Lou Holtz is one of the most successful college football coaches of all time. Twenty-six seasons as a collegiate head coach earned Lou Holtz a sterling reputation for turning pretenders into contenders. He is the only coach in the history of college football to take 6 different teams to a Bowl game, to win 5 Bowl games with different teams, and to have 4 different college teams ranked in the Top 20. Lou 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 Bowl game victories ranked him fifth on the all-time list. Amazingly, 21 of the 26 collegiate teams under his direction have earned Bowl game invitations and 14 have finished in the Associated Press Top 20, including 8 in the Top 10.
Lou Holtz is also considered among the greatest motivational speakers in America today. He speaks on overcoming seemingly impossible challenges by setting personal goals and striving to achieve them.
Born Louis Leo Holtz on January 6, 1937, Lou Holtz grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, just up the Ohio River from his Follansbee, West Virginia birthplace. He graduated from East Liverpool High School, earned a bachelor’s 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.
Lou Holtz began his coaching career as an assistant coach in various programs, such as Iowa (freshmen, 1960), William & Mary (offensive backs, 1961 to 1963), Connecticut (defensive backs, 1964 to 1965), South Carolina (defensive backs, 1966 to 1967), and Ohio State (defensive backs, 1968) which won the national championship during his tenure. During these years, he learned from many respected coaches, including Forest Evashevski at Iowa, Rick Foranzo at Connecticut, Paul Dietzel at South Carolina, and Woody Hayes at Ohio State.
Lou Holtz’s head-coaching career began in 1969 at William & Mary. Despite three previous consecutive losing seasons, Lou Holtz catapulted the Tribe to the top of the Southern Conference by the end of his second year as head coach. His team advanced to play 15th-ranked Toledo in the Tangerine Bowl in the only post-season appearance in the history of the school.
In 1986, Lou Holtz became the 27th head coach of Notre Dame following head-coaching positions at Minnesota (1984 to 1985), Arkansas (1977 to 1983), North Carolina State (1972 to 1975), and William & Mary (1969 to 1971). Merely two years after taking the reigns at Notre Dame, Lou Holtz led the Fighting Irish to a major post-season bowl game for the first time in seven years, proving he could take the Irish back to the ranks of college football’s elite. He also earned a reputation for knocking off highly ranked opponents by winning bowl games in five of the last seven seasons against teams with a combined record of 74-4-1, all of them ranked 7th or higher in the Associated Press poll. Under Lou Holtz’s leadership, the Fighting Irish chalked up a 23-game winning streak during the 1988 and 1989 seasons – the longest in Notre Dame history – including the consensus national championship in 1988.
In his 11 seasons at Norte Dame, Lou Holtz amassed an impressive 100-30-2 record – more victories than the number accumulated by legendary Notre Dame coaches Parsehgian, Rockne, or Leahy in their first 11 years on the job. When the Fighting Irish met Florida in the 1996 Orange Bowl, it was the 9th straight year Lou Holtz had taken Notre Dame to a Bowl Game (Cotton Bowl following the 1987, 1992 and 1993 campaigns, Fiesta Bowl in 1988 and 1994, Orange Bowl in 1989, 1990 and 1995, Sugar Bowl in 1991). No other coach in the country has matched this achievement.
After his departure from Notre Dame following the 1996 season, Lou Holtz joined CBS Sports’ College Football Today for two seasons as a sports analyst. In 1999, Lou Holtz returned to coaching at the University of South Carolina who had finished with a 1-10 record the previous season. Just two years later, Lou Holtz led the Gamecocks to victory in the Outback Bowl with an 8-4 record, a feat that he repeated in 2001 after finishing 9-3. The Gamecocks finished 13th in both national polls following the 2001 season, their best national finish since 1984. For the first time ever, South Carolina was ranked in the Top 25 the entire season.
Lou Holtz retired from coaching after South Carolina’s 2004 season. Currently, Lou Holtz serves as a college football studio analyst on ESPN. Lou Holtz appears on ESPNEWS’ ADT Coaches Spotlight, ESPN2’s College Game Day programs, and SportsCenter. He and his wife Beth are the parents of four children and currently reside in Orlando, Florida. |
