North Carolina State University Athletics
Holtz recalls his 'happiest days'
9/7/2006 12:00:00 AM | Football
The college football coaching legend was building a success program at NC State, with four bowl appearances in four years. He and his wife Beth were raising a young family in Cary, living out in the wilds of MacGregor Downs Country Club. He was just beginning the Hall of Fame career that eventually led him to his dream job at Notre Dame, where he guided the Fighting Irish to a national championship.
"It was just a great time to be a Wolfpacker," Holtz said. "We won a national championship in basketball, football was going well and we won an ACC championship, Sam Esposito was winning championships in baseball.
"It was just a special time to be here."
And to this day, Holtz says, he never should have left Raleigh following the 1975 season for that job with the NFL's New York Jets, a mistake that lasted only one year before he returned to the college ranks.
"I really didn't want to leave NC State," Holtz said. "Does it bother me to this day? Yes.
"The lesson is, don't go do anything unless you are totally committed to seeing it through. When I went to the Jets, I had no plan, no sense of urgency, no commitment to seeing it through."
Holtz, who spends much of his retirement working at ESPN as a college football analyst, is on a whirlwind tour of the country talking about the lessons he's learned, promoting his new best-selling book "Wins, Losses, and Lessons: An Autobiography".
"I have slept everywhere but my own bed, and talked to everyone except my wife," Holtz said of his booked-solid schedule.
So what if the stories he told Wednesday night to the packed house at Quail Ridge Books and Music on Wade Avenue in Raleigh had a familiar, rehearsed ring to them? Holtz is a funny guy and he never lets a good line go unrepeated.
He hit all the right buttons with the room full of more than 400 mostly Wolfpack fans, particularly when he dropped in a line about playing in "Chapel Hole". That's when he recalled his post-game press conference following his first game against the Tar Heels, which the Wolfpack lost in the final 10 seconds when they failed to convert a gutsy two-point conversion.
Holtz recalled the standing ovation he got from the Wolfpack fans in attendance, and the verbal battering he got from the North Carolina fans. "Agriculture beats no culture," he said that day.
Little wonder, as Holtz claims, he was called for jury duty during the week of the Carolina game for the next three years. "Getting out of jury duty in Wake County was a lot harder than beating Carolina," Holtz said.
The room was full of familiar faces, including some former players who helped Holtz and the Wolfpack win the 1974 ACC championship. The Buckey twins, Dave and Don, were there, with Dave Buckey introducing Holtz. Stan Fritts and Justus Everett stopped by to say hello. And a handful of other familiar Wolfpackers were there, including former basketball players Lou Pucillo and Monte Towe, former All-America swimmer Peter Fogarassy and senior associate athletics director emeritus Frank Weedon.
Holtz took no credit for turning around a program that had gone 3-8 the year before his arrival, under interim head coach Al Michaels.
"It didn't matter who came here to coach in 1972, NC State was going to win," Holtz said. "There was talent here. There were athletes here. The four running backs that were here when I arrived Willie Burden, Charley Young, Roland Hooks and Stan Fritts were as fine as I have ever had anywhere. The team was tired of losing. All they wanted was a little bit of direction and somebody to say sic em. My coming to NC State didn't make a difference. They could have brought in Sister Mary Joseph, and she could have won here."
Holtz said he barely recognized Raleigh, and he was amazed at the transformation of Carter-Finley Stadium, which has gone through more than $100 million in renovations since Holtz was last there in 1999, when he was in his first year of his last coaching job, at South Carolina.
"When we were here, we didn't even have a weightroom," said the ever slight, ever wiry Holtz. "When we had a great win, the players weren't strong enough to carry me off the field."
Holtz says he is impressed by the job that Wolfpack coach Chuck Amato, who got his first full-time job as a college assistant under Holtz in 1973, has done in his seven years at his alma mater.
"Chuck was a graduate assistant when I came here, and it didn't take long being around him to know he was going to be a good football coach," Holtz said. "A lot of people thought I hired him because I was scared of him.
"He was intense, but he had the ability to relate to people. It as obvious he was going to be a great coach. I think he has done a marvelous job, and I don't have any doubts that he is the right man for the job."
Amato says that Holtz has offered him several other coaching opportunities over the years and that he has called his old boss on several occasions for advice.
"Coach Holtz is one of those people, you either like him or you don't," Amato said. "And I love him."
Here are some of the highlights of Holtz's appearance Wednesday night, as he retold some of his best anecdotes relating to his days at NC State.
- On his meeting with then-NC State athletics director Willis Casey at a South Hills, Va., gas station. Casey was there to talk to Holtz, then the head coach at William & Mary, about the possibility of coming to Raleigh. "We both stood there for about 15 minutes, waiting for the other to show up. Finally, this pudgy guy walked up to me and asked me if I was Lou Holtz. I told him I was. He said: You don't look much like a football coach. I told him he didn't look like an athletic director."
- On his trip to Raleigh from Williamsburg, Va.: "In the last Quarterback Club meeting of the year at William & Mary, they gave me a new station wagon. I told them, I can' take it. I felt I would be coming to NC State and I didn't want to accept it, so I turned it down. We played our last game of the season and when I got home, my wife said: You won't believe what happened! They called me out of the stands at halftime and gave me this new station wagon. I told her we couldn't keep it. She said: We have four kids, how are we going to get to Raleigh? So we drove down here in William & Mary's new car, which embarrasses me to this day."
- On inserting Dave Buckey into his first game as a college freshman, against Maryland, after All-ACC quarterback Bruce Shaw went out with an injury: "Dave do you remember the first play you ever ran here? It was third and 15 and I called a draw. Dave ran the ball and got the first down. What I didn't tell him was that I didn't trust him to throw the ball. That's how geniuses are made."
- On going to Minnesota for two years after he was fired at Arkansas: "I did not want to go to Minnesota intitally. All the people I had ever met from Minnesota had blond hair and blue ears. You have to be wary of anyplace where the state bird is the mosquito."
- On the demolision of Paul Derr Track, in a renovation project where the old football practice fields used to be, the site where Holtz had NC State assistant professor of mathematics Robert Ramsay arrested after accusing him of spying for an opponent: "Oh, my. Where is the jogger going to go?"
- On writing his third best-selling book: "I've now written more books than I have read. Not many people can say that. I did not want to write an autobiography. It's like telling people your problems: 90 percent of them don't care and the other 10 percent are glad you have them. You are better off keeping it to yourself."
- On his famous dabbling in magic, which began when he was at NC State: "I did it to fool the children and then when we turned it around so rapidly, people started calling me a magician. Then I got a call from Barry Cooper, the president of the local magicians guild. He said I was an embarrassment and then he came over to teach me some magic tricks. That's where the magic began for me."
- On his famous list of life goals he wrote down after getting fired from an assistant's job at South Carolina in 1967: "There were 107 on the original list, and my wife said: You might want to add get a job on there. We have completed 102 of the list, including being on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, having dinner at the White House, having an audience with the Pope, going white-water rafting on the Snake River. I haven't gone to Pamplona, Spain, to run with the bulls with someone slower than I am that would be the key for me. I haven't gone on an African picture safari, though I have been to the zoo with a camera. And there are three goals that are private that I haven't accomplished yet."
