THE BATTLE FOR NO. 1: USC vs. NOTRE DAME : Roughing the Quarterbacks : Holtz’s in-the-Face-Mask Method Works to Turn Around Teams, Players

If you think Lou Holtz’s jokes are funny, you should see his quarterback act. It’s a scream.

At various stations in his career, according to former assistant coaches and players, the Notre Dame coach has:

--Thrown his clipboard at quarterbacks.

--Whacked quarterbacks on the butt with his clipboard.

--Thrown his hat at quarterbacks.

--Thrown his watch at quarterbacks.

--Tackled quarterbacks. Honest.

He has yanked the face mask and performed red-faced, in-your-face screaming with virtually every quarterback he has ever coached.

Now, this is normal behavior for most football coaches. But with Holtz it’s unusual, on two counts:

--He’s 5 feet 10 inches and 150 pounds, and screams with a lisp.

--It works.

Holtz, 51, is known as a college coach who has turned around football programs almost everywhere he has been--William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota and Notre Dame.

That’s not entirely true. Actually, it’s more accurate to describe Holtz as a man who has turned around quarterbacks.

Rick Schaeffer, the University of Arkansas sports information director, was talking about how Holtz, in his first year at Arkansas in 1977, treated Arkansas quarterback Ron Calcagni.

“I love Lou Holtz, but if I had been Ron Calcagni that year and Holtz had treated me like that, I’d have quit,” Schaeffer said.

Holtz has a theory about quarterbacks. He figures if you scream and yell at them, and they burst into tears, get rid of ‘em.

He believes if they can perform capably in high-stress practices all week, the games will be easy.

Earlier this season, in a Notre Dame practice, Holtz ran onto the field, screaming, and tackled his 200-pound quarterback, Tony Rice. The players who were out of earshot giggled. But Rice couldn’t afford to.

Not right away, anyway.

“Tony was more shocked than anything,” a witness said.

“At first, he seemed to wonder if it was a joke. But Lou was trying to make a point. Lou was screaming: ‘Who were you reading? . . . Who were you reading?’ Then Tony started to laugh, and that made Lou laugh.”

Later, Rice told a reporter Holtz’s behavior that day fit the pattern.

“There’s no question who’s in charge,” he said. “Here’s this little old man who has control over me. . . . His voice really carries, and it can scare you.”

When Holtz coached Minnesota in 1984 and ‘85, he achieved surprising success with an option quarterback named Rickey Foggie, who wasn’t recruited as a quarterback by any other major college.

Larry Beckish, now the quarterback coach at the University of Minnesota, was Holtz’s offensive coordinator.

“Lou kept the pressure on Rickey in practice from day one,” Beckish said.

“We were the only school that gave Rickey a chance to play quarterback and he desperately wanted to do well. Lou did a great job with him, and Foggie wound up being one of three quarterbacks in NCAA history to throw for 4,000 yards and run for 2,000 in his career.

“When Lou came in, we had four quarterbacks and Lou got on their cases immediately. He tried to intimidate all of them in practice. With three of them, he did. Rickey was the one kid who wouldn’t break. Lou would get in his face and yell at him, but Rickey just gave him a big smile, every time, and said, ‘Yes sir.’

“Finally, when Lou decided he couldn’t break him mentally in practice, Rickey became the quarterback.

“With Lou, the practices for a quarterback are very, very intense. Lou wants more pressure on the quarterback in practice than he’s going to face in the games.”

The formula worked at Arkansas.

In 1976, in Frank Broyles’ last season, the Razorbacks won 6 of their first 7. But when their sophomore quarterback, Ron Calcagni, went out for the season with an injury, they lost their last four.

Enter Holtz.

“Very soon after he arrived on campus, Coach Holtz sent for me,” said Calcagni, now the receivers coach at the University of Houston.

“I walked into his office and he looked up at me and said: ‘Calcagni, I’ve been watching film of you and I don’t think you’re tough enough to play for me.’

“I was shocked. I mean, I knew Holtz was from East Liverpool (Ohio), which is 30 miles from my hometown, Youngstown. He knew we play pretty tough high school football there. I figured I’d be in tight with this guy.

