Following a winner

August 20, 2006

BY WILLIAM O'ROURKE

Some book reviews will lead grateful readers to an author they may have passed by; others, like this one, will not necessarily affect a book's success. A few books come with audiences already in hand -- and if you are willing to read Lou Holtz's autobiography, you are already lining up for a copy.

When Father Edmund P. Joyce hired Holtz at Notre Dame in 1986, Joyce told him the rules, concluding, "And finally, the head football coach will never make more than the president of the university." Holtz adds, "I gulped at the last one."

Well, times have changed. The coach and the president are on different pay scales. But changing times is what Holtz's book records -- not only at Notre Dame, but in college sports generally, from shortly after World War II till the present day.

It's a sad fact that universities have been drafted in the American economy to entertain as well as educate. Sports are Big Business and notice of higher education is more often found in the sports pages than on front pages.

 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

WINS, LOSSES, AND LESSONS

By Lou Holtz

William Morrow, 336 pages, $25.95.

Lou Holtz's coaching style was a combination of blind obedience, patriotism (aka school spirit) and honed aggression. This affinity to all things military was adopted by a lot of kids who grew up too young to be in World War II, but nonetheless were shaped by it. Holtz, born in 1937, revered his relatives who were part of the greatest generation: "Not long after Pearl Harbor, the men in my family volunteered for service. Within a year, they had all marched silently away to war."

Holtz's autobiography tells a rags to riches story -- though he's much clearer on the rags than he is the riches. We never get any figures on his income as he prospered at Notre Dame (successful coaches have income streams other than what a university pays them.) The funny stories of Holtz's youth found herein have been rehearsed many times during his well-paid motivational speeches.

Holtz's father did not spare the rod, but Lou was spoiled in a number of ways. He had a loving uncle who ended up being his first football coach; in fifth grade at St. Aloysius his uncle had him playing with the seventh- and eighth-graders.

Older men, authority figures, loom large in Holtz's life, but none larger than the profane and brutal Woody Hayes, famous for hitting an opposing team's player, an act that ended his career. Hayes was both a military man and a coaching model; the drill-instructor style fit Holtz well. All who coached for Hayes' 1968 Ohio State national championship team went on to what Holtz calls "great careers." Holtz climbed on board the winners' bandwagon early.

And Holtz had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. At Arkansas in 1977 he had to suspend three star players for a crime that still dares not speak its name. Holtz writes, "It took a half hour before I got the full story. I was floored." It involved a girl who wanted action taken, but no one in authority wanted to press charges.

"The state of Arkansas went into an uproar when the news broke" -- the news of the suspensions, that is. Holtz himself was dragged into court; but the young attorney general of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, defended him. The rest, as they say, is history. Arkansas won its bowl game without the suspended players and Holtz gained a reputation for doing the right thing.

The book covers the various controversies of Holtz's time at Notre Dame, though most of them are skimmed over: steroid-use allegations; recruiting scholar athletes who were more athletes than scholars. Holtz mentions, but does not discuss, the 1993 expose, Under the Tarnished Dome. But it was during Holtz's years that all the Notre Dame rules began to bend: Red-shirting became acceptable, star players bolted early, other players were cast aside, all playing havoc with the university's high football graduation rates, a statistic dearly loved at ND.

Post-Holtz saw the end of the university honoring its Father Ted Hesburgh-era contract commitments; Scott Eden's perceptive 2005 book Touchdown Jesus details Tyrone Willingham's financial bottom line-inspired firing; by then it was no longer Father Joyce's rules, it was corporate rules.

At Notre Dame, Holtz was a very human presence around campus -- his autobiography also swells with it: a nice guy, unless he isn't; a good friend to have, as long as he doesn't turn on you. Indeed, the only news in the book is that Holtz plans to be buried at Notre Dame, a tourist attraction ad infinitum. As a coach, Holtz would make even games he won easily frustrating to watch, but he did win; very few losing coaches write autobiographies. I enjoyed the games. And I enjoyed Holtz's account of his full, contentious life. It's a winner's game and a winning book.

William O'Rourke, a former Sun-Times columnist, is a professor at Notre Dame. His latest book is On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical Memoir.