Holtz Tells ECU Players: ‘I’m Leaving’

Posted Jan 14, 2010 by Scott Carter

Updated Jan 14, 2010 at 05:16 PM

The meeting between East Carolina coach Skip Holtz and his players is over. As expected, Holtz informed the Pirates that he was leaving to become USF’s next football coach.

Pirates running back Norman Whitley was one of the first players to detail the meeting on his Twitter feed, saying:

“My heart is in a place that no sports writer or anyone can feel right now ... we are going to grow from this.’‘

Meanwhile, as news started to spread across the Internet that Holtz was leaving East Carolina to come to USF, a release from ECU athletic director Terry Holland surfaced saying that wasn’t quite the case. As of this blog post, there is speculation someone hacked into ECU’s Web site and posted the false statement the quiet the noise over Holtz’s departure.

Here is the statement in question for whatever it’s worth:

Coach Holtz and I met this morning and he informed me that he and USF are still conversing about the open football coaching position. He indicated that he had not been offered the position nor had he told them that he would accept the position if offered.

Coach Holtz also told me that both parties had agreed in principle to bring their conversations to a close by tomorrow and that he would continue to stay in touch with me as he has throughout the process.

At that time, we mutually agreed that this information should be shared with his staff and with the team so that they could have accurate information instead of rumor and speculation.

Immediately after our conversation, Coach Holtz scheduled a 3:00 p.m. meeting with the team which seems to have been interpreted by the news media as a farewell speech.

It should be remembered that a few weeks ago most of those same sources announced that he had taken the Cincinnati head coaching job even though, in that case, he had not been offered nor had he accepted the job.