“Anyway, the conversation went on like that, with him running me down. Finally I looked him in the eye and said: ‘I’m gonna show you, coach.’

“In practice, he was really hard on me, all the time. He’d yank on my face mask and yell a lot. One time I did something he didn’t like and he took off his watch and threw it down the field.

“The trainer went and got it, looked at it, and said: ‘It’s broken, coach.’

“With quarterbacks, Holtz wants perfection in practice. He wants you to take care of the ball, don’t make mistakes, be in command, and don’t beat yourself.”

Does it work?

“I definitely became a better quarterback under him,” Calcagni said.

“That’s the one thing he left me with: In adversity, when things go bad, hang in there. Be tough. I’ve become a Holtz-type coach myself. I put a lot of pressure on my players in practice.”

Oh, about Holtz’s 1977 Arkansas team. With Calcagni at quarterback, Arkansas was 11-1, and the Razorbacks beat Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, 31-6.

So folks in Arkansas will tell you Holtz turned Calcagni into an excellent college quarterback, but that he did not “turn Arkansas around.

“It’s true Holtz took us from 5-5-1 to 11-1, but he didn’t come into a talentless team,” Schaeffer said. “Broyles left him with good talent. All Holtz had to do was develop Calcagni, and he did.”

At Minnesota, however, Holtz did fashion a turnaround. The Gophers had lost 18 of their previous 19 when Holtz left Arkansas in 1984. Even worse, the four quarterbacks Holtz started with were freshmen.

Under Holtz, the Gophers were 4-7 and 6-5, and then Notre Dame called.

“It was what Lou did with Foggie that turned us around,” Beckish said.

“Foggie and the other quarterbacks knew that in practice, if Lou yelled at them and then they performed poorly on the next play, they wouldn’t play the following Saturday.”

Holtz describes himself as a fundamentalist, but says he places special emphasis on quarterback fundamentals.

“To win, you must master fundamentals,” he said. “You don’t need big plays to win, you need to eliminate the bad ones.

“I’ve never concerned myself with what a quarterback can’t do, I concentrate on what he can do.”

There is one quarterback, however, whom Holtz couldn’t reach.

Joe Namath.

In 1976, Holtz was coach of the 3-11 New York Jets. He quit abruptly to take the Arkansas job.

“One of the first things I wanted to do when I took the Jets job was to talk to Namath,” Holtz once said.

“I called the Jets’ office and asked a secretary for Joe’s phone number. I was told no one had it, that it was classified information. She suggested I call Joe’s lawyer, Jimmy Walsh.

“I called him, and asked for Joe’s number. He said he couldn’t give it to me. I said: ‘Oh?’

“He told me if I wanted to talk to him, I should leave my number and if Joe could get back to me, he would.”

Holtz’s response to that suggestion, some said, melted Walsh’s telephone.

Among the quarterbacks who have had their face masks yanked by Holtz is the Raiders’ Steve Beuerlein. When Holtz arrived at Notre Dame in 1986, Beuerlein was starting his senior season.

“He was very tough on me in my one year under him, but he told me he would be the day I met him,” Beuerlein said. “That’s part of his philosophy . . . but it made me a better player.

“Twice during my senior season he kicked me out of practice, for things I didn’t do. On both occasions, someone else on the offense screwed up running a play but Lou felt that since the quarterback is in charge, he has to feel responsible for everything that goes on.

“Every once in a while, he’d come up to me and say: ‘You’d better not throw an interception this week.’ He’d say it with kind of a smile, but he never let you know how serious he was.

“He was very tough on me in the practices. But just when things would get pretty tense between us, he had that knack for popping the one-liner at just the right moment, to take the heat off the situation.

“And it wasn’t all harassment. If I played well, he’d tell me.

“The nicest thing he ever said to me was on the Monday after the last game, when he said: ‘There’s no doubt in my mind you will go on to be an outstanding pro quarterback. I’ve had a lot of great quarterbacks, but I put you right up there with the best of them.’ ”