By ERIC OLSON and TOM COYNE<\/p>\n
Lou Holtz never met an opponent that couldn\u2019t beat him. Somehow, he squeaked out nearly 250 wins and a national title while cementing himself both as one of the most lovable and unlikable characters in college football \u2014 a one-of-a-kind iconoclast in a profession brimming with originals.<\/p>\n
The pint-sized motivator who restored greatness at Notre Dame and demanded it everywhere else he went died in Orlando, Notre Dame announced Wednesday. He was 89.<\/p>\n
Spokeswoman Katy Lonergan said the family did not provide a cause of death.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotre Dame mourns the loss of Lou Holtz, a legendary football coach, a beloved member of the Notre Dame family and devoted husband, father and grandfather,\u201d Notre Dame president the Rev. Robert A. Dowd said in a statement.<\/p>\n
His son, Skip, who followed Holtz into coaching, said in a\u00a0post on X\u00a0that his father had passed away and was \u201cresting peacefully at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was successful, but more important he was Significant,\u201d Skip Holtz wrote.<\/p>\n
Holtz went 249-132-7 over a career that spanned 33 seasons and included stops at Minnesota, Arkansas, South Carolina and, most notably, Notre Dame.<\/p>\n
It was there that he won his lone national championship, in 1988, capped with a win over West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl but highlighted by a 31-30 victory earlier in the season over Miami \u2014 one of the notable meetings in the so-called \u201cCatholics vs. Convicts\u201d rivalry of the \u201980s.<\/p>\n
For all the big personalities coarsing through college football during the day, none stood bigger than Holtz. He was only 5-foot-10, but commanded the sideline like someone much bigger. The lead-up to the big games were sometimes his best theatre.<\/p>\n
Armed with a homespun brand of folksiness that could trickle into corny but always contained a kernel of truth, Holtz lit up bulletin boards and motivational posters with dozens of memorable quotes and pithy observations, virtually all of them constructed to inspire:<\/p>\n
\u2014\u201cLife is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u201dWhen all is said and done, more is said than done.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u201cYou\u2019re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you\u2019re never as bad as they say when you lose.\u201d<\/p>\n
He could make any team \u2014 from Akron to Army to Alabama \u2014 sound like a world beater on any given week. More often than not, his Fighting Irish figured out a way to scratch out the wins.<\/p>\n
Restoring Notre Dame to greatness<\/p>\n
Before Holtz arrived in South Bend, Notre Dame was wallowing in mediocrity \u2014 a mere shell of the program built on a foundation of Knute Rockne, Ara Parseghian, the Golden Dome and Touchdown Jesus. Holtz turned things around quickly and had the Irish in the Cotton Bowl in Year 2 and winning the national title the season after that.<\/p>\n
His 1988 and 1989 teams won a school-record 23 consecutive games and he beat three teams ranked No. 1 \u2014 Miami in 1988, Colorado in 1989 and Florida State in 1993.<\/p>\n
The Irish finished No. 2 in the AP poll in 1993. Holtz left South Bend after the 1996 season with a record of 100-30-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cLou and I shared a very special relationship,\u201d said current Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman, who led the Irish back to the national title game in 2025 \u2014 a contest Holtz attended and spiced up with some trolling of the Ohio State program that beat the Irish that day. \u201cOur relationship meant a lot to me as I admired the values he used to build the foundation of his coaching career: love, trust and commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n
A fast start, then a detour to the NFL<\/p>\n
Notre Dame was the highlight of a head-coaching career that began at William & Mary and North Carolina State and also included a one-year stop in the NFL.<\/p>\n
Like so many who mastered the college game in his profession, he failed up there, resigning with one game left in a 3-10 campaign with the New York Jets in 1976 and proclaiming \u201cGod did not put Lou Holtz on this earth to coach in the pros.\u201d<\/p>\n
That opened the door at Arkansas, which was one of the four schools he led into the AP Top 25. His teams made 18 appearances there; eight of those were in the top 10.<\/p>\n
