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Morris: Holtz finds a home with Pirates

Five years after leaving USC, son of former head coach is thriving

EAST CAROLINA SKIP HOLTZ

Skip Holtz

MARK J. KAWANISHI/AP

Posted on 06.07.09
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Lou Holtz Skip Holtz

File photo/The State/

USC coach Lou Holtz and his son, offensive coordinator Skip, talk during a 43-40 loss to Mississippi in 2003. Skip Holtz has led East Carolina to a 29-22 record in four years.

Ron Morris

Columnist

rmorris@thestate.com
(803) 771-8432

Skip Holtz

AGE: 45

COLLEGE: Notre Dame, 1986

COACHING CAREER: 1987-88, graduate assistant, Florida State; 1989, receivers coach, Colorado; 1990-91, receivers coach, Notre Dame; 1992-93, offensive coordinator, Notre Dame; 1994-98, head coach, Connecticut; 1999-2003, assistant head coach/offensive coordinator, USC; 2004, assistant head coach/quarterbacks coach, USC; 2005-present, head coach, East Carolina.

AT ECU: In four seasons, Holtz has led the Pirates to a 29-22 record and a bowl game in each of his past three seasons.

FAMILY: Wife Jennifer; children Louis III, 15, Chad, 12, and Hailey, 10.

GREENVILLE, N.C.

When Skip Holtz sat down this past week for an interview in the East Carolina baseball press box, he leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, looking every bit as if he was seated in his favorite recliner at his Greenville home.

Five years removed from a career meltdown at the University of South Carolina, Holtz has found a home in eastern North Carolina. The way Holtz sees it, he could coach at East Carolina for as long as athletics director Terry Holland and the school’s passionate fans want him around.

In four seasons of leading East Carolina football, Holtz might be the most popular man in town. Move over Emily Proctor and Sandra Bullock, actresses who graduated from East Carolina; Skip Holtz has gained rock-star status in Greenville.

He went on the field to catch up with USC baseball coach Ray Tanner last Saturday and was greeted by a horde of photographers and an East Carolina crowd that cheered both his entrance and exit.

“It’s been awesome. It really has been. It’s been a good experience,” says Holtz, who unlike his Hall of Fame father, Lou, is not one for hyperbole. When the younger Holtz tells you something, you usually can take it to the bank.

That is important to know, because the line of questions for Holtz these days usually comes back to his future, at East Carolina or elsewhere. Holtz is a hot commodity, a head-coaching success at two schools not generally considered among the big boys of college football.

At Connecticut from 1994-98, Holtz compiled a 33-23 record that included a school-record 10 wins his final season. The Huskies under Holtz were a perennial top-25 team in Division I-AA rankings.

At East Carolina, Holtz inherited a program that had won three of its previous 25 games. He has directed East Carolina to three consecutive bowl games, a No. 14 national ranking this past season and the program’s first conference championship since 1976.

Naturally, other schools have wanted Holtz’s services. The talks reportedly got serious with Syracuse last December. Word leaked that Boston College had an interest in Holtz as well.

“It’s flattering. It’s an honor to have people mention your name, or to have people say he’s going to go here or he’s going to go there,” Holtz says. “The bottom line is Terry (Holland) has been very fair with me here at East Carolina.

“This is a unique place. It’s been special for me and my family since I’ve been here, the way this community has accepted us and brought us in. My wife loves it here. My family is very happy here.”

Holtz is entering the second year of a five-year deal that pays him $1.16 million annually. He certainly could sign a longer, more lucrative contract should he move to a BCS school. But Holtz says he does not coach for money, and he sees East Carolina as a unique situation.

The Pirates, members of Conference USA, long have played in the shadows of their ACC neighbors to the west. For many years, North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest and even N.C. State refused to play East Carolina in football.

“We have been viewed as the stepchild,” Holtz says. “That’s part of what we’ve been fighting. ... We’re viewed as kind of a second-tier program over here. But, as I told the players (when I arrived at ECU), that’s how we view ourselves.”

