Concern grows that Eric Morris will leave North Texas for major college football job

North Texas Mean Green head coach Eric Morris watches his team warm up | Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images

Denton, TX is the location of American Conference contender North Texas, led by head coach Eric Morris. After leading the Mean Green to a bowl game in his second season last winter, his group is 10-1 this season and still in contention of a College Football Playff appearance. Of course, that means attention is on the man in charge, who recently broached 40 years of age and now has several power conference programs looking into him.

North Texas won't go steady into a new coaching search themselves, though, and are pooling resources to offer a package that hopes to rival whatever a power conference pirate can offer this offseason. According to Brett Vito of the Denton Record-Chronicle, it's nearby Oklahoma State and Arkansas each with an eye on Morris.

"UNT’s coach has come up in connection with several jobs, but the one boosters are most concerned about is clear," Vito wrote on Sunday morning. "Oklahoma State is looking for a coach to replace Mike Gundy, who spent 21 seasons guiding the Cowboys. Morris emerged as a leading candidate for the job over the last several weeks as UNT continued to stack up wins."

Morris is one of the three candidates with the highest odds of taking the Oklahoma State job according to the predictive trading market, Kalshi, which accepts bets for and against such queries as 'who will coach the Oklahoma State Cowboys in football next?'

Arkansas favored to land Eric Morris

Arkansas Razorbacks interim head coach Bobby Petrino unleashes his fiery wrath | Nelson Chenault-Imagn Images

Meanwhile, Morris is the actual odds-on favorite, by Kalshi, to coach at Arkansas. Vito could see it, too: "Morris’ name has also come up in connection with the opening at Arkansas," he wrote after spilling the Oklahoma State news.

Regardless of his destination in 2026, Eric Morris will be waltzing around town with a hefiter bank account. Vito's larger article with the Chronicle laid out the plan from North Texas boosters to offer a package competitive enough to keep him in town. The worry is that they just won't have the firepower to match nor the resources to offer Morris that an SEC or Big 12 program would possess.

Right now, Morris is enjoying the fruits of a contract worth slightly more than $6 million total. He earns about $1.2 million annually as a base salary but has various incentives and signing bonuses that take him a little bit higher than that figure, depending on the year.

If he's at Arkansas or Oklahoma State, you can likely double that number and then some. Mr. Morris family surely won't want him saying no to such an opportunity, even if the Mean Green hold a special place in his heart.