Holtz’s Happiest Days Were at NC State

NC State athletics director Willis Casey sat in his car in the parking lot of a gas station in South Hills, Virginia, waiting for his interview candidate to show up.

When a half hour slipped by the designated time, Casey got out and went up to a slight man leaning on his car on the other side of the lot.

“Are you Lou Holtz?” Casey said.

“That’s me,” the 34-year-old head coach at William & Mary said.

“You don’t look like a football coach,” said Casey, a portly fellow whose habits included four packs of cigarettes a day and a bottle of bourbon a week.

“Well, you don’t look like a very athletic director, either,” the candidate shot back.

It was the beginning of a successful relationship and what Holtz often remembered as the happiest days of his coaching career.

Though he had a losing record in his first three years as a head coach, Holtz was convinced he could be successful as NC State’s coach, something he emphasized when Casey introduced him at a press conference on Nov. 24, 1971.

“Confidence is my strongest suit,” Holtz said.

To be honest, it fit his gangly 5-foot-10, 148-pound body better than any tailored clothing.

Holtz, the legendary college coach, died Wednesday at his home in Orlando, according to his family. He was 89. Tributes and remembrances poured in, though fewer people talked about his success at NC State, where he was 33-12-3, than they did about his national title and 100 wins as the head coach of his dream school, Notre Dame.

In his four years here, Holtz and Casey had a somewhat rocky relationship, but the Wolfpack’s success on the field changed the future of the sport at a school mostly known for basketball titles. The coach took a moribund program that had been to only three postseason games in its history to four consecutive bowl games, when postseason participation was a reward rather than an expectation. Before Holtz left, the Wolfpack owned an Atlantic Coast Conference championship and a United Press International Top 10 finish.

He beat Penn State two of the four times they faced each other and took his team on the road to face national powers like Nebraska, Georgia, Florida, Michigan State and Indiana in nonconference games.

It was at home, however, where the Wolfpack generated real excitement.

When he arrived in Raleigh — in a station wagon given to him by William & Mary as a reward for a 5-6 season and second-place finish in the Southern Conference — Holtz went straight to work, putting more than 9,000 miles on his state-provided car in his first month recruiting players from Ohio to Florida. From the moment he made his debut with a 24-24 tie against Maryland and a 43-20 upset at Syracuse, Holtz and his twin-veer offense generated offensive excitement and defensive excellence.

In his first season, the Wolfpack smashed every NC State total offense and rushing record, and topped them every year afterwards. Some of those records still stand more than a half-century later. The 1972 team scored 409 points, which nearly matched the three previous seasons under Edwards and Michaels combined (420).

Wolfpack fans loved him because of his success, his style and his ability to make them laugh.

Never have I enjoyed coaching more than when I was at NC State.

In four years, he lost only one home game, 30-22 to Wake Forest in 1975. Attendance went up from fewer than 25,000 the year before he arrived to 44,333 in his final year — 3,000 more than Carter Stadium’s capacity at the time.

Holtz used the existing talent he inherited and the players he convinced to join him to establish his program. His first teams featured a quartet of running backs he called “The Stallions”: Willie Burden, Charley Young, Roland Hooks and Stan Fritts.

In his first season, when freshman eligibility was reinstated by the NCAA, he brought twins Dave and Don Buckey from Akron, Ohio, and got them on the cover of Sports Illustrated as the face of college football’s first freshman class. In his final season, he inserted a freshman from High Point into his offensive backfield after his regular running backs fumbled eight times at Michigan State.

Ted Brown went on to become the most prolific running back in ACC history, setting rushing and scoring records that still stand today.

“Never have I enjoyed coaching more than when I was at NC State,” Holtz said in 2023. “It was a great time with great people and great coaching. I was really blessed to be here.”

Holtz left in a huff following the 1975 season, mainly because of disagreements with Casey over staffing, foot-dragging in getting improvements started to the stadium (something that didn’t happen until 25 years and six coaches later when former Holtz graduate assistant Chuck Amato was hired) and an infamous incident with a jogging math professor.

His lone year with the NFL’s New York Jets was disastrous, as he competed for attention with celebrated quarterback Joe Namath. The Jets, even with a rah-rah motivational tune Holtz took directly from NC State’s fight song, were 0-9 against teams with a winning record and beat only the Buffalo Bills (twice) and the 0-16 Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Holtz left for Arkansas with one game remaining on the Jets schedule and continued his legendary college coaching career that included the 1988 national title at Notre Dame and his eventual induction into the National Football Foundation’s College Football Hall of Fame.

Coaching was hardly Holtz’s only passion. While here, he learned a handful of magic tricks from NC State alum Barry Cooper of Cary, who was the president of a local magician’s guild. Holtz said it helped him overcome a childhood stutter, helped him relate to high school players on recruiting visits and endeared him to children during a time when he had four young kids at home.

He was a master motivator and banquet speaker, with oft-told and well-rehearsed anecdotes that kept his audiences in stitches, a football precursor to Wolfpack basketball coach Jim Valvano. All of his speeches were punctuated with his personal mantra to “be a participant in life, not a spectator.”

He always expected to be successful from the moment in 1966 he made a list of 107 goals he wanted to achieve during his lifetime. As he was unemployed at the time he showed the list to Beth, his wife of more than 60 years, he added one more goal to the list: Get a job.

Among the goals he achieved outside of football was to meet the pope, to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, to make a hole-in-one in golf and to have dinner at the White House. In all, he participated in accomplishing at least 102 of those goals. He never revealed which goals he didn’t complete.

He was also a person of faith, who limited his cursing vocabulary to “hell,” “damn” and “ass” because all three were mentioned in the Bible. Yet he was often accused by foes and the NCAA of multiple recruiting, academic and performance enhancing violations during his 33-year career as a head coach.

In all, he posted a 249-132-7 overall mark in college football, which included the perfect 12-0 record at Notre Dame and the imperfect 0-11 record in his debut season at South Carolina in 1999.

In October 2023, Holtz made his final return to Raleigh, joining more than 100 former players at a reunion at the University Club on Hillsborough Street and for a Wolfpack football game against Marshall to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his lone ACC title.

“I can’t believe so many people came here for this reunion,” Holtz told the roomful of former players, assistants and spouses. “It just shows you that we loved one another, we appreciated one another.

“You lived what I believe should be everyone’s goal: Do the right thing, want the best and show people you care.”