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Notes, Quotes and Slants
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Pirate Notebook No. 243
Tuesday, June 7, 2005

By Denny O'Brien

BONESVILLE MAGAZINE PREVIEW

Family or Football? Skip Holtz Chooses Both

©2005 Bonesville.net

Skip Holtz went against the grain when he left his head coaching post at Connecticut to join his father at South Carolina. It was the type of career move from which it can be difficult to recover.

But in Holtz's case, another opportunity did arise last year when the East Carolina job opened.

That is just one of many topics that were covered in my interview with Holtz for a story in this summer's edition of Bonesville Magazine. Holtz was very candid about growing up the son of a famous football coach, his decision to leave Connecticut, his blueprint for East Carolina, and many other topics.

Following is a sampling of Holtz's thoughts on a few of the subjects we discussed.

On what it was like growing up the son of a high-profile coach:

"It was different in some respects, very similar in others," Holtz said. "It was very similar from the standpoint that it was no different than when Billy goes to the office with his dad at the law firm, or has the opportunity to be around his father in his profession. He goes with his dad to run to the grocery store. Whatever his dad does, very similar from that standpoint.

"Different from the standpoint that football is a high-profile light, and as a little boy, those are idols. Those are guys you look up to. I had the opportunity to be around them on a daily basis and go to practice and be able to eat at the training table with them. So, it was similar in a lot of ways but very different."

Talking about the pressures of taking over as offensive coordinator at Notre Dame in 1992:

"My passion to succeed is much bigger than people's desire to win on the outside," Holtz said. "Being at Notre Dame, I remember going to Coach Holtz and telling him I wanted to coach quarterbacks and be the offensive coordinator when that job opened. Really, the only way he made me the coordinator is he tried to hire Mark Richt (who now is at Georgia) when he was at Florida State. Bobby Bowden said, 'Well, you can talk to him, but if he accepts it, I want permission to talk to Skip to replace him.'

"It became, why would I hire Mark Richt as the offensive coordinator at Notre Dame and then have Skip go to Florida State as offensive coordinator? So, that's when he ended up elevating me and keeping me with him. I never looked at it as pressure. You know, people look at it during the course of the game as there is so much pressure. The fan has an opportunity to sit down and say, 'You know, there are 30 seconds left in the game, if we don't make this first down, we're not going to win and we're not going to get the ball back.' They sit down and look at all these things in the future. When you're coaching, you're looking at that play."

His thoughts on ECU experiencing another coaching change and what it will take to turn things around:

"For a player, it's hard sometimes," Holtz said. "Change is hard. Not everybody adjusts well to change, and that's the challenge that we have right now. How quickly can we get this team to buy in and put both feet in the boat and play as a team, not as a group of individuals?

"That's what we have to try and build. Do we want to build that this year? Yes, without a doubt. Can we? I don't know. That's what we'll find out. I said I don't know how good we can be. But I want to be as good as we can be. I don't know how good that is. I don't know how that compares with the other schools in this conference. I've never played the other schools in this conference.

"I think we have to worry more about where we are than everybody we are playing against. We have to learn how to play together as a team, and we have to learn how to win. We have to build a togetherness and then we have to learn to win in the game of football. We have a lot of issues that we have to improve upon before we are ready to go be a successful program. How quick we can learn those and teach those as a staff will be how quick we can turn this program around."

On whether the BCS is an excuse or a legitimate obstacle for East Carolina:

"Both," Holtz said. "When you look at it, I'm certainly not going to sit here and have a pity party that we're not in a BCS conference and say, 'You know what, we can't do it.' Utah did it. Louisville got close. TCU got close.

"If you look under the new BCS policy, if that were in place the last four years, Conference USA would have had a team in the BCS three of the last four years. That's encouraging. That's almost like saying, if you do what Louisville did this year, you're going to get in. The changes that have been made are bright. I think it's going to take a while for that to translate into the recruiting side of it. I think had it been in place the last four years and you could say, 'Look, three of the last four years, a team from this conference has been in the BCS,' recruits are going to listen. Everybody wants a chance to play for the big piece of pie.

"An obstacle? Yes, because it has been. Recruiting against it has been very difficult. I think that this is a different age than it was 15 years ago when there was no BCS. All of a sudden, you kind of have the haves and the have-nots. You have the teams that have the chance to compete for the BCS and those who don't. And I think that gap has been getting wider between the two of them. So, legitimate obstacle? Yes, an obstacle that East Carolina didn't have to fight 15 years ago, in the early 90s when they built this program into what it was."

Discussing Charlotte as a potential prep football recruiting ground:

"I have a lot of relationships with the high school coaches over there," Holtz said. "I recruited the Charlotte area a little bit while I was down in Columbia. I think there is an awful lot of talent in that area. You go up in Raleigh and you've got N.C. State right in Raleigh. You're fighting in somebody's back yard. ...You go down into Charlotte and it's kind of like neutral territory that you're fighting on."

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02/23/2007 02:00:05 AM

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