Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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18 APRIL/MAY 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED football would have proven to be true. Instead Holtz made history, and Notre Dame, the football program and the school, is better for it in 2026, even as the Notre Dame community mourned his death on March 4 at age 89. "We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Lou Holtz," current head coach Marcus Freeman said in a state- ment. "Lou and I shared a very special relationship. He welcomed me to the Notre Dame family immediately, offer- ing me great support throughout our time together. Our relationship meant a lot to me as I admired the values he used to build the foundation of his coaching career: love, trust and commitment. "Lou's impact at Notre Dame has gone well beyond the football field. He and his wife, Beth, are respected across campus for their generous hearts and commit- ment to carrying out Notre Dame's mis- sion of being a force for good." TAKING STOCK OF THE 'WHAT IFS?' It only came to pass because Holtz was not only willing to buy into Corri- gan's vision, that the torch of tradition could be relit, he was willing to take a pay cut to leave a rebuild at the Univer- sity of Minnesota to step into a longtime dream of his own. "We're talking a big bite financially," Corrigan said. For Corrigan, the decision-making loop to find Faust's successor was a small one. He reported directly to then- university president Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh and vice president Rev. Ed- mund P. Joyce. And he enlisted a con- sultant named Ara Parseghian. "That's a nice search committee, isn't it?" Corrigan said of Parseghian, Notre Dame's iconic coach from 1964-74 who added two national championships to the school's trophy case. "It was great having a guy who knows what it takes to get the job done. And Father Joyce was nice enough to let me do that. There were five people who Ara and I talked about. I don't know which one of us said it, but one of us said, 'We need to wake up the echoes.'" Ho l tz 's ré s u m é wa s n 't w i t h o u t blotches, at least on the surface. He was coming off a 6-5 season at Minnesota, one that landed the Gophers in the less- than-coveted Independence Bowl, but in reality he rescued that program from oblivion. And Holtz had been forced out at Ar- kansas two years before Notre Dame hired him. "That didn't scare me at all," Cor- rigan said. "Ara and I went through the five names, and when we got done, we looked at each other and both said, 'He's the one.'" And he was. He pulled Notre Dame football out of one of the program's deepest funks. And Holtz did it while playing roughly 40 percent of his games against top-25 teams. Holtz's Irish squads were a col- lective 32-20-2 against ranked teams during his run. That included four wins against top- 10 teams at the time during the 1988 title run in Holtz's third season, with all four of those teams — Miami, Michigan, West Virginia and USC — actually fin- ishing in the top seven in the final poll. And with his dynamic team and his dynamic personality, Holtz made Notre Dame football an attractive enough commodity for NBC to invest millions in televising the school's football games, an arrangement that lives on today in its 36th year. "I was lucky," Corrigan said. "I knew Lou had a [Notre Dame] out clause in his contract, because I had talked to him previously about it. We were able to move fast, because we had had conversations. "The guy [Holtz] was there. We were friends. Our [son] Tim and Skip [Holtz's son] went to school together. And I knew Lou wanted the job. There were some things that could have gotten in between us. I think he actually got of- fered another job right about the same time he was coming to Notre Dame. I was so fortunate." And so was Notre Dame. THE ALLURE OF OHIO STATE Just how fortunate Holtz shared in 2008 ahead of his Hall of Fame induc- tion, when he talked about the career paths he didn't take, specifically the two that would have led him to Columbus, Ohio, to follow another legend. "Woody Hayes had the greatest influ- Holtz was willing to take a pay cut to leave a rebuild at the University of Minnesota and step into a long- time dream of his own in South Bend. PHOTO COURTESY MINNESOTA ATHLETICS