(Photo: John Korduner/Icon Sportswire)
SPECIAL EDITION
As Notre Dame begins 2026 chasing its first national championship in 38 years, we remember the man who last took the Irish to the top—and whose impact at Notre Dame went far beyond football.
Notre Dame begins the 2026 season with expectations as high as they have been in decades. The Irish aren’t simply expected to make the College Football Playoff. They are expected to contend for—and perhaps win—a national championship.
So there could be no better choice for our first All-Time Irish Hero of the season than the last Notre Dame coach to win one.
Lou Holtz.
Holtz passed away last March at the age of 89, prompting an extraordinary outpouring of memories from former players, coaches and Notre Dame fans. It was a reminder that his place at Notre Dame went far beyond the national championship he won in 1988.
To understand what Lou Holtz meant to Notre Dame, you have to understand that his relationship with the University began long before he ever became its football coach.
Holtz grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, where he was taught by the Sisters of Notre Dame. Each day, as students filed out to recess, the good nuns required them to do so to the tune of the Notre Dame Victory March. As a boy, he followed Frank Leahy’s great Notre Dame teams through newspapers and radio, and the discipline, faith and structure instilled by the Sisters stayed with him throughout his life.
Long before Lou Holtz ever coached the Fighting Irish, Notre Dame had already found him.
After playing linebacker at Kent State, Holtz began a coaching journey that took him to William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas and Minnesota, with one unsuccessful detour to the NFL and the New York Jets.
But Notre Dame was always the destination. When the opportunity came in 1986, Holtz took over a program that had gone 30–26–1 during the previous five seasons.
Notre Dame needed someone to make the Irish believe again, and Holtz did exactly that.
His first team finished only 5–6, but five of those losses came by a total of 14 points. The season ended with a dramatic 38–37 victory over USC in Los Angeles—a game that happened to fall on my wedding day. And yes, there was a television tuned to Notre Dame-USC in the reception hall.
By 1987, Notre Dame was back in the national conversation. Tim Brown won the Heisman Trophy and the Irish climbed as high as No. 4.
Then came 1988.
Notre Dame beat No. 9 Michigan to open the season, defeated No. 1 Miami 31–30 in one of the greatest games ever played in Notre Dame Stadium and went to Los Angeles and dominated No. 2 USC, 27–10.
Then, on January 2, 1989, Tony Rice, Chris Zorich, Frank Stams, Michael Stonebreaker, Ricky Watters and the Irish beat West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to finish 12–0 and win the national championship.
Notre Dame hasn’t won one since.
Holtz wasn’t finished. From 1988 through 1993, Notre Dame went 64–9–1, won 23 consecutive games and twice more came agonizingly close to another national championship. In 11 seasons at Notre Dame, Holtz finished 100–30–2.
But his impact was about far more than victories and championships. Holtz believed he wasn’t simply coaching football; he was preparing young men for life. His Catholic faith was central to who he was, and those who knew him understood that the Lou Holtz people saw on television was the same man away from the cameras.
I know that because my family experienced it firsthand.
When my late brother was fighting cancer, a battle he would lose in 2006, Lou took the time to meet with him, talk with him and offer encouragement. He later followed up with letters filled with hope.
There was nothing in it for Lou Holtz. My brother wasn’t one of his players or someone he owed anything to. He was simply a man going through an extraordinarily difficult time, and Lou Holtz wanted to help.
He didn’t have to do any of it. He simply did.
That was Lou Holtz.
He could be demanding, funny, emotional and intensely competitive. But underneath it was a genuine concern for people and a deeply held belief that football should teach something larger than football.
His sayings became part of Notre Dame lore: “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and never as bad as they say when you lose.” And another captured something about the man himself: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”
Holtz also helped revive one of Notre Dame football’s most enduring traditions. Early in his tenure, the “Play Like a Champion Today” sign was placed outside the locker room, where players could touch it on their way down the tunnel to the field.
It remains there today—a simple message that became inseparable from the Holtz era and, eventually, from Notre Dame football itself.
Lou Holtz may be gone, but his presence at Notre Dame remains, and perhaps there is no better time to remember what he accomplished.
Thirty-eight years after Holtz took Notre Dame to the top of college football, Marcus Freeman and the 2026 Fighting Irish begin another season with a legitimate chance to get there.
Holtz inherited a Notre Dame program searching for its way back. Within three years, he had restored its confidence, returned it to the top of college football and delivered a national championship.
Now, nearly four decades later, another Notre Dame team begins a season with the same destination in mind.
And that’s why Lou Holtz is our first FIP All-Time Irish Hero of 2026.