Skip Holtz will finally be a head coach in Williams-Brice Stadium
Skip Holtz’s chance to be a head coach at Williams-Brice Stadium finally comes Saturday. It took a lot longer than Holtz once believed it would.
Holtz was an assistant coach at South Carolina from 1999-2004, while his father Lou Holtz was the Gamecocks head coach. The elder Holtz wrote in a 2006 book that he had been promised by then-athletics director Mike McGee that Skip would succeed his father as head coach when Lou retired.
However, the Gamecocks hired Steve Spurrier as head coach when Lou Holtz retired.
“This hurt me deeply,” Lou Holtz wrote in an autobiography entitled “Wins, Losses and Lessons,” “because Skip and I had been misled.”
McGee told The State then that there was no succession plan outside of a 2001 agreement that would have hinged on Lou Holtz getting an offer to be the Washington Redskins head coach that season.
On Saturday, Skip Holtz will lead his Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (2-1) into Williams-Brice to play South Carolina at 3:30 p.m. He has a 33-23 record and is in his fifth season as Louisiana Tech’s head coach.
Skip Holtz was the head coach at UConn from 1994-98, but gave up that job to join his father as the Gamecocks’ offensive coordinator and assistant head coach in 1999. Lou Holtz stripped his son of play-calling duties and the offensive coordinator title in the spring before the 2004 season, but Skip Holtz retained the assistant head coach designation.
“I spent some wonderful years there coaching with my father and had some great memories, met some great people,” Skip Holtz said Tuesday at his weekly news conference in Ruston, La. “I know how rabid that fan base is. I know what that stadium is like with the atmosphere and it is going to be a great environment for our players to have the chance to experience.”
Louisiana Tech didn’t make Holtz available for interviews with South Carolina media this week. After leaving the Gamecocks, he became East Carolina’s head coach. He spent five years with the Pirates and had a 38-27 record before moving on to South Florida, where he was 16-21 in three seasons. He took the Bulldogs’ job in 2013.
Louisiana Tech is 66th in the nation in total offense, averaging 413.3 yards per game.
Holtz called Jake Bentley “one of the things that scares me” about the Gamecocks.
“I think Bentley is a phenomenal quarterback,” Holtz said. “He’s made some just incredible throws, where you sit there and say, ‘Wow. He’s got it as a quarterback.’ ”
Current Gamecocks head coach Will Muschamp said he knows Skip Holtz “pretty good.”
“He’s a guy I have a lot of respect for,” Muschamp said. “The (offensive) numbers Skip has put up since he’s been at Louisiana Tech have been outstanding.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2017 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Skip Holtz will finally be a head coach in Williams-Brice Stadium."