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| | Monday, September 6 | |||||
Scripps Howard News Service | ||||||
Let's start at the end and work backward with Lou Holtz.
I mean the very end.
"Coach, you need to turn around South Carolina's program, then retire and let your son take over," he was told at a booster club meeting. "By the time we turn it around, my son will have retired," Holtz wisecracked.Skip Holtz, 35, is South Carolina's offensive coordinator. He left his job as Connecticut's head coach for a five-year guaranteed contract at USC that pays him $120,000 a year. He's assumed to be the heir to the Gamecocks' throne when his dad calls it quits. "I'm not interested in retiring," Lou says. "I'm not interested in who will replace me." How long Lou coaches depends on several factors, including the health of Beth, who has had 83 radiation treatments for throat cancer that spread to her lymph nodes. When South Carolina approached Holtz last November, he turned down the school not once but three times. So athletics director Mike McGee went to work on selling the Gamecocks to the family. Holtz was in Nashville doing TV commentary on an NFL game when his wife called and told him he should take the South Carolina job. "She told me she had talked to Skip and he would come, too," Lou says. "I had never talked to Skip about it." Skip and his wife wanted their three kids to be close to grandpa Lou and grandma Beth. They are now. The families live only five blocks apart. "I think Beth can tell I'm happiest when I'm a teacher," Lou says when asked why he would take over a program that was 1-10 last season. "And I started thinking maybe she wants to make sure if something happens to her that I'm not alone."At the time of her surgery, Beth was given only a 10 percent chance of survival and required 12 hours of surgery. Her weight soon fell from 129 pounds to 89. Holtz says the South Carolina job was attractive because of its proximity to Beth's oncologist. Holtz tells how Florida coach Steve Spurrier arranged for his wife to get in to see one of the best radiation specialists in the country. "I don't pray for her; I pray to her," Holtz says, marveling at his wife's inner strength. Through all the personal hardships, Holtz has never lost his marvelous sense of humor. The one-liners are seemingly endless. On his offense: "Skip will call the plays until he calls 11 passes in a row and then I'll call the plays." On why South Carolina's opening game with North Carolina State is being televised: "Obviously they are trying to reduce the amount of violence on TV." On his running attack: "Boo Williams will have trouble getting insurance unless we improve the offensive line." On what tricks he has up his sleeve: "I tried to buy my way out of nine games, but that didn't work." Ask him why he left the TV booth for South Carolina, and Holtz says "the psychiatrist asked me the same thing prior to inducting me into the psycho ward. ... I'm not a young man. We're not on an 8-year rebuilding program." It's uncertain how long it will take to turn around the Gamecocks' program. However, Holtz went a long way toward turning around his players' attitude in only one afternoon. Shortly after arriving in South Carolina, Holtz made an innocent smart-aleck comment about how the cars in the Palmetto State "must be the cleanest in the country because all the trash is on the side of the road."The next day South Carolina's governor launched a statewide roadside cleanup campaign. Guess whose players soon were outside wearing orange vests picking up cans, bottles, paper and other debris? "I was thinking, 'I can't believe we're actually doing this,"' Williams said. "Even coach Holtz was out there picking up trash. It brought everybody from the starters to the walk-ons closer and made us feel better about ourselves." Not as good as a win would make them feel. But it's a start. (Gary Lundy writes for The News-Sentinel in Knoxville, Tenn.) | ALSO SEE SEC: The toughest tour in the country
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