ‘hey, I only scored seven touchdowns last night,’” Morris said. “At some point, I bothered them so much that they were like, 'okay, all right, let’s just offer this guy and get him here.'” 

Morris committed in the same class as Danny Amendola. The two followed the footsteps of future NFL great Wes Welker. Playing slot receiver at Texas Tech was serving in the front lines of an offensive revolution in college football. Morris also shared the field with Michael Crabtree. He left Lubbock with 184 catches, 1,965 yards, 19 touchdowns and one of the cooler nicknames in Red Raider history. 

Morris scored the game-winning touchdown in a Top 20 battle against Nebraska in 2008. In the weekly ‘good ball, bad ball’ session of film review the next day, Morris’ effort on the reverse was highlighted in the good ball session. As the 5-foot-8, 165-pound Morris turned the corner and ducked under a 6-3, 300-pound Cornhusker, Leach stopped the tape. Morris looked tiny. And his teammates let him know about it, calling him every name you can imagine. Leach objected. 

“He stopped the shouting and said, ‘no, no, the only little person that can do something magical like that is an elf,'” Morris told the crowd at the introductory press conference when he was named the North Texas head coach, one day after Leach’s funeral. “From then on, I was The Elf. Sometimes he’d call me The Angry Elf because I’d get mad when he’d take me out of the game.” 

Holgorsen always gave Morris a hard time. It wasn’t personal, that’s just how Holgorsen treats the people he likes. And he likes Morris a lot. Ask the former Houston head coach about Morris and it becomes obvious – Holgorsen sees a little of himself in The Elf. Holgorsen was also a slot receiver in the Air Raid offense, coming up under Hal Mumme alongside Leach. 

Morris leads his North Texas squad into Lubbock for a Week 3 contest against the Red Raiders. Fittingly, according to Holgorsen, it is the same weekend that Welker is being inducted into the Texas Tech Ring of Honor. Two of his star pupils from his days in West Texas are back home. He always knew Morris was following in those footsteps into the coaching ranks.  

“It’ll be a great weekend,” Holgorsen said. “I couldn’t be prouder of Eric and his journey. I’m not surprised he’s a great coach, but it is surprising that he’s risen the ranks this quickly. He’s a West Texas kid who wanted nothing more than to play for Texas Tech. I know he and his family are proud. So is everyone else who has known him.”