Hallowed Hall For Holtz

Lou Holtz didn’t do exits well as a football. It was the lone bane of his professional career since becoming a head coach in 1969 and now getting inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

• At William & Mary in 1971, his three-year run with the Tribe concluded with four losses by a total of 14 points for a final record of 5-6. Those were days when his quarterback was 5-foot-8, 155 pounds .and “ran the 100-yard dash in two days - with the wind.” On occa¬sion Holtz would grouse that his team had “more Marys than Williams.” .

• At North Carolina State In 1975, his fourth and final season with the Wolfpack culminat¬ed with his worst record in Raleigh (7-4-1) and a 13-10 loss to Bobby Bowden's West Virginia unit in the Peach Bowl. (Four years earlier in the same bowl, Holtz's team whipped Bowden's, 49-13.)

• Holtz's one-year NFL stint (1976) resulted in a 3-10 record, and he stepped aside before the end of the season.

“God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach pro football,” Holtz said.

• In 1983, his seventh and final season at Arkansas, Holtz had his worst record (6-5) with the Razorbacks and failed to make a bowl game for the first time in his last 11 years as a college head coach.

Consequently, Arkansas athletics director Frank Broyles fired Holtz. It marked the third time in 16 years - once as a college assistant, once as an NFL head coach and once as a col¬lege head coach - Holtz was told that he wasn't up to par in his profession.

“Every time I could smell the flowers, I began to look around for the coffin,” Holtz said.

• His two-year run at Minnesota (1985-86) ended with a 31-9 loss at Iowa, but four days later he was introduced as Notre Dame's new head coach.

• A missed extra point in the closing minutes at USC triggered a 27-20 overtime loss in-his 1996 Notre Dame swan song – the only time Holtz's Irish lost to the Trojans.

“Happiness is nothing more than a poor memory,” Holtz said.

• Finally, after restoring South Carolina foot¬ball to respectability, Holtz's six-year stint with the Gamecocks ended ignominiously with a 29-7 loss on Nov. 20 to rival Clemson, a contest marred by a bench-clearing brawl that prompted the program to turn down post¬season play.

“Isn't it a heck of a note, Lou Holtz is going to be remembered along with Woody Hayes for having a fight at the Clemson game," Holtz said.

He'll be remembered for a lot more. His 249 career victories ranked eighth in Division 1-A ranks when he retired after the 2004 season. The seven ahead of him are Bobby Bowden (373), Joe Paterno (372), Bear Bryant (323), Pop Warner (319), Amos Alonzo Stagg (314), LaVell Edwards (257) and Tom Osborne (255). Behind him were Woody Hayes (238) and Bo Schembechler (234).

Holtz is the only coach in history to lead six different programs to bowl games (each no later than in his second year), and only Bowden and Bryant have posted more victories against top 10 teams than Holtz’s 19.

Here is Blue & Gold Illustrated's Top 10 countdown of some of his more memorable legacies and standards set during an l l-year reign at Notre Dame (1986-96) in which he was 100-30-2 (.765).

10) A Mover of Mountains - In public, Holtz was versed in the art of self-deprecation, emphasizing patience as a necessity in his rebuilding projects.
“Remember, it takes a woman nine months to have a baby, no matter how many men you put on the job,” he noted.

At all six college programs he coached, Holtz inherited a program that had a losing or .500 season prior to his arrival, but he had each in a bowl game by the end of his second year.

• N.C. State went from 3-8 the year before he arrived to 8-3-1 and a bowl victory in his first year.

• Arkansas improved from 5-5-1 in 1976 under Broyles to 11-1 in Holtz's first year, highlighted by a 31-6 pasting of No. 2 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.

• Minnesota upgraded from 1-10 the year before Holtz arrived to 4-7 and 6-5 respec-tively. The year before Holtz took over, Minnesota lost to Wisconsin, 56-17, and Iowa, 61-10.The Gophers avenged both routs the next season.

• At Notre Dame, Holtz followed the “Year 3 Magic” of Knute Rockne, Frank Leahy; Ara Parseghian and Dan Devine by winning a national title in his third year (1988) – despite back-to-back losing seasons by the lrish in 1985-86. .

• South Carolina was 1-10 the year before Holtz arrived and 0-11 his first season. The Gamecocks followed with 8-4 and 9-3 ledgers and consecutive bowl conquests of Ohio State. Those bowl wins are twice as many as South Carolina had in its history.

Patience is what Holtz preached publicly, but in the privacy of his office hung a cartoon of a hungry vulture stating: “Patience my ass. I'm going to kill somebody!”

9) Bowled Over - Will Holtz's five career bowl victories at Notre Dame be eclipsed by another Irish coach? The Irish have not won a bowl game in 14 seasons, and the nature of the Notre Dame job does not lend itself to a coach staying at the school beyond 11 years. Thus, the opportunities to surpass the five bowl wins are limited.

Furthermore, all five of Holtz's post-season victories were in major bowls: two Cotton, one Sugar, one Orange and one Fiesta. Although the Cotton Bowl no longer falls into today's Bowl Championship Series, it was a “BCS-type bowl” during his tenure. .

That begs another question: Will any future Notre Dame coach ever play in eight consecutive BCS bowls as he did from 1988-95, never mind win five of them?

8) Many Happy Returns - In 11 seasons under Holtz, Notre Dame totaled 27 touch¬downs on punt or kickoff returns. Consider that in the 18 previous seasons (1968-85), the Irish scored only nine times via special teams during the regular season.

