Remembering Lou Holtz, who presided over ‘special time’ in NC State football history
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- Lou Holtz led N.C. State to a 1973 ACC title and four straight bowl games.
- Holtz left after 1975 for the NFL, returned and won 1988 at Notre Dame.
- Holtz shaped players and programs, leaving a lasting legacy in Raleigh and beyond.
In his four years coaching football at N.C. State, Lou Holtz was a dynamo.
Small in stature, he was filled with energy, one-liners, fiery competitiveness and football creativity. He could be funny, his blue eyes twinkling behind those black-rimmed glasses. He could be moody. He always seemed confident.
Holtz, who died Wednesday, March 4, at 89, was at N.C. State in what many longtime Wolfpack fans call a golden era of Pack sports. Holtz and the football team won an ACC championship in 1973. The Wolfpack basketball team, coached by Norm Sloan and led by the incomparable David Thompson, won the 1974 national championship. State’s baseball team, coached by Sam Esposito, won three straight ACC titles.
“It was just a special time,” Holtz said in a 2019 interview.
Holtz was seen on Saturdays constantly pacing the sidelines, his mind always churning, designing ways to win. He took the Pack to four consecutive bowl games with an explosive offense and some daring plays — an 81-yard quick kick by Johnny Evans decisive in a 1975 victory at Penn State.
Bill Yoest, a former All-America offensive lineman for the Pack, once recalled Holtz first being introduced to the team after being hired from William & Mary.
“So the door opens and in walks Mr. Peepers,” Yoest said. “He quickly had everybody’s attention. He was a master psychologist. He didn’t have a physical presence, not at 5-foot-9 and 130 pounds, but he had this mental aura about him. Before he was finished, I think everybody in the room was thinking the same thing: we’ll win.”
The Pack won 33 games and lost just once at home before Holtz’s ill-timed departure for the NFL and the New York Jets in 1976.
That lasted 13 games. Holtz was made for college football and soon was back. He coached Arkansas and Minnesota before landing what he always said was his dream job — at Notre Dame — and coached the Irish to a national championship in 1988, their most recent.
“Lou Holtz was an icon in college football and was certainly beloved by many at NC State, including me,” N.C. State athletics director Boo Corrigan said in a statement on Wednesday. “My father hired Lou at Notre Dame and our families enjoyed many years of close friendship. He was a role model and mentor as a coach and as a leader and I am honored to have called him a friend. My thoughts and prayers, as well as those of Wolfpack Nation, are with his children Skip, Kevin, Elizabeth and Luanne at this sad time.”
At odds with UNC’s Bill Dooley
At State, Holtz always seemed at odds with UNC football coach Bill Dooley. There was a mutual respect of sorts, but there also was vitriol at times.
In the 1975 game in Raleigh, the Tar Heels scored in the final seconds. The Heels went for a two-point conversion and the win, but quarterback Bill Paschall was under heavy pressure as he rolled toward the sideline and could not find an open receiver. The Pack won, 21-20.
A few days later, Dooley said the game films showed UNC’s Brian Smith being held in the end zone by State’s Greg Walker on the play. Holtz, at his weekly press conference at the Case Center, strongly disagreed, saying there was just a little “jostling.”
Afterward, Holtz was being further questioned about the play when his temper rose. “If anyone wants to see the game film, we can go upstairs right now and watch it,” he said.
A young reporter said he’d like to see it. Holtz darted out of the room and stormed up the back steps with media members in tow, demanding that the final roll of game film be loaded. After showing the play a few times, he asked, “What did you see there?”
Told that it did appear State’s Walker had grabbed Smith’s jersey, Holtz exploded. “Get the game film of that 1972 game, right now!” he said to an assistant coach, who hustled after it.
In the ‘72 game in Chapel Hill, the Pack went for two and the win after a late touchdown pass. Holtz showed that play, with Wolfpack running back Willie Burden being held up by a UNC defender as he swung out of the backfield. No call was made and UNC won, 34-33.
To Holtz, it seemed as if a football IOU had been settled.
A magician and comic
Holtz was an amateur magician who also could have been a standup comic.
Holtz once said, “Never tell your problems to people. Eighty percent don’t care and the other 20 percent are glad you have them.”
In talking about taking the Notre Dame job, he said, “They told me one policy they had was that a coach was not allowed to make more than the president. And the president was a priest who took the vow of poverty.”
Holtz liked to say he went to former NCSU athletic director Willis Casey, another feisty type, and asked for a bonus after the Pack went to the 1972 Peach Bowl and walloped West Virginia.
“He said for what?” Holtz said. “I said it was customary when you win. He said, ‘I hired you to do that, I fired the last guy who didn’t and I’ll fire you if you don’t continue to do it.’ I never asked for a bonus again.”
The Jogging Professor
Holtz left State after the 1975 season, and after an incident that year at a closed football practice on campus. NCSU math professor Robert Ramsay was jogging on the track that circled the practice field when Holtz ordered that he leave. Ramsay wouldn’t leave. Soon, an off-duty security officer was called in.
“I refused, was arrested and carried downtown in my gym shorts,” Ramsay said in a 1999 N&O interview. “I was guilty, I admit that. I was ugly. But little did I know what would happen. Lou Holtz was quoted as saying he thought I was a football spy, the story was in the papers, the wire services picked it up and it went all over the country.”
Ramsay, who died in 2016, said he did not believe “The Jogging Professor” incident played a major role in Holtz leaving N.C. State, saying it was more the lure of coaching in the NFL.
The two also made amends. Ramsay said when he was about to take a sabbatical at Stanford, Holtz sent him a note that jokingly said, “If I knew you were leaving, I’d have stayed.’”
Return to coaching
Holtz later came out of retirement to coach at South Carolina and returned to Carter-Finley Stadium for the Gamecocks’ season opener in 1999. The Pack took a 10-0 win on a rainy, windy night.
“We never got to practice for this game in the rain,” a drenched Holtz said that night. “Whenever we had rain we had lightning, and we aren’t quick enough to practice in lightning.”
In 2019, Holtz returned again to Raleigh for a speaking engagement. In an N&O interview, Holtz spoke of how much he missed coaching.
“The thing I miss most is teaching them how to succeed on the field but more importantly in life,” he said. “You know a lot of people can be successful and you make a lot of money. … But when you get a chance to coach and you get a chance to be significant, that’s where you help other people be successful and that lasts many a lifetime.”
Holtz couldn’t end the interview without more humor. Asked how he was able to maintain his blond hair into his 80s and avoid graying, he smiled again.
“I’m just lucky,” he said. “See, God gave me good hair and bad looks. I guess you can’t get both.”
This story was originally published March 4, 2026 at 5:12 PM.
