It’s Tough to Explain Why, but Holtz Leaving the Irish

Saying that he was “doing the right thing,” and repeating it perhaps two dozen times during an hourlong news conference, Lou Holtz walked away from the country’s premier college football coaching job Tuesday.

What was never explained, however, was why leaving Notre Dame after 11 seasons, a national championship and a couple of close misses, not to mention a 99-29-2 record, was the right thing to do.

“It is difficult to leave Notre Dame at this time, for many reasons,” Holtz said, reading from a prepared statement. “I will miss the students, and I would have loved to have the opportunity to coach in the new stadium. . . . But the main reason I regret leaving is because I will leave a talented group of young men I respect and love.”

Holtz, 59, will coach the Irish against Rutgers on Saturday at Notre Dame Stadium, the last game in the 59,075-stadium before it opens next season with a new upper deck and 22,000 additional seats. Then he will coach his last regular-season game for Notre Dame in the Coliseum against USC on Nov. 30. USC has not beaten the Irish since 1982.

After that, Holtz is expected to bow out with a bowl game, possibly in the Fiesta Bowl if the Irish beat both Rutgers and USC, finishing with a 9-2 record.

Speculation centering on Northwestern Coach Gary Barnett as Holtz’s replacement heated up Tuesday with Barnett’s announcement, in a prepared statement, that he had been contacted by Notre Dame. Barnett, who took Northwestern to the Rose Bowl last season and has the Wildcats poised for another major bowl bid, said that he was going to take some time to think about the Notre Dame situation.

Irish officials were also reportedly thinking long and hard about Barnett’s situation. He signed a 12-year contract with Northwestern last spring, after UCLA took a run at him as Terry Donahue’s replacement. That contract reportedly is worth $5 million, and there is a buyout clause, meaning that the Irish would have to come up with a sizable sum for a school that seldom does buyouts.

Rick Taylor, Northwestern’s athletic director, when asked Monday how much it would take to buy out Barnett, replied, “Lots.”

Notre Dame officials also confirmed, after the news conference, that Donahue originally had been on the short list of candidates late last week, while the school awaited Holtz’s decision, but Donahue pulled out of the running.

Mentioned most often here Tuesday as other candidates were Bob Davie, Holtz’s defensive coordinator, and Louisiana State Coach Gerry DiNardo, who played guard on Notre Dame’s 1973 national championship team under Ara Parseghian.

But while Notre Dame was moving forward in its search for Holtz’s replacement, a search officials hope will end the first week in December, so that the new man can be involved during the key recruiting months of December and January, some closest to the situation remained puzzled over Holtz’s action.

“After I listened to him and saw how firm he was in his stance and decision, I decided that I would respect that decision,” said Mike Wadsworth, Irish athletic director. “I was not going to badger him merely to satisfy my own curiosity.”

Holtz fed that curiosity all day with a series of statements that seemed geared to steer everyone to the same question: OK, so why are you leaving then?

Among his statements, in no special order:

--”It’s very hard for me to think about coaching anywhere else.”

--”This is a great job, the best job in the world.”

--”I do not feel good about this at all, but it is the right thing to do.”

--”I have not felt pressure here. The weight of the world has not been on my shoulders. I don’t have ulcers, I give them.”

--”I don’t think you ever go from Notre Dame to another coaching job and look at it as a step up.”

--”Notre Dame is family. It is something special.”

When the news conference had ended, as had a session with Wadsworth and Father William Beauchamp, Notre Dame’s executive vice president, and when Holtz had pretty well debunked the one logical reason for his quitting--a job awaiting him for big money as coach of the Minnesota Vikings--all that was left was speculation.

Much of that seemed to center on a meeting Holtz had with Wadsworth and Beauchamp last December, shortly after a 9-3 season that had put the Irish in the Orange Bowl.

“Lou went into that meeting expecting to hear all good things,” a Notre Dame source said. “What he heard instead was that, while he could continue to coach at Notre Dame as long as he wanted to, there were also areas of concern.”

Those areas of concern, according to the source, who works in the academic community at the school, were a slightly decreasing graduation rate, from the low 90% to the mid-80% range, and some recruits not quite up to the Notre Dame standards of model citizenship.

After that meeting, Holtz told many people about the assurances of a lifetime situation at Notre Dame if he so wished. But apparently the negative side of the meeting, no matter how gently put and no matter how normal that sort of thing might be in an employer-employee performance review, ate at Holtz.