It helped that two of Holtz's return men were 1987 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown and 1990 Heisman runner-up Raghib "Rocket" Ismail, but the emphasis and schemes applied on special teams aided the success. Just as noteworthy is that only one punt and no kick¬offs were returned for scores against a Holtz unit – and none in his last 10 years.

7) Run To Glory - After averaging a “paltry” 189.4 yards per game on the ground in Holtz's first season, the Irish never aver¬aged less than 215.6 in his remaining 10 campaigns, reaching the zenith of 287.7 in 1989.
Holtz's backfield stables were so depth ¬laden that he didn't have a 1,000-yard rusher until his seventh season (1992). His three 1,000-yard rushers were Reggie Brooks in 1992, Lee Becton in 1993 and Autry Denson in 1996.

Holtz's backs understood the conse¬quences of fumbles. Brooks did not lose a fumble during the 1992 regular season, nor did Becton in 1993.

“When they put a back in his grave, they ought to be able to pry his elbow away from his body and find a football somewhere in between,” Holtz said.

Toughness also was not negotiable.

“A ‘bellcow’ back is one who carries the ball about 20 times on Saturday and doesn't come to practice on Monday with a doctor, a lawyer or an agent;' Holtz noted.

Holtz also had a method to motivate his offensive linemen.

“I tell them the offensive line is the last stop before the bus stop,” he said.

6) Home Sweet Home - From 1990-92; Notre Dame squandered four of the biggest leads at home in devastating defeats. They succumbed to Stanford in 1990 and 1992 after holding 24-7 and 16-0 advantages, and Penn State overcame a 21-7 halftime deficit in 1990 to upset the No. 1 Irish. The most infamous of all was the 31-7 lead blown against Tennessee as the Volunteers rallied for a 35-34 victory.

Nevertheless, Holtz's Irish won 19 straight in Notre Dame Stadium from 1987-89. It is the second longest winning streak there since the stadium's dedication in 1930, surpassed only by the 28 achieved from 1942-50.

Holtz's 51 victories at home tie Ara Parseghian for most by any Irish coach. Yet Parseghian's longest winning streak at home was 10.

5) Conquest of Troy - Holtz was 9-0-1 versus archrival USC before the overtime loss in 1996, his final game with the Irish.

Granted, USC wasn't the elite program from 1986-96 that it was under John McKay and John Robinson from 1964-80, when the Irish were 4-11-2 against the Trojans despite the presence of College Hall of Fame coaches Parseghian and Dan Devine. Still, Holtz embedded into his squad a pre¬mium on beating USC, even threatening not to dress players who failed a test he put together the week of the game on the series’ storied history.

It began with the dramatic 38-37 come¬back in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1986 that put his program on a course to glory, and continued through 1995, when the No. 17 Irish thrashed the No. 5 and Rose Bowl¬-bound Trojans, 38-10.
4) Road Warriors - Holtz's 1991-94 Irish own the school record for most con¬secutive road victories with 16. The previ¬ous standard was 15 from 1929-31, when Knute Rockne's “Ramblers” traveling road show won back-to-back national titles before Hunk Anderson's unit played to a scoreless tie with Northwestern in Chicago's Soldier's Field.

When asked about the rough crowd he encountered at Boston College one year, Holtz said he never heard so much vulgarity and saw so much spitting and hatred directed toward him.

“By God, I thought we were playing at home,” Holtz cracked about the abuse.

3) Right On Schedule - When told after Notre Dame's 5-6 campaign in 1986 that the Irish schedules were too difficult, Holtz refused to alibi.

“The schedules wouldn't look so difficult if we were better,” he scoffed.

In the 27 seasons since 1977 - the year the NCAA began compiling toughest sched¬ule rankings - there have been 10 occasions when Notre Dame finished in the top 5 for most arduous slates. Holtz was the head coach in five of them: 1986 (No.3), 1987 (No. 1), 1989 (No.1), 1990 (No.4) and 1995 (No. 1). He was the head coach three of the four times the Irish finished No.1.

His 12-1 Irish in 1989 defeated the teams that finished No. 4 (Colorado), No. 7 (Michigan), No. 8 (USC), No. 15 (Penn State), No. 16 (Michigan State), No. 17 (Pittsburgh) and No. 18 (Virginia) in the Associated Press poll.

His 1988 national champs are one of only six teams in college football annals to defeat four teams (Miami, West Virginia, Michigan and USC) that finished in the Top 10.

2) Big-Game Excellence - Holtz has the most victories against top 25-ranked foes among Notre Dame coaches with 34, out-dis¬tancing Leahy's 30 and Devine's 17.

Holtz also was 3-1 versus No.1 teams, bettering Parseghian's 2-5 mark. Meanwhile, Leahy was 29-2-1 when he was ranked No. 1; while Holtz was 18-4 Parseghian 11-3-1 and Devine 0-0-1.

Perhaps the greatest testament to¬ Holtz's ability as a big-game coach is that in the six years from 1988-93, he was an astounding 12-2 against top 5-ranked teams.

1) The Unbreakable Mark? - Will any Notre Dame team ever again win 23 consecutive games? Not even Rockne and Leahy achieved the feat the Irish did in 1988-89. Furthermore, 10 of those 23 victories were against ranked oppo¬nents - eight of them in the Top 10.

Not bad for a coach who also lost the most games in Notre Dame history (30).

"I've missed more than 9.000 shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games.
Twenty six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot - and missed. I've failed over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed."
-Michael Jordan, as written by Robb Friedman.