Written by Ben Fidelman
On the surface, Lou Holtz looks like an odd addition to the celebrity cast of the Signing with the Stars event in Ann Arbor. In an interview with SiriusXM College Sports, the former Notre Dame coach and ESPN analyst shed some light to his relationship with Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, and why he is traveling back to Big Ten Country on Wednesday.
First, Holtz touched on his background with Harbaugh, which stems back to the two of them on opposing sidelines in the '80s.
“I knew Jim Harbaugh when he threw the fade pass against me at Notre Dame in the last two minutes to beat me in the first game I ever coached there,” Holtz said. “(We lived in the same place at one point) and I played a lot of golf with him. When he wanted to become a head coach at San Diego, he asked me to call the president who was a big Lou Holtz at Notre Dame fan. I helped him get the job.”
From a purely football standpoint, both sides of the relationship went on to have great success. Holtz finished his career with a record of 249-132, including a stellar mark of 100-32 at Notre Dame. Harbaugh had great success as a student-athlete at Michigan, player in the NFL, and head coach at both the college and professional levels.
Flash forward to 2015, when Holtz is enjoying his retirement in Florida and Harbaugh is preparing for his first year of coaching the Wolverines.
“On June 22 last year my house burned to the ground, and we lost everything,” Holtz said. “About a week later, the best man at my wedding about 55 years earlier named Bill, who is a retired Chrysler executive living in Ann Arbor, sent me a care package of clothes. Unsolicited by anybody else — he just felt this was the right thing to do. He sent all these Michigan clothes and a lovely note. How do you repay somebody like that?
“His 12-year old grandson is a huge Michigan fan, so I called Jim and asked him to do me a favor and invite him over for lunch sometime. So he invited not only the kid but the whole family of the best man at my wedding over and had a fantastic time.”
Harbaugh connected with the retired coach soon thereafter, which spurned an invitation for Holtz to join the celebrity cast for the Signing with the Stars event slated to benefit the Chad Tough Foundation.
“At the same time when Jim called me to tell me how everything went, he asked me if I would come up and do this event. He said it’s going to be about 3,500 people or so and will raise money for cancer. My wife is a stage four cancer survivor; they gave her a ten-percent chance to live. She has squamous cell carcinoma in her throat, had a 13-hour surgery, and 83 radiation treatments. Her weight went from 129 to 89. So we do everything we can to help fight cancer.
“Those are the reasons I’ll be there. I have tremendous respect for Jim.”
It’s a relationship that’s lasted decades, and always seems to come together no matter what the memories of rivalries between Notre Dame and Michigan are.
On the surface, Lou Holtz looks like an odd addition to the celebrity cast of the Signing with the Stars event in Ann Arbor. In an interview with SiriusXM College Sports, the former Notre Dame coach and ESPN analyst shed some light to his relationship with Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh, and why he is traveling back to Big Ten Country on Wednesday.
First, Holtz touched on his background with Harbaugh, which stems back to the two of them on opposing sidelines in the '80s.
“I knew Jim Harbaugh when he threw the fade pass against me at Notre Dame in the last two minutes to beat me in the first game I ever coached there,” Holtz said. “(We lived in the same place at one point) and I played a lot of golf with him. When he wanted to become a head coach at San Diego, he asked me to call the president who was a big Lou Holtz at Notre Dame fan. I helped him get the job.”
From a purely football standpoint, both sides of the relationship went on to have great success. Holtz finished his career with a record of 249-132, including a stellar mark of 100-32 at Notre Dame. Harbaugh had great success as a student-athlete at Michigan, player in the NFL, and head coach at both the college and professional levels.
Flash forward to 2015, when Holtz is enjoying his retirement in Florida and Harbaugh is preparing for his first year of coaching the Wolverines.
“On June 22 last year my house burned to the ground, and we lost everything,” Holtz said. “About a week later, the best man at my wedding about 55 years earlier named Bill, who is a retired Chrysler executive living in Ann Arbor, sent me a care package of clothes. Unsolicited by anybody else — he just felt this was the right thing to do. He sent all these Michigan clothes and a lovely note. How do you repay somebody like that?
“His 12-year old grandson is a huge Michigan fan, so I called Jim and asked him to do me a favor and invite him over for lunch sometime. So he invited not only the kid but the whole family of the best man at my wedding over and had a fantastic time.”
Harbaugh connected with the retired coach soon thereafter, which spurned an invitation for Holtz to join the celebrity cast for the Signing with the Stars event slated to benefit the Chad Tough Foundation.
“At the same time when Jim called me to tell me how everything went, he asked me if I would come up and do this event. He said it’s going to be about 3,500 people or so and will raise money for cancer. My wife is a stage four cancer survivor; they gave her a ten-percent chance to live. She has squamous cell carcinoma in her throat, had a 13-hour surgery, and 83 radiation treatments. Her weight went from 129 to 89. So we do everything we can to help fight cancer.
“Those are the reasons I’ll be there. I have tremendous respect for Jim.”
It’s a relationship that’s lasted decades, and always seems to come together no matter what the memories of rivalries between Notre Dame and Michigan are.
