What were Lou Holtz's best moments during illustrious college football coaching career? Timeline

SOUTH BEND — Over the course of a 33-year head coaching career, Lou Holtz left an indelible impression upon college football history.

A third of those seasons took place at Notre Dame football, where the fiery coach, who died Wednesday, March 4, at age 89, led the Irish to their most recent national championship in 1988.

Here’s a timeline of some of the pivotal moments from Holtz’s epic run on the sidelines.

Lou Holtz's best football moments

1960: Holtz, a 165-pound walk-on linebacker for two seasons at Kent State, is hired as a graduate assistant at Iowa.

1961-63: Holtz spends three seasons as the backfield coach at William & Mary.

1964-65: After losing out to California’s Marv Levy for the top job at William & Mary, Holtz spends two seasons as an assistant at Connecticut under his former Kent State position coach, Rick Forzano.

1966-67: Holtz spends two seasons on Paul Dietzel’s coaching staff at South Carolina. Holtz coaches the scout team, scouts the opposition and serves as an academic liaison in 1966, then moves up to defensive backs coach in his second season.

1968: As a defensive backs coach under the legendary Woody Hayes, Holtz helps Ohio State win the national championship. The Buckeyes complete an undefeated season (10-0) with a 27-16 Rose Bowl win over USC and O.J. Simpson.

1969: At 32, Holtz becomes a head coach for the first time, returning to William & Mary during the summer when Levy is hired as special teams coach with the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles.

1972-75: Despite three straight losing seasons (13-20) in Williamsburg, Va., Holtz is hired at North Carolina State. Over the next four seasons, the Wolfpack goes 33-12-3 and makes bowl appearances each year.

1976: In a move he would quickly regret, Holtz jumps to the NFL’s New York Jets to coach a fading Joe Namath and Co. Holtz writes the lyrics to a poorly received fight song, “New York Jets Go Rolling Along,” and demands the team sing it after each win. Saddled with a 3-10 record, Holtz walks away from a five-year contract and resigns with one game left in the regular season.

Dec. 11, 1976: Holtz returns to the college game at Arkansas as Hall of Fame coach Frank Broyles’ hand-picked replacement. Holtz’s first group finishes 11-1 with a 31-6 upset of second-ranked Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. The Razorbacks, 24-point underdogs, played the game short-handed after Holtz suspended three offensive starters following an off-field incident.

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Dec. 18, 1983: Despite going 60-21-2 with four top-11 finishes in the national rankings, Holtz technically resigns amid controversy after seven seasons in Fayetteville. A pair of endorsement commercials for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), both filmed in Holtz’s university office, had caused backlash days earlier. Holtz later writes that parting was “one of the great unsolved mysteries of my life.”

1984: Holtz moves on to Minnesota, where the Gophers are coming off a 1-10 disaster. By his second year, despite losing four of five games to close the regular season, Holtz converts a 6-5 record into an Independence Bowl bid.  

Nov. 28, 1985: Holtz activates the “Notre Dame Clause” in his contract, which allows him to leave the Gophers if they qualify for a bowl game and the Irish come calling. Holtz is hired as Gerry Faust’s replacement.

Oct. 15, 1988: Fourth-ranked Notre Dame upsets top-ranked Miami, 31-30, in the famed “Catholics vs. Convicts” battle at Notre Dame Stadium. Before the Irish stop a 16-game winning streak for coach Jimmy Johnson’s defending national champions, Holtz gives a stirring locker-room talk in which he tells his players to “Save Jimmy Johnson’s a—for me.”

Jan. 2, 1989: Top-ranked Notre Dame defeats third-ranked West Virginia, 34-21, in the Fiesta Bowl to complete a 12-0 season and clinch the first national championship for Irish football since 1977.

Nov. 13, 1993: Notre Dame upsets top-ranked Florida State, 31-24, in the “Game of the Century. One week later, the top-ranked Irish fall 41-39 at home to No. 17 Boston College, re-opening the door for the Seminoles to claim their first national title.

Jan. 1, 1994: Notre Dame completes its third straight season of 10 or more wins with its second straight Cotton Bowl win over Texas A&M, 24-21. That will stand as Notre Dame’s last New Year’s Six bowl win for 31 years.  

Nov. 19, 1996: With two games left in the regular season, Holtz, 59, announces his resignation, effective at season’s end. “I do not feel good about this at all,” he says during a 75-minute news conference. “But I do feel it's the right thing to do.”

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Nov. 23, 1996: Tenth-ranked Notre Dame destroys Rutgers, 62-0, for the 100^th and final victory of Holtz’s run in South Bend. His Irish teams suffered just 32 losses and two ties while compiling a .765 winning percentage, his best at any of his seven head coaching stops.  

Nov. 30, 1996: Holtz completes his Irish coaching career with a 27-20 loss at unranked USC. That marks the only loss Notre Dame suffers against its archrival during Holtz’s tenure (9-1-1).

1999: After a two-year hiatus that includes a studio gig with CBS Sports, Holtz returns to coaching at hapless South Carolina. The Gamecocks finish 0-11 in his first season, the only winless season of Holtz’s career.

2000-01: In a remarkable turnaround, Holtz leads South Carolina to a combined 17-7 mark and back-to-back wins in the Outback Bowl.

Nov. 20, 2004: Holtz coaches his final game, a 29-7 loss at Clemson that ends in a brawl. He falls one win shy of an even 250 for his college career (249-132-7) but still goes out with a winning season at 6-5.  

Mike Berardino covers Notre Dame football for the South Bend Tribune and NDInsider.com. Follow him on social media @MikeBerardino.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Lou Holtz best moments as college football coach, Notre Dame championship