The little boy faces his idol when Morton's team, Harrell's team square off
LUBBOCK - Texas Tech football players carry a high profile in and around Lubbock, Graham Harrell even more than most.
As a senior in fall 2008, he was setting team records that still stand for career pass attempts, completions, yards and touchdowns.
In throwing a lot of those passes to Biletnikoff Award winner Michael Crabtree, Harrell led the Red Raiders to an 8-0 start, a No. 2 national ranking and, ultimately, an 11-2 season during which he earned first-team all-America recognition and finished fourth in voting for the Heisman Trophy.
Young boys donned Tech replica No. 6 jerseys, just like Graham, and dreamed of being the Red Raiders' star quarterback.
Behren Morton was no exception.
James Morton, Behren's dad, has the pictures to prove it. Some show Graham and Behren in the same photo at a community event. A couple are pictures of Harrell that a little Behren drew.
"Behren was probably 5 years old," James Morton said this week, "but he loved his Graham Harrell for sure."
In those way-back days, Morton diligently sketched his quarterback idol: the scarlet No. 6 on each shoulder, a big Double T on the chest and, in sharp attention to detail for a 5-year-old, even red piping down the sides of the jersey and in the collar. One red shoe and one black shoe are adorned with some exceptionally long cleats.
Come Saturday, Behren Morton and Harrell will be on opposite sidelines,
Morton is taking his own turn as the Texas Tech quarterback and Harrell will serve as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach for visiting West Virginia. Harrell, a full-time college assistant since 2014, will be coaching against the Red Raiders in Jones AT&T Stadium for the first time.
"We obviously respect Graham a great deal," James Morton said, "And the time that he was playing there and then having recruited Behren at USC was a cool deal, too. But blood's thicker than water, so we've been pulling for him in games that he's been coaching in, but come Saturday we're going to be pulling for the Red Raiders."
Behren Morton made his first career start in Tech's most recent game, accounting for 432 yards of total offense and three touchdowns in a 41-31 loss at Oklahoma State.
He got the start because Donovan Smith was dealing, at the time, with a sprained AC joint. Tech coach Joey McGuire hasn't named a starting quarterback for Saturday, but he said Monday that Morton began the week taking the majority of the QB snaps with the first offense.
Given that Harrell had his picture made with countless kids over the course of his career, it's not surprising that he had no specific recollection of the ones with a young Morton. That's not to say he draws a blank when it comes to the young Morton. The former Tech quarterback recruited the current one when Harrell was offensive coordinator at North Texas and continued the pursuit as offensive coordinator at Southern California.
Behren Morton was playing for his dad at Eastland, where James Morton still coaches.
"I thought he could be really, really talented," Harrell said this week. "Obviously, I'm probably biased, but I love coaches' kids. They usually understand football and know football, and so I really liked him as a player. I thought he was athletic. I thought he could really throw the football."
The Harrell-Morton connection, though, goes deeper.
James Morton, who led Monterey to nine playoff appearances in 11 seasons from 1998 through 2008, spent the next seven seasons at Midland Lee. In 2014, he interviewed Harrell to be his offensive coordinator, planning to keep it on the down-low, only to have the news leak and hit social media while Harrell was still on campus.
Former Tech coach Mike Leach, then at Washington State, asked Harrell to come join his staff instead.
"I was going to take it," Harrell said of the job in Midland, "and then Leach called and said, 'If you're going to coach, come coach for me at Washington State.' That's really how I got into coaching."
Harrell calls James Morton "one of my favorite guys, one of my favorite high-school coaches, not just in recruiting, but just knowing him as a guy. He's always been awesome to be around."
But the chance to get a foot in the door at a power-five program was more than he could pass up. He started out coaching the WSU wide receivers. Thus, Harrell's career began to take shape in the Pac-12 instead of in the Texas high-school district once lovingly known as "The Little Southwest Conference."
"He came out and interviewed, of course everybody loved him and I thought it would be an awesome deal," Morton said. "We were really, I think, about to get him, and then coach Leach came up with a position for him at Washington State. He was real aggressive, Graham was, with the interview, and then he kind of, I felt like, slow played me a little bit and I kind of put two and two together when I heard they were hiring some positions at Washington State."
Morton, meanwhile, returned in 2016 to be head coach in his hometown of Eastland, where he starred on the Mavericks' Class 2A state championship team in 1982. Weekends are busier these days, because he's still in charge of his own team leading up to Friday nights and afterward while trying to get to his son's games.
Two weeks ago, when Eastland played at Jacksboro, Morton spent Friday night in Jacksboro. Being 81 miles northeast of Eastland, it put him that much closer to Oklahoma and the Tech game the next afternoon in Stillwater.
Up to that point, Behren Morton had played only a little for the Red Raiders. Now he was making his first college start, on the road, against a team with a No. 7 national ranking and a strong pass rush.
Walking into Boone Pickens Stadium that day, James Morton felt the difference.
"We got there way early," he said. "I told my wife as we were watching Oklahoma State fans starting to pile in, I was like, 'Just think: Every one of these people walking in is going to be screaming at your son.' When you put it in that perspective, then the butterflies kind of started.
"My wife and I, we always joke about it, but Behren just seems to always overcome stuff."
Assuming the younger Morton starts on Saturday, he'll get a chance to show his childhood idol all the stuff he's learned about playing quarterback. Not that the idol needs convincing.
"I liked Behren, recruited him and thought he could really be special," Harrell said. "I would've have liked to (have coached him). ... Thought he could be really successful in what we do offensively."
Texas Tech vs. West Virginia
When: 2 p.m. Saturday
Where: Jones AT&T Stadium
Records: West Virginia 3-3, 1-2 in the Big 12; Texas Tech 3-3, 1-2
Rankings (AP/coaches poll): Both teams are unranked.
TV: Fox Sports 1
Line: Tech by 6
Last game: West Virginia 43, Baylor 40; Oklahoma State 41, Texas Tech 31
Last meeting: Texas Tech 23, WVU 20 last year in Morgantown, West Virginia
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: The little boy faces his idol when Morton's team, Harrell's team square off