Holtz’s approach to fighting East Carolina’s inferiority complex was to schedule games against big-name opponents. He secured series against West Virginia and Virginia Tech, both of which East Carolina plays this season. He also got North Carolina’s Big Four schools to alternate years playing East Carolina, and a five-game series with USC begins in 2010.

“We can look at it as a death march, that we’re going to the dentist to get our gums scraped because we’ve got to go play these teams,” Holtz says, “or we can look at it as a great opportunity to turn around and improve our program.”

To help matters, East Carolina has beaten the likes of Duke, Virginia, N.C. State, North Carolina, Virginia Tech and West Virginia. Holtz has turned around the program with a wide-open offense and a developing defense, and in so doing has created unprecedented excitement around Greenville.

When he arrived for the 2005 season, East Carolina sold 15,000 season tickets. Those numbers climbed to 16,000, 22,000 and 21,000 and are expected to reach 20,000 this season despite the depressed economy. East Carolina averaged 42,016 fans in five games last season at 43,000-seat Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

What Holtz has created at East Carolina is a greater passion for football than those at the big-brother schools in the state. It is the only game in town, and the city of Greenville essentially shuts down on football Saturdays.

Holtz says East Carolina fans are much like those at South Carolina. He says he often recalls a late-October game in 1999 at Williams-Brice Stadium that pitted 0-7 USC against 4-3 Vanderbilt. Yet, an announced crowd of 74,806 attended.

“They remind me a lot of the South Carolina fans,” Holtz says of the East Carolina faithful. “They know everything about your players, about your coaches, about your team.

“When you speak to these booster clubs, the lady up front says, ‘You know with Sean Allen moving to center, who’s going to play at the guard position?’ Golly. I didn’t expect that.”

Truth be known, Holtz did not know what to expect when he put six years as an assistant coach under his father in Columbia behind him. When he accepted the East Carolina job, Holtz says he convinced himself to think about what might be instead of what might have been.

Holtz was recommended to East Carolina’s Holland by Dave Odom, then USC’s basketball coach and a longtime friend of Holland. Holland and Holtz met in Rock Hill, hit it off and have established a working friendship.

“He’s everything we could have hoped for,” Holland says of Holtz.

Holtz’s teams have gone 5-6, 7-6, 8-5 and 9-5, and have played the past three seasons in the Papajohns.com Bowl, Hawaii Bowl and Liberty Bowl. With eight starters returning on both offense and defense, there is reason to believe East Carolina again will play in a bowl game and challenge for the Conference USA championship.

Should that happen, more BCS schools are likely to seek out Holtz as their next coach. When Syracuse and Boston College came calling last winter, East Carolina fans were upset the savior of their program would even consider leaving Greenville.

“You want people to think your coach is good,” Holland says he had to explain to fans. Holland even wrote a letter that was e-mailed to East Carolina season-ticket holders.

“The truth is that no one could be more loyal to East Carolina University and his football players than coach Holtz has been,” Holland wrote. “The Pirate Nation has earned that loyalty and needs to continue to earn coach Holtz’s loyalty by making sure he knows we care about his own future and career more than we care about simply winning football games.

“The best way to earn undying loyalty is to encourage coach Holtz to continually compare the job we are all doing with what he can expect from the fans and administration at other institutions. After all, we each compare him constantly to what the coaches of competitors are doing, so it is only healthy if it is a two-way street.”

Holtz says he is flattered by the attention he seems to get from other schools every offseason. But he says he does not think in terms of what his next step will be.

“I am not looking to leave,” Holtz says. “I don’t need BCS next to my name to say that I’m doing a good job. ... It’s going to have to be a special situation to get me out of Greenville. I enjoy it here. I’m happy here. Never say never, because you don’t know what’s going to happen in this business.”

What we do know, for now, is that Holtz is the toast of this city and university.

Listen to Morris Tuesdays from 4-5 p.m. on ESPN Radio 93.1 FM

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