Welcome to a weekly series that I’m really excited to research, and even more excited to share with you folks. I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of the four-letter network’s 30 for 30 Series. And while SEC Storied has had a few stories that are Gamecock related, I thought it could be a cool idea to hit on some of the players, coaches, and stories, that only a true Gamecock would take the time to deep dive on. Throughout this series, I’ll focus on big names, small names, certified legends, and the best that never were. Today we are looking at the man who brought the South Carolina Football program back from the dead, before nearly burying it again. He finished with a career record of 33-37 at South Carolina, but that certainly doesn’t tell the full story. A legend for more schools than South Carolina, this first installment in our ongoing series will focus on Lou Holtz and his 6-year run as the Gamecocks head coach, from 1999-2004.

Lou Holtz came from humble beginnings. He was born in Follansbee, West Virginia, to Anne Marie (Tychonievich) and Andrew Holtz who was a bus driver. He seemed to be self-assured and bold, even from an early age. On one occasion, when he was 9-years old, he snuck out of his window onto a snow-covered roof in an attempt to avoid the doctor, who his sister had told him was there to inject him with large needles to treat his pneumonia.

After high school, Holtz went to Kent State University where he briefly played linebacker, from 1956-57. While at Kent St., Holtz also trained in the Army Reserves program that the school offered. He even earned a commission as a Field Artillery Officer in the United States Army Reserve at the time of his graduation. A year later, he took his first coaching position as a graduate assistant at Iowa University. He ran through a few more assistant jobs as he climbed the ladder, even landing as an assistant at South Carolina for the 1966-67 season. He got his first head coaching job in 1969 at William and Mary.

A year later, he led William and Mary to a Southern Conference title and a birth in the Tangerine bowl. From there, his career was off and running. He then upgraded to coaching NC State and even briefly had a stint in the NFL before going 3-10 with the NY Jets and quickly moving back to the college ranks, where he stayed for the rest of his career. On a national level, he’s perhaps most well known for his time spent coaching Notre Dame, which is a team he took over in 1986 after several years of sub-par play by the Fighting Irish. One notable move he made with the team when he arrived, was removing the names from the back of the jerseys in an attempt to emphasize the team over the individual. Although his 1986 squad posted an identical 5–6 mark that the 1985 edition had, five of their six losses were by a combined total of 14 points. In the season finale against the archrival USC Trojans, Notre Dame overcame a 17-point fourth-quarter deficit and pulled out a 38–37 win. With few exceptions, Notre Dame continues to keep player names off the back of jerseys to this day.

Between 1988 and 1993, Holtz's teams posted an overall 64–9–1 record, winning the National Championship in 1989, and losing to Miami in 1990 with a chance to be a repeat champion. During that run, Holtz’s squad set a school record for consecutive wins at 23. On the back end of his time at Notre Dame, there was an NCAA scandal that Holtz wasn’t deemed involved in, but the 1999 investigation that looked at Notre Dame’s impermissible benefits from 1993-1999, did rule that Holtz and members of his staff learned of the violations but failed to make an appropriate inquiry or to take prompt action, finding Holtz's efforts "inadequate." Lou Holtz left Notre Dame after the 1996 season and walked away from a lifetime contract for undisclosed reasons. He then went on to spend two years at CBS before he came out of retirement for the South Carolina job.

1998 was a low point for the South Carolina Football program. After beating Clemson handily and winning the program’s first-ever bowl game in 1994, the Brad Scott era at South Carolina turned into a disaster. In his final season, the Gamecocks beat Ball State to open the season, and then proceeded to lose 10 straight. The final record, 1-10, was the worst in school history, at least up until that point, and Scott was promptly fired. This is the situation that Lou Holtz found himself in when arrived in Columbia in 1999, and his first year didn’t go any better. The 1999 Gamecocks went 0-11, extending the losing streak to 21-straight. Despite this, Gamecock nation continued to show up, selling out nearly every game during the streak. When asked if there was a “chicken curse” at South Carolina, Holtz simply joked about a light that flashed sometimes in the coach's office. Lou Holtz was often candid about the rebuild and knew it was going to take a little patience to turn the worm. Once, during the 0-11 season, when asked about whether the tackling had improved, he said simply, “I don’t know, our running backs fall down before they are touched.” Holtz used various methods to attempt to motivate his fledgling team, including having the team put in an extra walk-through practice the Friday before the Arkansas game. Marcus Elliot, a former Holtz player who witnessed the extra practice, said “They must have had a good week of practice. If they had a bad week they might have come out here in pads (The State, Oct. 17, 1999).” The Gamecocks ultimately lost the game in a blowout, 48-14. Yet Holtz remained resilient. And his patience would soon pay off.

Just in case you wanted to see some terrible highlights of a bloodbath.

