One offer could have altered the course of college football history in 1979.
For the first time in 28 years, Ohio State was on the market for a new head coach. Woody Hayes' legendary tenure came to an unceremonious end with a punch to Clemson defender Charlie Bauman. One of the coaches Hayes mentored as an assistant during his career rose to the top of athletic director Hugh Hindman's list.
Not Earle Bruce, a Hayes assistant for six years before head coaching jobs at Tampa and Iowa State led him to be Hayes' successor as the Buckeyes' head man. No, before Bruce was hired, the man Hindman wanted was Lou Holtz.
Holtz served as an assistant under Hayes in 1968, when Ohio State's famed "Super Sophs" went undefeated for a national championship. His college coaching rise took him through jobs at William & Mary, Iowa State and, beginning in 1977 after a failed one-year stint in the NFL as head coach of the New York Jets, Arkansas.
As strange as it is to say in 2026, the Razorbacks were better placed to compete in 1979 than Ohio State. Holtz assembled a 20-3-1 record in his first two seasons there. The Buckeyes were 16-7-1 in the same stretch. But Holtz, who grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, loved Ohio State. As he told reporters at his induction into the Ohio High School Athletic Association's Circle of Champions in 2015, if an offer came his way, there's a good chance he'd have taken it.
But Hindman wanted him to interview and go through the process first. Doug Lesmerises, then a reporter for Cleveland.com, wrote that Holtz detailed a phone call between he and Hindman at that 2015 induction.
Hindman: "We'd like you to apply for the Ohio State job and interview you."
Holtz: "Well, how many people are you going to interview?"
Hindman: "Probably four or five, but you are by far the leading candidate."
Holtz: "Hugh, I was at Ohio State, served on the staff with you. I've been head coach at William & Mary, N.C. State, Arkansas. What in the world are you going to find out in an interview that you don't know about me already? Or look at the track record.
"And if I interview at (Ohio State), I wanna tell you they will run me out of that state (of Arkansas), because we had a better football team than Ohio State had at that time."
Hindman wanted Holtz to go through the interview process, but Holtz wanted an offer. Bruce took over the Buckeyes, Holtz ran the Razorbacks for four more seasons before a two-year tenure at Minnesota led him to the school he's most often associated with, Notre Dame. He won a national championship with the Fighting Irish in 1988. Bruce went 81-26-1 in his nine-year career at Ohio State.
In recent times, Holtz famously beefed with current Buckeye head coach Ryan Day. He called out the physicality of Day's team in 2023 before they played Notre Dame, leading Day to famously say "I'd like to know where Lou Holtz is right now" after Ohio State's win in South Bend. Holtz later claimed via X before the Ohio State vs. Notre Dame national championship game in January 2025 that “if Notre Dame doesn’t win, it’s because we want to preserve Ryan Day’s job.” After the Buckeyes beat No. 1 Texas to open the 2025 season, he said Ohio State was "not a very good football team" after the Longhorns outgained them.
Regardless of any recent spats with Day and Ohio State, the news that Holtz is entering hospice care strikes close to the heart. The 89-year-old has lived a legendary football life. And that almost included a tenure as the head man in Columbus.
