Lou Holtz

Louis Leo Holtz (born January 6, 1937) is a former American football player, coach, and analyst. He served as the head football coach at the College of William & Mary (1969–1971), North Carolina State University (1972–1975), the New York Jets (1976), the University of Arkansas (1977–1983), the University of Minnesota (1984–1985), the University of Notre Dame (1986–1996), and the University of South Carolina (1999–2004), compiling a career college football head coaching record of 249–132–7. Holtz's 1988 Notre Dame team went 12–0 with a victory in the Fiesta Bowl and was the consensus national champion. Holtz is the only college football coach to lead six different programs to bowl games and the only coach to guide four different programs to the final top 20 rankings. After retiring from coaching, Holtz worked as a TV college football analyst for CBS Sports in the 1990s and ESPN from 2005 until 2015. On May 1, 2008, Holtz was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. Early life and coaching career Holtz was born in Follansbee, West Virginia, the son of Anne Marie (Tychonievich) 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. He graduated from East Liverpool High School. After high school, Holtz attended Kent State University. He was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity, and graduated in 1959 with a degree in history. Holtz 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, where he received his master's degree. From there, he made stops as an assistant at William & Mary (1961–1963), Connecticut (1964–1965), South Carolina (1966–1967) and Ohio State (1968). The 1968 Ohio State Buckeyes football team won a national championship with Holtz as an assistant. William & Mary Holtz's first job as head coach came in 1969, at the College of William & Mary, who played in the Southern Conference at that time. In 1970, he led the William & Mary Indians (now Tribe) to the Southern Conference title and a berth in the Tangerine Bowl.