Lou HoltzLou HoltzLou Holtz has established himself as one of
the most successful college football coaches of all time.
Born Louis Leo Holtz on January 6, 1937,
Holtz grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, just up the Ohio River
from his Follansbee, West Virginia, and birthplace. He
graduated from East Liverpool High School, earned a Bachelor of
Science degree in history from Kent State in 1959 and a
master’s degree from Iowa in arts and education in 1961.
He played linebacker at Kent State for two seasons before an
injury ended his career.
COACH
Holtz is the only coach in the history of college football to:
1) Take 6 different teams to a bowl game.
2) Win 5 bowl games with different teams.
3) To have 4 different college teams ranked in the final Top 20 poll.
Holtz has a 243-127-7 career record that
ranked him third in victories among active coaches and eighth in
winning percentage. His 12 career postseason bowl victories
ranked him fifth on the all-time list.
The 70-year old Follansbee, West Virginia,
native became the 27th head coach of Notre Dame following two
seasons at Minnesota (1984 to 85), seven at Arkansas (1977 to
83), four at North Carolina State (1972 to 75) and three at
William & Mary (1969 to 71). He spent the 1976 season
as head coach of the New York Jets of the National Football
League. Twenty-one of the 26 collegiate teams under his
direction have earned post-season bowl invitations - and 14 have
finished in the final AP top 20, eight in the top 10 (not
including the 1995 finish in that category).
Holtz’s head-coaching career began in
1969 at William & Mary at age 32. Despite three
straight losing seasons, his second team in 1970 won the Southern
Conference title and advanced to play 15-ranked Toledo in the
Tangerine Bowl in the only postseason appearance in the history
of the school. Holtz’s stab at professional football -
between his tenures at North Carolina State and Arkansas produced
a 3-10 record. He resigned the week of the Jets’ final
regular season game.
Before becoming head coach at William &
Mary in 1969, Holtz served as an assistant coach at Iowa
(freshmen, 1960), William & Mary (offensive backs, 1961 to
63), Connecticut (defensive backs, 1964 to 65), South Carolina
(defensive backs, 1966 to 67) and Ohio State (defensive backs,
1968). The Buckeyes won the national championship in 1968
in his one season on the Ohio State staff. He worked under
such respected coaches as Forest Evashevski at Iowa, Rick Foranzo
at Connecticut, Paul Dietzel at South Carolina and Woody Hayes at
Ohio State.
When Holtz took over as Notre Dame’s
27th head football coach back in November of 1985, he brought
with him a well-proven reputation as a fixer of football programs
following a series of spectacular repair jobs at William &
Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas and Minnesota.
NOTRE DAME
Twenty-six seasons as a collegiate head
coach earned Holtz a sterling reputation for turning pretenders
into contenders - for taking football programs and elevating them
a level or two on their way to the top 20. But nowhere has
he done this as impressively than at Notre Dame.
He enhanced that track record quickly,
needing only two years to put the Fighting Irish back into a
major post-season bowl game for the first time in seven seasons.
Holtz proved he could take the Irish back to the ranks of college
football’s elite and keep them there on a consistent basis.
He also has developed a well-earned
reputation as an expert when it comes to knocking off highly
ranked opponents. That ability has been particularly well
displayed in bowl games, with his team recording wins on January
1 in five of the last seven seasons against teams with a combined
record of 74-4-1, all of them ranked seventh or higher in the
Associated Press poll.
In his 11 seasons at Notre Dame, Holtz
chalked up more victories than the number accumulated by
Parseghian, Rockne or Leahy in their first 11 years on the job.
Including the consensus national championship in 1988, a record
23-game winning streak that ranks as the longest in Notre Dame
history. An overall 100-30-2 mark during those eleven years
- his accomplishments nonetheless have positioned him alongside
those Fighting Irish coaching legends. When the Fighting Irish
met Florida in the 1996 Orange Bowl, it was the ninth straight
year Holtz had taken Notre Dame to the traditional January
post-season bowls (Cotton Bowl following 1987, 1992 and 1993
campaigns, Fiesta in 1988 and 1994, Orange in 1989, 1990 and
1995, Sugar in 1991). This is something that no other coach
in the country has matched.
After his departure from Notre Dame following the 1996 season, he joined CBS Sports’ College Football Today for two seasons as a sports analyst and worked with United States Filter (a global provider of water treatment) as a customer relations spokesman. From there he went on to be head coach at the University of South Carolina for six seasons from 1999-2004 where he led the Gamecocks to back-to-back January 1 bowl games for the first time in the history of the school.
ESPN Sports Analyst
Currently, Holtz serves as a college
football studio analyst on ESPN. He appears on ESPNEWS',
ESPN College GameDay
programs, SportsCenter as
well as serves as an on site analyst for college football games.
SPEAKER
For many years Lou Holtz has been considered among the greatest speaking legends in America today. He speaks on overcoming seemingly impossible challenges by setting your own goals and working to achieve them.
He has built a reputation as a motivator, a
demanding disciplinarian and someone who relishes challenges and
hard work.
AUTHOR
Holtz has authored three New
York Times best-selling books The
Fighting Spirit that chronicled Notre Dame's
1988 championship season and Winning
Everyday: A
Game Plan For Success (August
1998), which has been published in several languages. His latest
book which was released August 15, 2006 is Wins,
Losses and Lessons, an autobiography of his
life and the lessons he has learned, and is also a best seller.
Additionally, he has produced three highly
acclaimed motivational videos: Do Right,
Do Right II, and If
Enough People Care. The Lou Holtz Hall
of Fame opened in East Liverpool, Ohio in July 1998. And he
recently released his latest video, Do Right
20 Years Later.
The Walter Camp Football Foundation, an
award that is presented annually to an individual who has
attained a measure of success and been a leader in his chosen
profession, named Lou Holtz 1998’s Man of the Year. This
is the second time Coach Holtz has been saluted by the
organization named for the legendary Father of American Football.
In 1977, while in Arkansas, he was named Coach of the Year.
Married to Beth Barcus of East Liverpool on
July 22, 1961, Holtz and his wife are the parents of four
children and currently reside in Orlando, Florida.