Lou Holtz could never stay in one place for very long. Perhaps it was because he was trying to outrun his critics — “I like to leave when people are asking, ‘Why are you leaving,’” he said, “rather than, ‘When are you leaving?’” — or maybe the movement was the point.
“Nothing on this earth is standing still,” he once said. “It’s either growing or it’s dying. No matter if it’s a tree or a human being.”
Holtz, the longtime college football coach turned TV commentator, died Wednesday at the age of 89, taking with him the sharp wit that made him one of the sport’s most entertaining figures throughout the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s and into the 2000s. But the other defining aspect of Holtz’s career — the restless spirit of a career “program-fixer” — lives on more vibrantly in modern college football than ever.
Holtz was infamously nomadic throughout his coaching career. From 1969-2004, he coached six different programs — William & Mary, N.C. State, Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina — and led each of them to at least one bowl game, the only coach in history to do that. Among coaches with at least 150 career FBS wins, only Holtz and Pop Warner (one of the sport’s foundational early coaches)1 led six different schools in their careers:
Speaking of infamous, Holtz also made one brief stop in the NFL, coaching the 1976 New York Jets. To say it didn’t go well would be an understatement — but ever the quipster, Holtz had this to say when he resigned before the season finale to go coach at Arkansas:2
“God did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach in the pros.”
The implication, of course, being that the Almighty might have put Holtz here to coach in college instead — and if so, the mission was apparently to fix flagging programs as quickly as possible.
Looking at coaches in the Top 30 for all-time wins who led multiple programs and spent the majority of their careers after World War II, I calculated the change in their teams’ Simple Rating System (SRS) scores in their first year — and first three years — relative to the same spans before they arrived. While Holtz isn’t quite in the same turnaround tier as Bear Bryant and Urban Meyer,3 he shares the next tier with Hayden Fry and Brian Kelly, ahead of the rest (a group that includes Nick Saban and Steve Spurrier — Holtz’s successor at South Carolina):
Statistically, the most impressive quick-turnaround jobs Holtz ever did were at N.C. State and Arkansas. In 1972, he took over a Wolfpack program that had a -10.79 SRS under previous coach Al Michaels — not that Al Michaels — and led them to a 14.81 SRS the following season, a 25.6-point upgrade that still ranks as the fourth-biggest year-over-year SRS improvement by any FBS team since 1956:
And after his Jets misadventure, Holtz took over the Razorbacks from Frank Broyles and immediately boosted their SRS by 15.84 points as well, leading them from a 5-5-1 record under Broyles in 1976 to 11-1 in his first season and 30-5-1 in his first three seasons. After Arkansas had appeared in just one bowl in Broyles’ final five seasons at the helm, they went 5-for-5 in Holtz’s first five seasons in Fayetteville, solidifying his reputation as a “fixer” for once-elite programs who’d slipped into mediocrity.
But the most iconic fix of Holtz’s career came in South Bend.
Lured away from Minnesota by way of a peculiar contract clause — he had it written into his agreement that, should Notre Dame ever come calling, he was allowed to leave the Gophers early — Holtz inherited a Fighting Irish squad that had fallen into disrepair. They’d won two national titles (in 1966 and 1973) under coach Ara Parseghian, and then another in 1977 with Dan Devine coaching and Joe Montana at QB. But after Devine turned the keys over to former high school coach Gerry Faust, the program slipped from its usual perch. Faust’s .535 winning percentage with the Irish is still the worst ever by a Notre Dame coach with at least 5 seasons of tenure.4
Notre Dame was no better by SRS in 1986, Holtz’s first year at his dream job. But from there, the team rapidly improved. By 1987 they were back in the Cotton Bowl, and in 1988 Holtz put together his crown jewel of a season — winning the national championship with a perfect 12-0 record.
The Irish would be a force to reckon with for the next half-decade, though they missed a chance to play for a second straight title when they lost a rematch of the notorious “Catholics vs. Convicts” game to Miami in November 1989, and blew another title shot in 1993 when they followed a dramatic “Game of the Century” victory over FSU with a loss to Boston College in the regular-season finale the very next week, relegating them to finish No. 2 in the polls while the Seminoles won the title over Nebraska.
Never again would Holtz get as close to another title with the Irish — but then again, maintaining the same program for more than a decade was never really Holtz’s thing anyway. He retired to join CBS as a broadcaster, but was drawn away again to coach South Carolina.
The final coaching stint of his career began in very un-Holtz-like fashion: He inherited a team that went 1-10 under prior coach Brad Scott in 1998, and somehow led them to an even worse record! But after the 0-11 disaster of ‘99, Holtz turned on the old magic once again — the Gamecocks went 8-4 and 9-3 over the next two seasons, at the time the first instance of the program ever winning 17+ games across consecutive seasons. Days shy of his 65th birthday, the turnaround artist had painted one last masterpiece.
Retiring from coaching for good in 2004, Holtz would move on to find another act as a meme-able ESPN studio commentator, remembered for his role in promoting the sport on television (and his hilariously odd on-air rivalry with colleague Mark May).
The later image of Holtz as a loveable, babbling TV goofball obscured the perfectionist’s edge with which he coached — belied by his short stature and self-deprecating sense of humor — and the messiness of his many exits. The flip-side of being the nomadic turnaround specialist is that you leave plenty of wreckage among the programs you leave, from NCAA violations to fractured relationships, chief among which might have been an Arkansas departure fueled in part by his taping political ads for anti-civil rights politician Jesse Helms from the Razorbacks coach’s office.
(Later, Holtz would also be a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, much like Bob Knight and other coaches of that era — archetypally old-school men increasingly at odds with a changing culture.)
But the ironic thing about Holtz’s legacy is that his coaching wanderlust and itch for new team-building challenges would fit right into the itinerant ethos of modern college football.
In a page right out of Lou Holtz’s playbook, Curt Cignetti helped turn Indiana football from a doormat to a national champion within the span of just two seasons this past January — and that was just the most notable of many quick-turnaround stories in recent seasons, aided by the advent of the transfer portal, NIL and changes to eligibility rules.
In typical fashion, Holtz said he was against this new landscape, calling it “terrible for college athletics” and pointing out that part of improving as a player (and person) was learning life lessons about teamwork, patience and perseverance without shortcuts to success. And on some level, maybe he had a point.
But Holtz himself proved in his career that success in college football has rarely belonged to those who simply stay put and wait their turn. It belongs to those willing to move quickly, build quickly and leave quickly if the next opportunity demands it.
That same sense of restless opportunism is at the heart of how college football operates today. After all, you’re either growing or you’re dying — and nothing on this earth can ever truly stand still.
Filed under: College Football, Football
In addition to having the youth football association named after him.
Mirroring what Bobby Petrino would end up doing 31 years later:
Who was also definitely not put on this earth to coach in the pros.
Yes, even Charlie Weis was better, at .565.
I didn't start watching college football until casually in the late 90s; then became a hooked, serious fan after that Vince Young Rose Bowl, and I always thought Holtz was one of those decades long guys at Notre Dame. Like a Paterno, Ferentz, or the aforementioned Bobby Bowden.
Who will be the quick turnaround wiz this year? I'm eyeing Eric Morris and the Oklahoma State Mean Green in an always wide open Big XII. All while cheering for Pat Fitzgerald in East Lansing, with admittedly not high expectations.