Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz has entered hospice care, according to several reports, including ABC57 in Indiana.
A Holtz family source told ABC57 of Holtz’s failing condition. The 89-year-old Holtz might be best known around the country for being the head coach at Notre Dame from 1986-96, leading the Fighting Irish to a national championship in 1988.
But Holtz is also well known around SEC football circles as the former head coach at Arkansas from 1977-83 and as the ex-head coach at South Carolina from 1999-2004. The South Carolina job was his final coaching stop in an incredible career that 4 years after leaving Columbia landed Holtz in the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008.
Holtz took his first college head coaching job at William & Mary in 1969, and he followed that up with a stint at NC State from 1972-75 before dabbling in the pro game as the head coach of the New York Jets in 1976. Holtz was also the head coach at Minnesota from 1984-85.
He is perhaps known more to younger college football fans as an analyst at ESPN.
Fox Sports announcer Tim Brando took to social media to post a tribute to what Holtz has meant to the sport of college football.
“Coach Holtz has always been a National Treasure,” Brando wrote.
Here is Brando’s emotion-filled full post on Holtz:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
