Lou Holtz
How do you know what it's like to be stupid if you've never been smart?
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: 'Boy, you are skinny, aren't you?' I said: 'Honey, I'd like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.'
Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It's the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.
Coaching is nothing more than eliminating mistakes before you get fired.
In football, it's the job of the player to play, the coach to coach, the official to officiate. Each guy is charged with upholding his end, nothing more. In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.
I don't think there's been anything in the game of football in my lifetime that has changed college football more than redshirting.
I won't accept anything less than the best a player's capable of doing... and he has the right to expect the best that I can do for him and the team!
I think everyone should experience defeat at least once during their career. You learn a lot from it.
My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961. The pay wasn't much, so to get $300 more per year, I agreed to coach the golf team. I didn't even know how to keep score, and really, my main job was not to wreck the van on the way to tournaments.
A lifetime contract for a coach means if you're ahead in the third quarter and moving the ball, they can't fire you.
After winning, most teams become individuals; most teams become complacent.
We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.
On this team, we're all united in a common goal: to keep my job.
I give opinions, not advice.
I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.
It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.
As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.
My wife doesn't even want to spend 2 hours with me.
If you made me the national commissioner of football, I'd tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we're going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.
When I left the University of Notre Dame, I honestly felt I would never coach again.
I'm no genius.
I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody's life.
I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.
The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn't allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.
The University of Notre Dame does not redshirt, and I endorse that policy completely. I am very much in favor of redshirting, but not at Notre Dame. But there's no doubt about it. It puts us at a huge disadvantage.
I truly believe the things Notre Dame stands for.
For victory in life, we've got to keep focused on the goal, and the goal is Heaven.
The key to winning is choosing to do God's will and loving others with all you've got.
Had I been a great athlete, I'm not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.
If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who's been successful at another college program, they're going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.
Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.
At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn't collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.
I'm an old man, and all my life I've said that Notre Dame should remain independent because it's a national school.
When I work a game as an analyst, all I do is look at the game like a coach.
Football coaches don't have real problems.
I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that's for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn't play golf.
I just have an enthusiasm for life.
I have no desire at all to become the winningest coach at Notre Dame. The record belongs to Knute Rockne or some other coach in the future.
I believe in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.
I've followed Notre Dame football since 1946, when I listened on the radio and Johnny Lujack tackled Doc Blanchard in the open field to preserve a 0-0 tie.
My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.
When I die, and people realize that I will not be resurrected in three days, they will forget me. That is the way it should be.
I do think coaches need to get away from the game more, though. It's good for them.
Notre Dame is the one school that has a national recruiting base, from Florida to Texas to California.
I was raised in a religious environment, and my wife is one of the more religious people that I have ever known.
I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that's all I ever was associated with.
An agent won't help you get drafted higher, won't make you win more games, and won't make you faster or stronger.
All my life, I've been trying to make a hole-in-one. The closest I've come is a bogey.