Holtz Wants Gamecocks To Win

Why? It is the question Lou Holtz will be asked a million times before South Carolina kicks off against North Carolina State on Sept. 4. Why leave a cushy life behind as a CBS college football analyst to coach again in a state where a Holtz is overshadowed by a Hootie?

Why give up the rubber chicken speaking circuit where he could make $20,000 for dropping a few witticisms on some Shriners? Why be away from his loving wife Beth who bravely continues to fight throat cancer?

On this day, the 62-year-old Gamecock coach already is tired of answering what has become the eternal question. Players have been in his office all morning, some with personal problems, some with academic problems. All of them bearing the problem of turning around South Carolina football, which itself bears the burden of having won one bowl game in its 105-year history.

Why indeed?

"I ask myself that every morning," Holtz says. "Today is not a good day to ask that."

But Holtz does the interview anyway as if the klieg lights have come up on The Tonight Show. It's Johnny and Ed all over again. It's the stuff Domers used to eat up and South Carolinians can't get enough of. Holtz is on auto-Lou. His schtick is on cruise control. The man can't resist an audience.

On his lack of depth: "We can't get on Noah's Ark, we don't have two of anything."

On a recent scrimmage: "It was one of the few times where I could say that the most outstanding people on the field were the officials."

On former South Carolina coach Brad Scott: "I think 1-10 last year should have received some votes for coach of the year."

On doing color on NFL telecasts: "The games I did were not the highest ranked. Some go all over the country. We usually went to a third of the city."

Things will get better, they always do under Holtz. Say what you will about the man and his style, he gets results. The coach who ranks 11th in the sport in career wins is one of those who can improve a team by sheer will. South Carolina Athletic Director Mike McGee is banking on it. An entire state craves it. A mediocre team needs it.

"He's like a father and grandfather," said safety Arturo Freeman. "Out there he is correcting everybody, getting in your face. But after practice he's like a grandfather telling everybody he loves them."

What makes Holtz so appealing is also what makes him so hard to figure. The man himself said after Notre Dame, a coach goes directly to heaven. End of career. The risks in coming back are obvious. Holtz could become the Willie Mays or Pete Rose of his profession, tarnishing a great career by hanging on too long. No matter how much energy he puts into the job, South Carolina could flop like it seemingly always has.

When asked why South Carolina hasn't won consistently, Holtz counters, "More importantly, why have't they won on occasion? Let's not be real greedy."

He's right, of course. It says something about a school that its two most famous graduates are named Hootie. One Hootie (Darius Rucker) leads the Blowfish, the other Hootie (Johnson, fullback, Class of '52) is the chairman at nearby Augusta National.

"This is as tough as any (job) I've seen," Holtz said. "We're waiting for some good things to happen and they will. But not many good things have happened yet."

At a recent practice, Holtz admonished the film crew in the tower for blowing a horn too long signifying the end of a drill.

"I'll run the practices," he barked.

As the practice ended, a gust of wind blew an empty box off the tower and smacked him in the back of the head.

"I want to see those people," Holtz said looking up as his victims.

All the while, you can see Holtz working. He's gathered his family and friends around him for a final stab at greatness. Son Skip came from Connecticut, where he was head coach, to be offensive coordinator. UConn was ready to extend Skip with a long-term contract. Skip chose to move his kids closer to their grandparents.

Former Notre Dame assistant Dave Roberts came from being fired at Baylor to spark the fire again with his old boss. Beth has given her blessing despite her condition.

Holtz has walked into a bargain basement that can't sink any lower. Think about it: If he wins, say, five games next year, he's a savior. Heck, if he wins two games it's an improvement on 1-10. If things get to too tedious, he can revert back to television personality and full-time husband.

There is no downside. South Carolina football is his occupation while Lou Holtz decides what to do with the rest of his life.

"I don't have anything to prove or anything to gain," he said.

It's just that the enormity of the task ahead of him is just taking hold. South Carolina is coming off its worse season in history. The program is 10 years removed from its last eight-win season and five years removed from its last bowl. Beth is in the middle of 83 radiation treatments to treat her cancer.

And yet it was Beth who urged her husband to say yes after McGee had failed in three previous attempts.

"My wife said if they call again I think you ought to take it," Holtz said. "I don't know why she felt that way. I think she also felt there was something missing. Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something. I really didn't replace it."

Holtz took the job Dec. 4 amid a flurry of black slaps, congrats and one-liners. In early April, it is, in many ways, remedial football. During Monday's spring practice, Holtz lined up as a fullback, took a handoff and ran to daylight just to how some raw recruit how it's done.

Assemble all the reasons that Holtz can lead South Carolina to victoy and a two-hour trip north to Clemson tells you why they can't.

"They're in the SEC East," said Scott, summing up the Burma Road of Florida, Tennessee and Georgia that the Gamecocks have to face every year. "It's hard."

So hard that South Carolina is usually in an 0-3 hole against those teams before the season begins. The Gamecocks are 2-16 against the three since 1993. That annual firewalk cost Scott his job after five seasons. It took only a few days for Clemson coach Tommy Bowden to swoop up his old buddy and his recruiting knowledge of the state. None of that concerns Holtz. He is the toast of a bigger town but on a smaller stage.

If Notre Dame is heaven then purgatory is colored scarlet and black. He should have known something 33 years ago when Marvin Bass hired him as a Gamecock assistant coach. Lou and Beth sank all their savings into buying a house in Columbia. A month later Bass was gone having taken a job in the Canadian Football League.

Holtz's pay was cut from $11,000 to $7,000 under Paul Dietzel and he never made a road trip. Discouraged, the Holtzes gave the profession five more years. If at the end of that time Lou, then 27, hadn't advanced, he would go back to school to get his doctorate.

But Holtz persevered, cultivating that image of the thin, wan bulldog who stalked the sidelines, grabbed facemasks and won a lot. In 1978, he suspended three of his Arkansas stars and still beat Barry Switzer by 25 in the Orange Bowl. During a pit stop at Minnesota, Holtz halted a 17-game Big Ten losing streak and led the Gophers from 1-10 to 6-5 in two years.

And then there was Notre Dame. The mother of all jobs. A hundred victories in 11 years. A national championship. You couldn't decide what NBC showed most -- the game or Lou stalking the sidelines. God, it was great. Even that damning trial last summer when Bob Davie questioned his former boss' "mental capacities" couldn't take that away.

Want to tap into Holtz's legendary ego? Ask him about the fallout from Notre Dame. In the two years he has been away, Holtz has become revisionist history. He's been blamed for dragging the program off its national championship with bad recruiting.

"We went 9-3 and 8-3 my last two years," Holtz said, eyes narrowing in sarcasm. "We lost three games in overtime the one year. That's really bad. I inherited an 11-0 program."

Some of the criticism is ridiculous, of course. Holtz could have retired into the sunset. He could have protected his record. But he wouldn't have been fair to himself and ...

"One thing about me is I try to be honest," Holtz said contemplating the future. "You look at it and it's going to be difficult. That's obvious."

© 1998 CBS SportsLine USA, Inc. All rights reserved