Holtz said that he first mentioned to Wadsworth that he was pondering stepping down “sometime in February” of this year, which would have been two months after his performance review. Wadsworth wouldn’t comment on specifics of the December meeting and said he didn’t remember Holtz’s reference to possibly stepping down in February.

“But then, I do forget things sometimes,” he added.

There was also much made by Notre Dame observers of Holtz’s occasional glowing references to Wadsworth’s predecessor, Dick Rosenthal, while omitting references to Wadsworth in the same context.

“Lou loved Rosenthal,” another school official said, also asking to remain anonymous. “Rosenthal was a huge fan and Lou had him right around his little finger.”

Other strange elements of Holtz’s news conference included references to how Notre Dame’s lucrative NBC contract had cost the Irish some votes in national ratings from writers who think the Irish are fat cats; to how people who work for Notre Dame did so as a labor of love and certainly not to make financial gains: to how the Air Force game that the Irish lost in a major upset shouldn’t have been scheduled when it was because the Irish players were in the midst of midterms; about how he really wasn’t a “Madison Avenue-type guy” and that Notre Dame probably needed somebody a little more like that.

He also continued in his stance about how one of the reasons he was leaving, although not the only one, was that he didn’t want to break the record for most victories by a coach at Notre Dame. It is held by the legendary Knute Rockne, who is six ahead of Holtz.

“I am comfortable leaving here with his record intact,” Holtz said.

He even made a point of how Wadsworth and Beauchamp had not asked him for his input on a new coach, adding, “These guys don’t need me on this. They are fine administrators and neither is where he is because he won the lottery.”

Wadsworth said later that he had, indeed, asked Holtz for some input on coaching candidates.

In the end, the only documented explanation for what Holtz did was his repeating his need “to do the right thing.” He even tried to explain it with a golf analogy.

“Sometimes you’re out there and your caddie says, ‘Seven-iron,’ ” Holtz said. “But you know you aren’t Greg Norman and you think it is a four-iron. You can feel what is the right thing to do there.”

So, for reasons that may never be fully explained, Lou Holtz decided to go with the four-iron. The days, weeks and months ahead will tell best how soft a landing Holtz and Notre Dame will have.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Lou Holtz at a Glance

ALL-TIME COLLEGE VICTORIES

Coaches who have at least 215 victories at four-year colleges regardless of classification or association. Bowl and playoff victories are included. Totals for active coaches (denoted by *) are through Nov. 16:

College: Victories

*Eddie Robinson: 405

*John Gagliardi: 335

Bear Bryant: 323

Pop Warner: 319

Amos Alonzo Stagg: 314

*Joe Paterno: 287

*Ron Schipper: 287

*Roy Kidd: 272

*Bobby Bowden: 268

*Tubby Raymond: 258

*Jim Malosky: 251

*Roger Harring: 241

*Tom Osborne: 240

Woody Hayes: 238

Bo Schembechler: 234

Arnett Mumford: 233

Jim Merritt: 232

Fred Long: 227

*LaVell Edwards: 225

Fred Martinelli: 217

*Hayden Fry: 220

*Lou Holtz: 215

HOLTZ AS COLLEGE COACH

The college coaching record of Lou Holtz, who resigned Tuesday as Notre Dame football coach, effective at end of season:

*--*

Year School W L T 1969 William & Mary 3 7 0 1970 William & Mary 5 7 0 1971 William & Mary 5 6 0 1972 North Carolina St. 8 3 1 1973 North Carolina St. 9 3 0 1974 North Carolina St. 9 2 1 1975 North Carolina St. 7 4 1 1977 Arkansas 11 1 0 1978 Arkansas 9 2 1 1979 Arkansas 10 2 0 1980 Arkansas 7 5 0 1981 Arkansas 8 4 0 1982 Arkansas 9 2 1 1983 Arkansas 6 5 0 1984 Minnesota 4 7 0 1985 Minnesota-x 6 5 0 1986 Notre Dame 5 6 0 1987 Notre Dame 8 4 0 1988 Notre Dame-y 12 0 0 1989 Notre Dame 12 1 0 1990 Notre Dame 9 3 0 1991 Notre Dame 10 3 0 1992 Notre Dame 10 1 1 1993 Notre Dame 11 1 0 1994 Notre Dame 6 5 1 1995 Notre Dame 9 3 0 1996 Notre Dame 7 2 0 Career Totals 215 94 7 Notre Dame Totals 99 29 2

*--*

x-did not coach team in Independence Bowl

y-won national championship.