AUBURN, Alabama — It's not often head coaches in the Southeastern Conference are close friends.
Auburn coach Gus Malzahn, however, has been a longtime friend of Chad Morris, and when the coach was fired by Arkansas after less than two years on the job Sunday, Malzahn was disappointed for his coaching buddy.
"I hate it for Chad," Malzahn said. "He's a wonderful person, a wonderful coach. He'll bounce back. There's no doubt he'll bounce back. I just hurt for him."
Malzahn and Morris first met each other as high school coaches in Arkansas and Texas, respectively.
Looking to find a way to remove the "for sale" signs in front of his house, Morris, then the head coach at Stephenville (Texas) High in the early 2000s traveled to Arkansas to watch Malzahn's Springdale team face Little Rock Central in a playoff game. Malzahn's hurry-up, no-huddle offense was the talk of the coaching circuit in the offseason and Morris wanted to adopt and adapt the system for his own.
Their first face to face meeting didn't include more than a handshake. Another visit ended with the two sharing a small conversation, but Morris kept paying his own way to see Malzahn's games in Arkansas. Persistence finally paid off and finally in January 2004 the two met face to face for almost an entire week at Malzahn's football office in Springdale. They shared ideas and Malzahn opened up the book on his hurry-up, no-huddle secrets.
To this day, Morris credits Malzahn with his turnaround in the shadow of Texas legend Art Briles, who led Stephenville to state championships before Morris took over in 2003 and missed the playoffs. With Malzahn's help, Morris went 43-6 over the next four seasons at Stephenville, landed a job at Lake Travis High and won back-to-back state titles with perfect 16-0 records. Malzahn coached Springdale to a No. 2 national ranking, won a state title in 2005 and could still make a strong case for leading the best high school team in the state of Arkansas' history.
Interestingly, their career paths have been nearly parallel since 2004. Malzahn's leap into college football occurred a few years before Morris, but he did follow in Malzahn's footsteps to become the offensive coordinator at Tulsa in 2010. Later, he landed his own gig at Clemson as Malzahn coached Auburn's offense. They faced off as coordinators in 2011, with Clemson snapping Auburn's 17-game winning streak.
They then moved on to become head coaches at Auburn and SMU in 2013 and 2015. Seven years after Morris and Malzahn first faced off as foes, Arkansas came calling for Malzahn. The Hogs wanted him to return to his home state and lead their program after firing Bret Bielema, but he leveraged their interest into a seven-year, $49 million deal to remain at Auburn. The Razorbacks then turned to Malzahn's best friend, Morris, who ran a similar system at SMU with a few of his own twists. He jumped at chance to coach in the SEC.
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