COMMENTARY : Now Is Season of Holtz’s Discontent : College football: Notre Dame hasn’t lost a game but the coach still acts like a beaten man.

After winning the national championship in January, spending much of the summer reading and all of the fall preparing, Lou Holtz is exactly where he wants to be--unbeaten and about to begin the season of his discontent.

Calendars are fine for marking time, but Lou’s mood is just as accurate, and a good deal more colorful.

When those slim shoulders stoop so badly you can’t make out the “Notre Dame” embroidered across his chest, when those sad eyes have more bags under them than the counter at the Safeway down the street, when every opponent is portrayed as bigger than Goliath, stronger than Hercules and faster than Mercury (all this from a man whose team has won 22 straight football games), you can safely bet the house that Lou is in the hunt for the national championship.

Again.

“This hasn’t been a fun time,” Holtz said. “I have difficulty sleeping at the present time over the winning and the pressure that builds with this thing. I told our football players (that) last January and I didn’t know I’d be as prophetic as it turned out to be.”

You’d think a man would allow himself a deep breath and a smile and a good night’s sleep after winning all 10 of his games this season--the last one a 59-6 rout over Southern Methodist--and holding onto the No. 1 ranking throughout. But not Lou Holtz.

“I think the No. 1 team in the country would be the highest-ranking team that has the easiest row to hoe. . . .

“When you look at Penn State on our schedule up there, and Miami down there, and then, obviously, followed by a bowl game . . . I’d have to say the chances of Notre Dame making it through those three games would be monumentally stacked against us.

“I believe that in the bottom of my heart,” Holtz continued, “and yet, I don’t think there’s anybody in the country we aren’t capable of beating. But to play three football games of that magnitude on the road, and expect this football team to go through and win all three, I think, personally, that’s asking too much of a football team.”

As the parable instructs, the problem with crying “Wolf!” at every turn is that sooner or later, a real one is bound to turn up. But things have been tough enough for Holtz this season that one is still inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He lost an All-America linebacker, three other starters and two important reserves even before the season began.

Notre Dame faced down its first legitimate beast, beating Michigan at Ann Arbor in the second game of the season, then came back the following week to subdue a formidable Michigan State team.

But Holtz’s relentless pessimism killed much of the joy during what should have been an enjoyable three-week stretch that followed successive matches against underwhelming Purdue, Stanford and Air Force. And his charges’ boundless enthusiasm (some would call it rowdyism) nearly killed the golden goose itself when Southern Cal visited South Bend on a cold and blustery afternoon Oct. 21.

That was when the Irish did their fighting before the kickoff, rumbling with Southern Cal just outside the tunnel leading to the team locker rooms. It detracted from what was one of Notre Dame’s finest games in recent memory, a stirring 28-24 comeback victory, and left Holtz deeply distressed and disturbed.

The school’s administration once worried that the players under previous Coach Gerry Faust had become so dispirited they wouldn’t throw rice at a wedding; now, they faced the prospect of players under Holtz’s regime who would throw bricks at the bride.

Likely recalling last year’s “Catholics vs. convicts” brawl with Miami, as well as the shoving and showboating that marred the final moments of the Fiesta Bowl victory over West Virigina that sewed up the national championship, Holtz dashed off a formal apology for the “unnecessary confrontation” and signed it “The Members of the Notre Dame Football Team.”

Lou was less formal with his players. Do it again, he warned them, and I’m gone. The following week, the decidedly un-Fighting Irish formed a single-file line on the far sideline when Pitt’s players headed for the locker room. Then, proving they had plenty of guff left in them, the Irish tamed the Panthers 45-7.

Navy went down quietly two weeks ago and Holtz graciously shelved his standard we’re-terrified-of-every-opponent shtick and made good on his promise of mercy against Southern Methodist last weekend.

Yet, even as it appeared things were returning to normal, a Minneapolis court was treated to testimony this week by a former official at the University of Minnesota that football and basketball players at the school received payments from boosters and members of the coaching staff during Holtz’s tenure there.

Holtz has categorically denied engaging in any irregularities. And Luther Darville, the official charged with diverting the money, said Holtz “didn’t encourage it directly” and responded “I don’t recall” when asked whether he had direct knowledge of coaches’ payments to players under Holtz.

Still, Holtz seems to be finding his form--and with good reason. Over the summer, he re-read “They Call Me Coach” by John Wooden, who built a basketball dynasty at UCLA, and “Shake Down The Thunder” by his Notre Dame predecessor, Frank Leahy. He also talked with Bobby Knight of nearby Indiana University and Bill Walsh, who left the sidelines and waltzed into the broadcasting booth after leading the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl titles in this decade.

From each of them, he hoped to learn how to go about repeating success.

“I’ve now come to the realization that no matter what I do, there are going to be half the people for you and half the people against you,” he said.

“I just hope we can keep that same percentage, that half, for us.”

Don’t look now, Lou, but you’ve already got them.

ABC-TV analyst Dick Vermeil says USC is No. 1. Section C. Page 8.