Lou Holtz

Lou Holtz has established himself as one of the most successful college football coaches of all time.

Holtz is the only coach in the history of college football to: 1) Take 6 different teams to a bowl game. 2) Win 5 bowl games with different teams. 3) To have 4 different college teams ranked in the final Top 20 poll.

Despite never inheriting a winning team, he compiled a 243-127-7 career record that ranked him third in victories among active coaches and eighth in winning percentage. His 12 career postseason bowl victories ranked him fifth on the all-time list. Holtz was recently selected for the College Football Hall of Fame, class of 2008, which places him in an elite group of just over 800 individuals in the history of football who have earned this distinction. Approximate 1 in 5,000 people who played college football or coached it make it into the Hall of Fame.

When Holtz took over as Notre Dame’s 27th head football coach back in November of 1985, he brought with him a well-proven reputation as a fixer of football programs following a series of spectacular repair jobs at William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas and Minnesota.

In his 11 seasons at Notre Dame, Holtz chalked up more victories than the number accumulated by Parseghian, Rockne or Leahy in their first 11 years on the job. Including the consensus national championship in 1988, a record 23-game winning streak that ranks as the longest in Notre Dame history. An overall 100-30-2 mark during those eleven years - his accomplishments nonetheless have positioned him alongside those Fighting Irish coaching legends. When the Fighting Irish met Florida in the 1996 Orange Bowl, it was the ninth straight year Holtz had taken Notre Dame to the traditional January post-season bowls (Cotton Bowl following 1987, 1992 and 1993 campaigns, Fiesta in 1988 and 1994, Orange in 1989, 1990 and 1995, Sugar in 1991). This is something that no other coach in the country has matched. Holtz is the 2008 recipient of the Notre Dame Monogram Club’s highest honor, the Moose Krause Distinguished Service Award.

Currently, Holtz serves as a college football studio analyst on ESPN. He appears on ESPNEWS', ESPN College GameDay programs, SportsCenter as well as serves as an on site analyst for college football games.