Louis Leo Holtz is a former American football player, coach, and analyst. He served as the head football coach at The College of William & Mary, North Carolina State University, the New York Jets, the University of Arkansas, and Notre Dame. His 1988 Notre Dame team went 12–0 with a victory in the Fiesta Bowl and was the consensus national champion. In 2005, Holtz joined ESPN as a college football analyst. On May 1, 2008, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.
About Lou Holtz in brief
Louis Leo Holtz is a former American football player, coach, and analyst. He served as the head football coach at The College of William & Mary, North Carolina State University, the New York Jets, the University of Arkansas, and Notre Dame. Holtz’s 1988 Notre Dame team went 12–0 with a victory in the Fiesta Bowl and was the consensus national champion. He is the only coach to guide four different programs to the final top 20 rankings. In 2005, Holtz joined ESPN as a college football analyst. On May 1, 2008, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. He was born in Follansbee, West Virginia, the son of Anne Marie and Andrew Holtz, a bus driver. His father was of German and Irish descent, while his maternal grandparents were emigrants from Chernobyl, Ukraine. He grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, where he was raised as a Roman Catholic. After high school, he attended Kent State University. He played college football as an undersized linebacker, and graduated in 1959 with a degree in History. He also trained under Kent State’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and earned a commission as a Field Artillery Officer in the United States Army Reserve at the time of his graduation from college. He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant in 1960, at Iowa. From there, he made stops as an assistant at William and Mary, Connecticut, South Carolina and Ohio State.
He accepted an offer to leave college football and become the head coach of the NFL’s New York Jet after the 1975 season. His jump to the NFL as head coach for only thirteen games with a 3–10 record before returning to the college game with Arkansas would be duplicated by Bobby Petrino 31 years later in 2007. In his seven years there, the Razorbacks compiled a 60–21–2 record and reached six bowl games. In the 1978 Orange Bowl against the Oklahoma Sooners, he led them to a berth in the 1978 Cotton Bowl. That team was recognized by the Rothman poll as co-national champions, along with Texas along with Notre Dame for 1977. In 1979 Holtz was widely considered to be the leading candidate to replace Woody Hayes at Ohio State, but did not pursue the job. He retired from the NFL after the 1976 season with the Jets at 3-10 and one game remaining in the1976 season. He resigned ten months later on December 9, 1976, with the team at 3 10 and one game left in the 1976 NFL season. The last game of his last American football game was the last game before the American Football League Championship Game in San Diego, California. He died of a heart attack at the age of 48 on December 25, 1986. He has been married to his wife, Barbara, since 1987. He had a son, Michael, and a daughter, Amy, with whom he has two sons, Michael Holtz and Amy Holtz.
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This page is based on the article Lou Holtz published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
