Why Courtney Morgan left his alma mater for UW: Great brand, great city, great uniforms great

June 05, 2024

SEATTLE — About a decade before he came to plot and manage Washington’s recruiting operation, Courtney Morgan was selling medical devices in Los Angeles and training high school offensive linemen on the weekends. The organization he worked with, B2G Sports, had a 7-on-7 team, and that 7-on-7 team had a prospect who had been overlooked by USC and UCLA.

He wasn’t thought to be fast enough to play safety and was a little undersized for a linebacker. But he knew the game, and he had great film, and teammates gravitated toward his leadership. And so in the absence of interest from the local teams, Narbonne High’s Keishawn Bierria accepted an offer from Steve Sarkisian at Washington. He became a cornerstone of Chris Petersen’s first Pac-12 championship team before becoming a sixth-round NFL Draft pick.

Morgan, UW’s new director of player personnel under new coach Kalen DeBoer, is telling this story in the lobby of the Huskies’ football operations facility because he knows how much talent goes overlooked in his native Southern California, and he knows how well Washington can fare when it finds those kinds of players. While the Huskies must win some recruiting battles for touted prospects in order to compete for Pac-12 championships, it’s the sweet spot where talent and skill meet attainability that seemingly appeals to Morgan most.

“What we have to do here is out-evaluate people,” Morgan said, “and don’t worry about the names.”

Morgan isn’t one of UW’s on-field assistants. He doesn’t coach players or recruit off-campus. Yet his position has become one of the most important in college football, and that’s no less true at Washington, where Morgan is responsible for managing scholarship numbers, supervising all aspects of the recruiting department, making sure external marketing is aligned with recruiting priorities and obsessively tweaking and updating UW’s recruiting board. He isn’t a college football lifer, having also worked in sales and marketing, but his network is 20-plus years in the making and his connections run particularly deep in the West Coast’s most fertile recruiting territory.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Morgan starred as an offensive lineman at Westchester High (where, incidentally, he was high school teammates with future star UW defensive lineman Larry Tripplett). Morgan was proactive about his recruitment, stacking VCRs to record highlight tapes and sending them to coaches. Ohio State was the first to offer a scholarship, via handwritten letter. Many others followed, including USC. But Morgan became enamored with Michigan and coach Lloyd Carr, so he left L.A. for Ann Arbor, where he started 11 games and appeared in 28, and was part of two Big Ten championship teams from 1999 through 03. (His teams faced UW twice, in Seattle in 2001 and at Michigan in 2002. The schools split the series, each winning at home. Of the 2001 game, which UW won 23-18 thanks in part to Roc Alexander’s return of a blocked field goal for a touchdown, Morgan said, “We were just in the locker room like, ‘It would bounce to the fastest guy on the field.’”)

Morgan went into medical device sales after college, first for a pharmaceutical company and then in orthopedics. He coached youth football on the weekends, and when friends Henry Bell and Ron Allen co-founded B2G Sports — “They’re like the grandfathers of all the 7-on-7 stuff you see today,” he said — Morgan helped them train offensive linemen.

When he identified a gem, he advocated for them. Jordan Simmons, the former USC guard who has played for the Seahawks and Raiders, was among his first pupils; Morgan spotted him walking around the track, wearing slides and eating Doritos. He saw a potential NFL frame — about 6-foot-4 and 320 pounds — and also saw, on the first play of Simmons’ sophomore highlight reel, a nose tackle athletic enough to drop into coverage, intercept a screen pass and return it for a touchdown.

Morgan started calling people: Brady Hoke, then the coach at Michigan (Hoke had helped recruit Morgan to Michigan more than a decade prior); Brian White, then the running backs coach at Florida (White had recruited the Los Angeles area for Wisconsin while Morgan was in school); Rick Neuheisel, then the coach at UCLA (Neuheisel had recruited Morgan at Colorado).

Offers poured in. Simmons, who wound up a national top-150 prospect in the 2012 class, signed with hometown USC. Morgan said he worked with maybe seven other players that year, a couple of whom also played in the Pac-12.

“From there, the football world is so small, coaches who used to recruit you will call you — ‘You got this kid?’” Morgan said. When UCLA hired Jim Mora ahead of the 2012 season, he offered Morgan a job as the Bruins’ director of player development. “I took a major, major blow for income,” Morgan said, “but I knew it would pay off in the long run.”

After two seasons in Westwood, Morgan left to work in client development for the sports agency Vanguard Sports Group, then co-founded his own branding and marketing business, Pure Influence Group, before taking his first football job in six years as director of player personnel at San Jose State. A year later, DeBoer hired him at Fresno State for the same job — like UW, he felt it was a brand well-positioned to excel at recruiting within its conference — and a year after that, Jim Harbaugh brought Morgan back to his alma mater with the same title.

“Courtney, I think it will be probably documented, was involved in building some great classes the last two years, wherever he’s been,” DeBoer said in December. “Actually, you could even go back three or four years. It’s not a coincidence. Success happens where he’s been, including us at Fresno State, where we had a big resurgence of great, better players from 2020 to 2021.”

Morgan was at Michigan for seven months before DeBoer called yet again, this time asking him to spearhead his recruiting operation at Washington.

“My heart was at Michigan,” Morgan said, “but my brain was with Coach DeBoer. It’s hard to leave your alma mater, but the pros were way in favor of coming to Washington. Michigan, I got to live a dream for, like, seven months. Going back to my alma mater, which holds a big place in my life for a lot of reasons. Then being back on campus, having the season that we had. … What I learned at Michigan is going to help me tremendously.”

