{"id":473223,"date":"2026-02-17T05:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/473223\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T05:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:21:08","slug":"rece-davis-reflects-on-his-friendship-with-former-espn-analyst-lou-holtz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/473223\/","title":{"rendered":"Rece Davis reflects on his friendship with former ESPN analyst Lou Holtz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Longtime college football coach and former ESPN college football analyst Lou Holtz entered hospice care<\/a> last month at the age of 89.<\/p>\n

Rece Davis, who worked with Holtz for many years at ESPN, took some time to recall their friendship on a recent episode of the College GameDay Podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had an opportunity to speak with his family and to speak with him. He, at the time, wasn\u2019t in position to be able to respond, but they said he was listening to me, which was really a first,\u201d Davis said<\/a>. \u201cIt never happened in the 10 years that we worked together. So I was pleased that. That was delightful.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has been such a great and loyal friend to me and my family. Means so much to us. He\u2019s been over for Thanksgiving over the years, and we dearly love him. Prayers with him and with all of the Holtz family as they go through this.There are a million stories that people could tell about Lou Holtz, a lot of them very public, a lot of them very private. He has done immeasurable good for numerous people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holtz and Davis worked together at ESPN from 2005 to 2015 and the College GameDay host shared several stories about Holtz\u2019s sense of humor.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral years ago, Lou was gracious enough to invite Mark May and me to go with him to Augusta to play,\u201d Davis said. \u201cLou\u2019s a member of Augusta National. I\u2019m a terrible golfer, and Lou knew that, but he was going to take me.<\/p>\n

\u201cLou and Mark had a bet over the course of 36 holes. \u2026 Lou was coming off neck surgery. He was not supposed to be playing. \u2026 It ended up that Lou wins the bet. You can\u2019t have your cell phones there, but you can have cameras at Augusta Nationals. So, they\u2019re going to take a picture of Mark handing Lou the money, and Lou says, \u2018Wait a minute.\u2019 And Lou goes back into the clubhouse, won\u2019t take the picture until he comes back out wearing his neck brace, so that it looks as if that he beat Mark wearing a neck brace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Give a list to Davis\u2019s full tribute, if only to hear Rece do what is a pretty decent Lou Holtz impression<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Longtime college football coach and former ESPN college football analyst Lou Holtz entered hospice care last month at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[219431,399,113332,398,396,397,99663,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-473223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-college-gameday-podcast","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-lou-holtz","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-rece-davis","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}