This Is One Tie That Holtz Won’t Forget : College football: He tries to explain choice of plays during Notre Dame’s final drive.

It is the tie that won’t die. Notre Dame 17, Michigan 17--The Aftermath.

Even now, three days after Coach Lou Holtz’s timid use of the final 65 seconds of Saturday’s game against Michigan, two questions remain:

What in the name of Knute Rockne was he thinking during the Irish’s last drive? And has anyone checked what Holtz is smoking in that pipe of his these days?

So unimpressed were the voters with Holtz’s last-minute strategy and the subsequent tie, that the Irish (1-0-1) tumbled four spots, from third to seventh, in both the USA Today/CNN coaches’ poll and the Associated Press rankings. And in a telling piece of voting commentary, Michigan (0-0-1) was ranked one place ahead of Notre Dame in each poll.

Of course, what appears to have upset voters and fans alike is Holtz’s bizarre choice of plays during the final drive and his equally curious postgame explanation of why he did what he did. Nor did Holtz earn many admirers when he became testy during a brief interview at game’s end with NBC sideline reporter John Dockery.

Holtz has since apologized for his bad TV manners, but he remains adamant about his handling of the final minute of the game. In his mind, the circumstances dictated caution. To the Notre Dame Stadium audience of 59,075 fans, many of whom booed Holtz lustily, the answer was obvious: pass, pass, pass.

Instead, on first down at the Notre Dame 12-yard line, Holtz called a running play for fullback Jerome Bettis. Bettis gained seven yards. Then, with 35 seconds remaining, Holtz called another running play, this time for halfback Reggie Brooks. An illegal procedure penalty nullified the play, but it didn’t stop the clock--a rule forgotten by Holtz.

Now, with only 14 seconds remaining, quarterback Rick Mirer dropped back and threw a long sideline pass, which was caught out of bounds. Holtz called a timeout, prompting more boos. On the final play of the game, Mirer was at last allowed to throw deep. The ball was batted down by a defensive back.

End of game. Start of second-guessing.

Holtz later said he used the two running plays to assess the Michigan defense. It was an explanation he used again during his Sunday television show.

“I don’t know what (Michigan is) going to do,” he said. “Are they going to settle for the tie? Are they going to use their timeouts? Are they going to blitz us? Are they going to play man to man? Are they going to try to pressure us? Or are they going to be content with the tie and back up?”

In retrospect, Holtz said his only error in those 65 seconds was his memory lapse concerning the time clock.

“In the heat of the battle, with everything else on your mind, for whatever reason known only to God, I think the clock’s going to start on the snap of the ball,” he said. “I’m over there talking to Rick Mirer not knowing that the clock is running.”

Added Holtz: “I am going to have a difficult time facing our team because as a football coach you’re not supposed to make many mistakes, particularly when it comes to strategy and clock.”

Holtz offered some other reasons for his decision to play it safe. Included in the list was his desire to avoid an interception and a repeat of a 1990 game against Penn State, when the Nittany Lions picked off a pass and won on the final play of the game. He also said he didn’t want to punt to Michigan in the waning moments. And most important, he didn’t want to jeopardize Notre Dame’s chances at a national championship.

The explanations weren’t well received. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti wrote Sunday, “(Holtz) ran out the clock and ran from the pressure.” And, “If Elvis is dead today, Holtz is brain-dead.”

Even Ken Mirer, a former Indiana state championship football coach whose son began the season as a Heisman Trophy candidate and the likely first choice in the next NFL draft, was perplexed by Holtz’s game-day performance. “Yeah, I would have (thrown),” Ken Mirer said. “If I had that kid as my quarterback, hell, I don’t think there’s a better quarterback in the country to take that team down the field in that situation.”

And then, choosing his words carefully, Mirer said of his son Rick: “I think he is in a position that he has a lot of confidence in his ability. I think he would have liked to have had a chance to put the ball in the position where Notre Dame could have won the game.”

Not everyone was so critical. Ara Parseghian, the former Notre Dame coach who 26 seasons ago settled for a controversial tie with Michigan State--and later won a national title because of it--said he understood Holtz’s dilemma.

“If you’re in the business as long as (Holtz has) been and as long as I was and you coach at Notre Dame, this is going to happen,” Parseghian told the Chicago Tribune. “Would this same response occur if he were at Arkansas or Minnesota? I don’t think so.”

Parseghian was right. At Arkansas, Holtz might have been fired.