Part of why Morgan was willing to leave his alma mater for Washington is his belief that UW “has a lot to sell.” There are academic hurdles, yes, and Morgan acknowledges the Huskies will always draw from a smaller pool of players because of that. “But on the flip side, there’s a lot to sell because the degree means something,” he said. “So here, you have to really understand the profile of the kids that you need to recruit.”

That’s one of the primary lessons he’s learned throughout a career in recruiting and sales. If applied properly at UW, it will prevent the Huskies from chasing prospects unlikely to consider them.

“You have to understand where your brand fits in the marketplace,” he said. “That also sets your board and gives you realistic expectations on who you need to recruit, and who you need to not waste your time on. Some kids off the top are not a good fit, just because of where your brand stands and what they’re looking for.”

Washington, he said, “has a strong brand, a respected brand. They have a lot of players in the NFL. People don’t really know about the academic value outside of the West Coast. It’s a lot like Michigan — it’s like a West Coast Michigan. It’s a great brand, great city, great uniforms, great facility and stadium. It’s clean, as far as how people perceive the program. Great fan support. These fans are the best fans I’ve ever seen. They are the most ruthless Twitter fans I’ve ever seen.”

They are restless, certainly, when it comes to recruiting, an endeavor that did not go particularly well for former coach Jimmy Lake. The Huskies signed a 2021 class now ranked fourth in the Pac-12 and 30th nationally, and DeBoer’s 2022 transition class — a near-even split of transfers and high school signees, only four of which had been committed to Lake — currently ranks 70th nationally and 11th in the conference, per the 247Sports Composite overall rankings.

UW isn’t trying to re-invent the recruiting wheel under DeBoer. Much of the philosophy communicated by Morgan sounds familiar to those who have followed UW recruiting historically.

“I think the formula here is, you’ve got to dominate California, and you’ve got to keep the top kids home,” Morgan said. “When I say do well in California, you’re not going to always get the five-star kids. Anyone who knows California, USC is going to get who they want, because that’s their home.

“But there’s so much talent in Southern California. So many players fly under the radar. There are so many developmental players whose best football is ahead of them. That’s where Washington always wins, taking the kids that maybe need a year or two, or taking a really good football player who might lack the measurables people really think are ideal for the position.”

Such as Bierria, or a handful of others Morgan remembers from the Sarkisian and Petersen eras.

“You look at Marvin Hall, you look at Jaydon Mickens. USC and UCLA didn’t want those dudes,” Morgan said. “They’re 5-9 ½ — but they ran 10.5. So Washington has to go to L.A. to get those kids. You’ve got to get the Sidney Jones — nobody wanted Sidney Jones. And then what happens, you know? Washington has always done a good job of getting those kids who are really good football players who may need to get in the weight room a little bit.”

That’s not to suggest the Huskies aren’t after more highly recruited players, especially locally. Four-star Lake Stevens tailback Jayden Limar is a high priority in 2023, as is four-star, national top-50 Pittsburg (Calif.) High quarterback Jaden Rashada. Winning in 2022 is crucial to opening those doors and others. And while the new staff has put out several offers outside of UW’s traditional footprint, Morgan said there always is thoughtful intent behind those decisions.

“We’re not a national recruiting team unless we have a connection to that player or region,” Morgan said. “As a whole, you’re not going to burn your gas driving through that part of the country all day, because there’s so many players. … If you see an offer outside the footprint, there’s a connection there. We’re not blindly watching highlight tapes and saying, ‘OK, let’s offer that kid in North Carolina. Let’s offer that kid in Tennessee.’

“Kids who care about school will travel. Stanford gets kids from everywhere. I really think Washington can get anyone they want, as long as you get a kid on campus.”

The guiding principle regarding national recruits will be the same as it was at Michigan, Morgan said: If a prospect outside the footprint comes to campus twice before his official visit, UW will feel good about its chances. Otherwise, the Huskies will live in Washington, California, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, with a particular emphasis on California when it comes to skill players.

Early identification will be a point of pride. “We find new players every day,” he said.

UW also hired Spencer Henkle as director of recruiting (previously at Oregon) and Jerret McElwain as director of scouting (previously at Michigan), with former director of recruiting Justin Glenn reassigned as director of player development. Joyce Harrell, the daughter of Seattle mayor and former UW linebacker Bruce Harrell, also was promoted to director of on-campus recruiting. Several other full-time staffers touch recruiting, too, and UW still employs student interns to cut tape and assist with IDing viable prospects.

Morgan and staff are constantly assessing: What is the status of each of their top targets? When was the last time a coach spoke to them? Who was it, and what did they talk about? That data helps determine priorities.

“Resetting your board, adding guys, taking guys off,” Morgan said, “until you get the right board.” The transfer portal needs to be part of the equation — a “tool in your kit,” he says — but, “You don’t want to live in the portal.” Think of it more as “the new JUCO,” he said.

The responsibility for Washington’s recruiting ultimately rests with DeBoer, and his on-field assistants are paid handsomely to stock their positions with talent capable of competing for conference titles. They have to build connections, and they have to close.

It’s Morgan’s job to make that process as efficient as possible and to leverage his own connections to put the right prospects in front of the coaching staff. That might have been the most beneficial part of his time at Michigan: meeting a parade of top-100 recruits, handlers, trainers and parents who came through Ann Arbor on visits, and expanding his network into the midwest and East Coast.

“I didn’t know anybody in the DMV area,” he said. “I didn’t know anybody in Maryland, DC, Virginia. I didn’t know anybody in Florida. I was considered just a West Coast guy. But now that I’ve been at Michigan, I can get a kid from anywhere.”

Now he just has to help get them to Washington.

(Graphic courtesy of Washington Athletic Department)

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