Lou Holtz Biography

Louis Leo Holtz was born on January 6, 1937, and passed away on March 4, 2026, as an American college football coach. Holtz coached six college programs between 1969 and 2004 and finished with a 249–132–7 career record. His 1988 Notre Dame team achieved a 12–0 record and won the Fiesta Bowl, earning consensus national championship recognition. Holtz is the only college football coach to lead six different programs to bowl games and the only one to guide four different programs to the final top 15 rankings. After retiring from coaching, he worked as a college football analyst for CBS Sports in the 1990s and for ESPN from 2005 to 2015. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008. Holtz began his coaching career in 1960 as a graduate assistant at Iowa, where he earned his master's degree.