Former Arkansas players who played for Lou Holtz remembered the coach who passed away on March 4.
Lou Holtz made a deep and lasting impact on the people he coached. Whole Hog Sports collected reactions from Dan Hampton, Houston Nutt, and other former players who recalled their coach with great fondness after his death on March 4 at the age of 89.
“When you play for Coach Holtz you learn a lot,” said Kevin Scanlon, the former Arkansas quarterback who became the Holtz family’s financial advisor through his job at Stephens in Little Rock. “One of the things you learn is there’s five time zones. There’s Eastern Standard Time, Central Standard Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Time and then there’s called LLH Time. That’s Louis Leo Holtz Time.
“He had a different time than the clock on the wall. He said, ‘Forget the clock on the wall. My watch says it’s [this] time.’ For Holtz, to be early was to be on time, to be on time was to be late, and to be late was to be forgotten, Scanlon explained."
The article later continued with more recollections of Holtz:
“First time I met him he was coaching at South Carolina and I was in town on a recruiting trip, I spent an hour with him in his office talking about leadership, management, recruiting,” (John) Calipari wrote. “He was a great recruiter, incredibly organized and extremely gracious with his time that day. It was incredible.”
“Tim Brown kind of grabs me and I said, ‘Our coach ain’t doing good,’ and he got real sad real quick and he said, ‘I know, I know,’” Hampton said. They were referring to Holtz, who passed away in home hospice care in Orlando. “And then [Wednesday], the very next day, we hear about it,” Hampton said. “Just very sad to hear it.”
Hampton later continued:
“Lou would try to engender [an attitude of], ‘Hey, why can’t you be great?’ And ‘Why don’t you start believing in yourself?’” said Hampton, a College and Pro Football Hall of Fame member. “That’s really kind of how he took a team that went 5-5-1 and had about five guys drafted into the NFL and we go and basically win a share of the national championship.
“Because he basically taught us, ‘Hey, why not us, why not here, why not now?’ In life sometimes you’ve got to play big. Well everybody just said, ‘Hey why not me? I can play big.’ And we just started playing great football. Guys like Larry Jackson and Dale White, a lot of players that maybe other teams didn’t think much of, hey, they became great, great players and they were the backbone of a fantastic Razorback team.”
Houston Nutt had this to say:
“I just thought the world of Coach Holtz and I had the privilege to play for him and coach with him,” Nutt said. “I learned so much from him. He was just such a great, great coach.
“When you think about his legacy, I always think about that Oklahoma game. We were a huge, huge underdog. And I mean, we’re up and down the field and our defense is playing unbelievable, taking away the ball; just outplayed them.
“And you’re talking about a [Sooners] team that’s going to win the national title if they just beat us. … I think we’re a 30-plus-point underdog. That’s going to stand out, it’s going to be locked in for a long, long time, to win 11 games.”