After Notre Dame, Holtz transitioned into the TV booth with CBS, promising he would never coach again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018You could put it in granite.\u2019 I\u2019ve got the granite stone,\u201d Holtz said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t very good granite.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took an open job at South Carolina, where he had once served as an assistant coach. Despite posting a career-worst 0-11 mark in his first season with the Gamecocks, Holtz went 17-7 over the next two seasons, beat then No. 9 Georgia in the second game of 2000 and also beat Ohio State twice in the Outback Bowl.<\/p>\n
He left the sideline for good following the 2004 season and returned to the airwaves, working 11 more seasons with ESPN.<\/p>\n
Core values of trust and getting the best out of players<\/p>\n
On the field, each program he led reached new heights in part because he never wavered from his core values of trust, a commitment to excellence and caring for others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you have to go in there with a vision of where you want to go and a plan of how you\u2019re going to get there,\u201d Holtz once said. \u201cYou have to hold people accountable, and you have to believe it can be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The results were impressive, even if he sometimes used unconventional methods.<\/p>\n
He once tackled quarterback Tony Rice following a failed play in practice and was widely critiqued in 1991 when he grabbed a player by the facemask, pulling him to the sideline and yelling at him the entire way after the player committed a personal foul. Holtz later apologized.<\/p>\n
Holtz suspended his leading rusher, Tony Brooks, and leading receiver, Ricky Watters, in 1988 because they were 40 minutes late to a team meal the night before Notre Dame faced then No. 2 Southern California. The Irish still won 27-10.<\/p>\n
At Arkansas, he once suspended three starting offensive players for disciplinary reasons before facing then No. 2 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. Arkansas, an 18-point underdog, still won 31-6.<\/p>\n
As demanding as Holtz could be, though, he used his charm and eye for good players to recruit top talent. Notre Dame\u2019s 1990 recruiting class included five future first-round NFL draft picks, and he found unique ways to motivate his team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing I said at every practice was, \u2018Boy, what a great day to work,\u2019\u201d Holtz recounted. \u201cIt could be raining. It could be whatever. I\u2019d be, \u2018Boy, am I glad to be here. No place I\u2019d rather be than here.\u2019 I used to say to them, \u2018I travel all over the world speaking to every major corporation and they\u2019d pay me money. I speak to you for free and you don\u2019t have to take notes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in West Virginia, dreamed of coaching high school<\/p>\n
Louis Leo Holtz was born Jan. 6, 1937, in Follansbee, West Virginia, and aspired to be a high school football coach. His future wife broke off their engagement in 1960. That\u2019s when Holtz, once a 150-pound linebacker at Kent State, took a graduate-assistant job at Iowa. A year later, he married Beth Barcus, and they were together more than 50 years.<\/p>\n
She inspired him again in 1966 when, eight months pregnant with their third child, Holtz was jobless. Beth bought him a book about setting goals, and Holtz created a wish list of what he wanted to do: attend a White House dinner, appear on \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d and see the Pope.<\/p>\n
Holtz said there were 107 entries on the list: \u201cShe said, \u2018Gee, that\u2019s nice. Why don\u2019t you add \u2018get a job.\u2019 So we made it 108,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 2008, Holtz was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and Notre Dame placed a statue of him outside its home stadium.<\/p>\n
He said numerous times that his plan was to be buried on that campus, as well. He figured it was only fitting because, as he said in 2015: \u201cThe alumni buried me here every Saturday,.\u201d<\/p>\n
AP Sports Writer Michael Marot in Indianapolis contributed to this report. Tom Coyne is a former AP sports writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By ERIC OLSON and TOM COYNE Lou Holtz never met an opponent that couldn\u2019t beat him. Somehow, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[111,139,141,140,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-178802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-college-sports","9":"tag-orlando","10":"tag-orlando-headlines","11":"tag-orlando-news","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}