Miami coach Jim Morris is today considered one of the top college baseball men in the country. He runs a program without equal, a winner of two national championships during his 15-year watch. Want fund-raising advice? He's an expert. Need A-Rod's e-mail address? Morris is your man.

But in 1975 Morris was a little-known assistant coach at Appalachian State, a former minor leaguer who wanted to coach college baseball. He was so eager to get started that he was willing to take a job at DeKalb Community College (now Georgia Perimeter), which was fielding a team at the South Campus for the first time.

AP (ENLARGE)

Miami coach Jim Morris got his first head coaching job at the former DeKalb Community College South Campus in the 1970s.

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The school was willing to overlook the fact that Morris had no experience as a head coach. Morris was willing to overlook the fact that the school had no players, no history and no facilities.

"I wanted a job," Morris said.

So DeKalb took a chance on Morris. Major league scout Joe Willingham, a member of the school board who pushed for the hire, drove him around town and helped him sign players. A fine facility was built. Morris didn't waste the opportunity.

"He was motivated, really wanted to do something," said Marvin Cole, the retired DeKalb College president who helped hire Morris. "He was anxious to coach a baseball team."

By the end of his second season, Morris had DeKalb South in the final of the National Junior College Athletic Association championships.

Since then Morris has had only three stops: an assistant for two years at Florida State, head coach at Georgia Tech for 12 years and head coach at Miami for 15 years.

Morris, whose No. 1-ranked Hurricanes open the College World Series on Saturday against Georgia, has seen the dark hair of his DeKalb days turn to the salt-and-pepper variety, but his desire to win has never wavered.

"[Miami] is an interesting place to coach," Morris said. "But the pressure I put on myself to win here is no different than the pressure I put on myself to win at Georgia Tech or the pressure I put on myself to win at DeKalb College. Going to that first World Series at DeKalb College was important, just like it's important to go to the World Series here."

Morris, 58, has been successful at every stop. When he left DeKalb College in 1979, the Eagles were ranked No. 1 in the nation. Four years into his reclamation project at Georgia Tech, Morris led the Yellow Jackets to the first of four consecutive ACC championships. One of the players he tried to recruit was a kid from Athens named David Perno, now the coach at the University of Georgia.

"I liked Jim, and he really recruited me, but my brother played at Georgia and I lived in Athens. There was no way I could go to Georgia Tech," Perno said.

Others didn't have that problem. Nomar Garciaparra, Jason Varitek, Kevin Brown, and Jay Payton signed up, and by the time Morris left Tech, the Jackets had been to the NCAA playoffs for nine consecutive years. The team he left behind was voted preseason No. 1.

He took the Miami job in 1994, hired to replace the legendary Ron Fraser, likened to the baseball version of Bear Bryant. It didn't take him long to realize the new job carried a different objective.

He noticed the distinction on his first visit to the Coral Gables campus. When athletics director Paul Dee was showing Morris around the facilities, he noticed the door leading from the locker room to the toilet had a unique doorstopper.

"I looked down to see what it was and it was a national runner-up trophy," Morris said. "I'm thinking, 'Man, look at that. This has to be a tough place.' But that showed me we weren't playing for second place."

Another variation occurred when Morris was scheduling hotels for road trips. They asked: Where do you want to stay in Gainesville? Where do you want to stay in Tallahassee?

"And they asked, 'Where do you want to stay in Omaha?' " Morris said. "This was all new. I always thought you had to get [to the College World Series] first, then make the arrangements. But their expectations are very high, and if you don't go to Omaha, it's a bad year."

Rarely has he disappointed. His Miami record is 694-254-2. This is Miami's 11th trip to Omaha under Morris; his teams won titles in 1999 and 2001. It helps assuage the disappointment from 2007, when Miami failed to get out of the regionals.

"People call the house, a plumber for example, and they'll say, 'Maybe you'll do better next year,' " Morris said.