COLLEGE FOOTBALL: BOWL WEEK : Holtz and Notre Dame: Merger of Possibilities

This is the Lou Holtz sideline check list: Cap on. Eyes staring straight ahead. Hands shoved deep into jacket pockets. Pacing back and forth in front of the Notre Dame bench so he can fight off brain lock. You know, like maybe he can walk it off.

Is there something funny going on here?

“If you pace, you think a little bit better than you do if you’re just standing there,” said Holtz.

So what is this Lou Holtz? The world’s first stand-up comicoach ?

When he has paced his last sideline, there’s always the Comedy Store or the Improv beckoning to him, but Holtz said Notre Dame is going to be his last coaching job.

“Yeah, I mean where do you go from Notre Dame?” Holtz asked.

OK, where do you go from Notre Dame?

“Well, if you win, you go to Heaven. If you lose, you go to Purgatory.”

And if you’re 8-3, you go to Dallas.

It is there, in the Cotton Bowl, that Notre Dame will play Texas A&M; on New Year’s Day in a matchup that seems to have very little going for it, other than something that may eventually be regarded as a small piece of history--Notre Dame’s first bowl game with Holtz as coach.

Last season, after Holtz had bolted from Minnesota and Notre Dame was wallowing in its Faustian funk, the Irish finished 5-6. And you know what? No one suggested that Holtz be thrown in front of that light in the tunnel, the one that belongs to that oncoming train Holtz has spoken of so many times in his travel monologues.

Let’s look at Holtz’s itinerary: Begin in 1969. Start with the two years at William & Mary, where his only regret was that he wasn’t there long enough to find out their last names.

In the four seasons from 1972 through 1975, Holtz’s teams were 33-12-3 and went to four bowl games at North Carolina State. Then he was lost on the runway with the New York Jets for a year. After that, Holtz spent seven years and six bowl games at Arkansas, where his teams had a 60-21-2 record, followed by two seasons and a 10-12 record at Minnesota.

Now, after only two years and just one winning season at South Bend, Holtz is receiving a lot of praise. First-year Athletic Director Dick Rosenthal, who inherited Holtz instead of hiring him, said that Holtz had already leaped right up there in Irish lore with some of the biggies.

“Honest to gosh, if somebody had an assignment to mold a Knute Rockne and a Frank Leahy, they couldn’t have done a better job than Lou Holtz,” Rosenthal said. “He is Notre Dame.”

Now, that’s funny, Holtz said.

“I want to tell you this,” he said. “We’ve had so many great coaches here, the chances of Notre Dame having another one are very small. So don’t expect anything. People say, ‘How do you want to be remembered at Notre Dame?’ I’d say as a dumb coach who was the luckiest guy to ever win three national championships.

“ ‘He was dumb, but that little sucker was sure lucky. Can you believe he won three national championships?’ That’s how I’d like to be remembered.”

So far, Holtz--that dumb, lucky little sucker--is saying all the right things, making all the right people happy and winning enough games to make the whole thing worthwhile. It is actually a difficult chore. Being the football coach at Notre Dame is kind of a pressure job. Picture the Pope with a whistle.

It’s still early in the Holtz era at Notre Dame, where you don’t just pace the sideline, but you pace it beneath the watchful eyes of Knute Rockne and Frank Leahy, who are looking down from above, the Irish say. Meanwhile, from Florida, Ara Parseghian is also watching when he’s not playing golf, and Parseghian likes what he sees of Holtz.

“He’s turned the program around in two years,” Parseghian said. “When he took the job, I said he’d have them in a major bowl game in three years, so he’s ahead of schedule. Notre Dame people are very encouraged by Lou. I know there was a lot of criticism of Gerry Faust, and I’ll give you an example of how things have changed.

“There used to be so many errors, like offsides and delay of game, and they were repeated. That was the thing that saddled Gerry Faust. Now, the feedback I get is that this football team doesn’t make repeated errors with Lou. That’s good coaching. As far as I’m concerned, he is the right coach at the right time at the right school.”

So there you have it. This season, life was just a bowl game for Lou Holtz and Notre Dame. The Irish couldn’t wait to get Faust and his 30-26-1 record out of South Bend. For five years under him, Notre Dame was the punch line to a football joke.

Now they’ve got a genuinely funny guy who is downright serious about his coaching. And here is something that looks like a real upset. This humor thing, no matter what appearances Holtz may give, might not be something to laugh at after all.

