Lou Holtz

Louis Leo Holtz spent decades on the sidelines of American college football, shaping the sport from the late 1960s into the early 2000s. Born in 1937 and living until 2026, he built a reputation as a coach who could rebuild and revitalize struggling football programs. He served as the head coach for several major institutions, including the College of William & Mary, North Carolina State University, the University of Arkansas, the University of Minnesota, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of South Carolina. Over his long career, he compiled a college head coaching record of 249 victories, 132 losses, and 7 ties.

Holtz is best known for leading the University of Notre Dame to a consensus national championship in 1988. His Fighting Irish team finished that season with a perfect 12-0 record and secured a victory in the Fiesta Bowl. His ability to guide different teams to success earned him a unique place in college football history. He remains the only coach to lead six different programs to bowl games and the only one to guide four different programs to the final top 15 rankings. After retiring from coaching, he shared his analysis of the game with television audiences, working for CBS Sports in the 1990s and as an ESPN analyst from 2005 until 2015. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008.

Formative Years and Hard Work

The son of a bus driver of German and Irish descent, Holtz was born in West Virginia and grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio. His maternal grandparents had emigrated from Chernobyl, Ukraine. To afford his education at Kent State University, he worked part-time at a local newspaper, the East Liverpool Review, while also playing as a walk-on for the school football team. Holtz also trained under the university's U.S. Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps, earning a commission as a Field Artillery Officer, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in history in 1959. These early experiences of working to pay for school, playing without an athletic scholarship, and training for the military grounded him in the values of hard work and self-reliance.

Throughout his career, Holtz faced both triumphs and setbacks, from a brief, unsuccessful ten-month stint with the NFL's New York Jets to sudden departures from major universities. At Arkansas, he faced a difficult situation before the 1978 Orange Bowl when he suspended key starting players for disciplinary reasons, yet his depleted team secured a 31-6 victory over Oklahoma. These experiences reinforced his belief that success is not an accident of birth but a result of choices and effort. His words remain popular because they offer a direct, practical guide to self-determination. As Holtz once remarked, "You were not born a winner, and you were not born a loser. You are what you make yourself to be."