The year 2000 seemed like a year of change in so many ways. It was the new millennium, and anything was possible. Despite the 0-11 record in 1999, the Gamecocks had the nation's 20th ranked defense, and Lou Holtz felt much more confident entering the 2000 season. Gamecock Fans were hungry for a win, and they got one immediately, a 31-0 win over New Mexico State that had those fans (including the 10-year old version of myself) celebrating in pure ecstasy. I’ll never forget watching the torn-down goalposts get carried around the stadium, and I’m sure pieces of it are still in some lucky fan’s basement. Reportedly, Holtz stopped the celebration in the locker room and told the team to turn their focus to No. 9 Georgia the next week, a game that basically no one thought South Carolina had a shot in. Most Gamecock fans would’ve probably been content just breaking the streak finally, but this Gamecock team was different. South Carolina beat Georgia 21-10 and for the second straight week, Williams-Brice Stadium was left without goalposts.

This was the beginning of a magical 8-4 season that injected life into a previously flailing Gamecock program. The eight-game improvement from the previous year was the best in the nation in 2000 and the third-best single-season turnaround in NCAA history. It also earned National Coach of the Year honors for Holtz from Football News and American Football Coaches Quarterly. The season was capped with an Outback Bowl win vs. Ohio State, the program’s most prestigious bowl win to date, and only second bowl win ever. The Gamecocks finished the season ranked #19 in the AP Poll. The success continued in 2001, where the Gamecocks went 9-3 and won a second straight Outback Bowl over Ohio State, even after two Ohio State cheerleaders reportedly asked Lou for his autograph after pre-game warmups in an attempt to “distract” him. The 9-win mark was the second-highest in school history, and South Carolina finished ranked #13 in the final AP Poll, the highest in school history. The Gamecocks posted their best two-year mark in school history from 2000 to 2001, going 17–7 overall and 10–6 in SEC play. Having seen peaks higher than that in the years since, it’s worth pausing to remember how incredible it is that Lou Holtz took South Carolina from its worst 2 year stretch in school history to its best. When reflecting on the seniors after the second Outback Bowl Holtz noted, “I think our seniors set the record of the most wins in 2 years…..they also had the record for the most losses in a two-year period, but they did it in the proper order” (The State, Jan. 2, 2002).

Following those seasons, expectations were through the roof for what the 2002 season could bring. Unfortunately, both 2002 and 2003 found the Gamecocks finishing 5-7 and missing out on bowl season. Some attributed the fall to QB Phil Petty graduating without a suitable replacement, Defensive Coordinator Charlie Strong moving on to Florida, lapses in recruiting, and character flaws within the team. Whatever it was, the Gamecocks couldn’t replicate their early success. Despite this, Holtz came back in 2004 and posted a winning season at 6-5. Unfortunately, the season ended on an embarrassing note. In an incident that’s become known simply as, “The Brawl”, South Carolina and Clemson got into a huge on-field fight in the final game of the season. Prior to the contest, some South Carolina players congregated at the corner of the endzone near the bottom of "the Hill" at Memorial Stadium as Clemson made its traditional entrance to the field. Brief shoving ensued between Gamecock and Tiger players but was broken up quickly, but the fuel was set for the fire that would later explode into an inferno. I’m sure I’ll write a subsequent article detailing this incident in full but simply put, it was a bad look, made worse by the fact that Clemson went on to win the game convincingly, 29-7. After the game, both teams self-imposed bowl bans, ending the 2004 season prematurely for the Gamecocks and effectively ending Holtz’s career. At his final press conference, Holtz quipped that he, “is going to be remembered along with former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes for having a fight at the Clemson game," alluding to the 1978 Gator Bowl in which Hayes punched a Clemson player on the sideline.

Lou Holtz once said “Rome wasn’t built in a day….That’s because I wasn’t the foreman.” Though his tenure didn’t quite reach the heights that many Gamecocks dreamed it might after the historic turnaround, there’s no double that he laid the foundation for things to come. Holtz personally was instrumental in Steve Spurrier becoming the next coach of the South Carolina Football program, both because he proved there was an avenue for success, and because of his personal relationship with Spurrier at the time. Lou was a coach the likes of which we don’t really see in College Football anymore. Many players loved him, but he didn’t particularly care if they liked him. He wasn’t afraid to push your buttons and he was perfectly willing to run off players that weren’t willing to get in line. He once said, “The way you motivate a team is to eliminate the unmotivated ones.” At the same time, he was an enigma, sometimes letting talented players with character issues poison a locker room. In 2008, Lou was elected to the college football hall of fame, and there’s no doubt he belongs there. Holtz is the only coach in college football history to lead six different teams to a bowl game. He should forever be credited with pulling South Carolina out of the depths of the Brad Scott era and though he was followed by a coach that led South Carolina to unprecedented heights, we can’t forget that the foundation was laid by Lou Holtz, foreman of Rome.