But before the serious stuff, a few Holtzisms:

On rumors he was leaving Arkansas to go to South Carolina: “I have never thought about leaving Arkansas since I got here. Suicide, yes. Leaving, no.”

On the terms of his contract as a head coach: “I have a lifetime contract. That means I can’t be fired during the third quarter if we’re ahead and moving the ball.”

On why he sometimes squats on the sideline during games: “It makes a tougher target for the fans to hit.”

On players: “I don’t mind starting a season with unknowns. I just don’t like finishing a season with a bunch of them.”

On the value of assistant coaches: “According to the Bible, Joseph died leaning on his staff, and I think the same will be said of me.”

On being pelted with oranges by Arkansas fans while he was leaving the field after clinching an Orange Bowl bid: “I’m just glad we weren’t invited to the Gator Bowl.”

In any event, Holtz insists that there is a serious side to him, if people want to look for it, and he often comes up with funny things because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“What people don’t know about me is that I’m a shy person,” Holtz said. “I’m a private person in a lot of respects, but because of the nature of the profession, you’re exposed. A lot is written and said about you and your life’s an open book. But I enjoy being by myself and being private.”

Louis Leo Holtz is a week away from his 51st birthday. He grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, just up the river from Follansbee, W. Va., where he was born. Holtz earned a bachelor of science degree at Kent State and a master’s degree in arts and education at Iowa. But long before then, the slight, bespectacled Holtz had found that humor was pretty useful as a defense mechanism.

“Because of my size, because of my stature, because I wasn’t a very good athlete, if you listed my accomplishments as a person--if you didn’t list speaking or coaching--there would be absolutely nothing to it,” Holtz said. “I was never a good student. I never won an award. Never dated an awful lot.

“Consequently you sort of grow up with an inferiority complex about a lot of things,” he said. “And many times, you just don’t know how to handle things. Many places, I found a sense of humor would enable us to get publicity, which enabled us to sell season tickets, which enabled us to build a better program.

“That was true at William & Mary, N.C. State, Arkansas and Minnesota. At Notre Dame, we don’t need to sell tickets. All we need to do is win football games.”

And now, Holtz-inspired enthusiasm knows few bounds at Notre Dame.

Rosenthal--Notre Dame class of ‘54--was chairman of the board at a South Bend bank for 25 years before he became athletic director. Bankers are usually pretty conservative, right down to their gray suits, but Rosenthal is brimming with optimism about the future of Notre Dame’s football program.

“Lou Holtz will win the national championship at Notre Dame,” he said. “I’ll bet my house on it.”

The Rosenthals won’t be forced to start packing soon, Parseghian said. He believes strongly that Holtz is going to be able to withstand the pressures of coaching at Notre Dame. Not only is Holtz a good motivator, he is also a seasoned, experienced coach, which Parseghian considers mandatory for the football coach of the Irish.

“One thing is that he is not afraid to command or to lead,” Parseghian said. “A coach needs to criticize when in order and eulogize when in order. This guy is already accomplishing miracles and he played the toughest schedule in America. What he’s got to watch out for is to be careful not to burn himself out. The demands are so many for a Notre Dame football coach. If he’s not careful, the body can give out on you.”

Holtz is well aware of the flame-out factor. But he says that coaching at Notre Dame isn’t so much pressure as it is a feeling of responsibility.

“I know this job takes an awful lot out of you,” he said. “You look at the people who coached here. Look at Ara when he coached here and then look at him when he left. Then look at him now. He’s the only guy who ever got out of coaching and got younger.”

The Notre Dame name game goes on. Rockne. Elmer Layden. Leahy. Terry Brennan. Parseghian. Dan Devine. Now it’s Holtz. For one thing, he’s not getting any younger.

“No, nor do I ever plan on being mentioned in the same breath as those people,” said Holtz. “I didn’t come to Notre Dame to be a legend. I didn’t come to Notre Dame to replace anybody. I didn’t come to Notre Dame to find out if I could coach. I came to Notre Dame because I believed in Notre Dame and I wanted to be part of the family.”

Right now, the family is pretty proud of him. Of course, Holtz could still be disowned if he had a couple of losing seasons. But at the moment, Irish eyes are smiling at Lou Holtz.

“I think most of the fans, the administration, the faculty have been warm, but reserving judgment,” Holtz said. “But I think that fluctuates according to down and distance.”

For Holtz at Notre Dame, it’s still first down and short.