Dr. Lou, Jr. is coming to town

Posted Jan 18, 2010 by Tom McEwen

Updated Jan 18, 2010 at 07:01 PM

An unmatched credential of new University of South Florida football coach, Skip Holtz, is that he is the son of Lou. 

Few in this business have left the high marks of his famous dad, now retired from coaching and living in Orlando, trying to break 90 at Bay Hill.  He hasn’t done it often. Did not when I played with him several times with Bear Bryant.  As I recall the best line on that day came on the first fairway when I was the last to hit and I asked Lou if we were “rolling them over in the fairway” and Bear Bryant replied for him “roll them over everwhere…in the fairways, in the rough, out of bounds, and in the traps, that way nobody will cheat” and nobody did. 

As I remember, Bryant and Holtz won.

This is pertinent today because Skip Holtz, Lou’s son, has accepted the head coaching job with the South Florida Bulls.

In his first interview, young Holtz made points when he said Tampa was his favorite vacation spot.  He came here often with his dad, notably some years ago when Lou was the speaker at the Outback Bowl for Jim McVay.

He told my good wife Linda that he was just a puppet on a string, and had no idea what he was going to say, until he started speaking. He was good, he always was, as a college football coach and speaker. Lou was the head coach at Notre Dame, Arkansas, South Carolina, all over the South and West, and he was a good one. 

However, good as he was on the sidelines, he was unmatched behind the mike as he was at Higgins Hall for the Outback Bowl in Tampa.

Holtz was peerless on his feet, adlibbing, and regaling the crowd with his one liners. Here are some he used that night at Higgins Hall;

“I can’t believe that God put us on Earth to be ordinary.” 

“If what you did yesterday seems big, then you haven’t done anything today.”

“Life is 10% what happened to you and 90% how you responded to it.”

“Why not 90% of the time” he was asked by the audience, and he said “no one has ever drowned in his own sweat.”

About his team of that season, he said, “we are united in a common goal; to keep my job.”

What about motivation, he was asked, “When all is said and done, more is said than done.”

“Don’t tell your problems to people, 80% don’t care and the other 20% are glad you have them, the problems.”

Where did that sort of thing get you in recruiting?  Answer, “it is not the way you break it down, it is the way you carry it.”

“The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.  I don’t think I ever heard a player complain about the way a ball bounced.”

Lou Holtz is on as a regular on ESPN as Dr. Lou and he is excellent in that role.  He always has an answer, it is usually a fresh one.

And so he sends his son, now as an emissary to coach in Tampa as he so often did as an assistant.  His son is not quite the speaker Dr. Lou is, but who is?  We guarantee you he will be successful at USF and the public role that position has come to demand.

Go get ‘em, Dr. Lou, Jr.