Three times Lou Holtz helped shape Cowboys history from elsewhere

The football world lost a giant this week with the passing of Lou Holtz at the age of 89. One of the most successful college coaches in history, Holtz led programs at William & Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame and South Carolina and impressively led four of those schools to top-15 finishes.

Holtz also had a brief, if forgettable, stint in the NFL, coaching the Jets to a 3-10 record in 1976 and resigning before the end of that season.

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But the College Football Hall of Fame coach, with 249 wins in a career spanning more than four decades, left an indelible mark on the game. And perhaps unsurprisingly for such a prominent figure in the sport, Holtz found himself on the sidelines of multiple chapters in the history of the Dallas Cowboys.

Ruffled Feathers in Fayetteville

“God didn’t put me on this earth to coach professional football,” Holtz once said at the end of his disastrous 10-month tenure as the Jets’ head coach. Sure enough, he was back on the sidelines for Saturday Dance the following season, although his return to college altered the trajectory of a Cowboys legend.

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Holtz was hired in 1977 to be the head coach of the University of Arkansas. The Razorbacks had finished the previous season with a meager 5-5-1 record, and longtime head coach Frank Broyles resigned after 19 years to focus on the title of the school’s men’s athletic director. He hired Holtz specifically because he was an outsider to the program and had a proven track record.

That was a blow to the assistant coach who thought he would inherit the job, 32-year-old Jimmy Johnson.

Johnson was an Arkansas alum, having played for Broyles for three seasons, including the 1964 national championship team, and then returning to be the Razorbacks’ defensive coordinator under his former coach for four seasons.

After being passed over for the head coaching job in favor of Holtz, a disappointed Johnson left his alma mater. He took on an assistant role at the University of Pittsburgh as Holtz led the Razorbacks to an 11-2 record, a No. 3 ranking and an Orange Bowl victory in his first season at the helm.

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Interestingly, Johnson would get a call to return to Arkansas in 1983 after Broyles fired Holtz. By then, having found success as head coach at Oklahoma State, Johnson interviewed for the Razorbacks job, unaware that the job had already been awarded to someone else. After this second snub, Johnson virtually severed all ties with Arkansas forever.

Holtz took over at University of Minnesota; Johnson was eventually hired 1,800 miles south, at the University of Miami. But the two men would cross paths again… in a very noticeable way.

‘Catholics against convicts’… and that quote

The year was 1988. Holtz was now in his third year as head coach at Notre Dame; Johnson was in his fifth season at the University of Miami. The two schools had met in Miami the previous year, with Johnson’s Hurricanes defeating Holtz’s Irish, 24-0.

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Their mid-October rematch, played in South Bend 11 months later, is still considered one of the greatest college football games ever played. It was undoubtedly one of the most publicized.

Both teams came into the contest undefeated. The Hurricanes were defending national champions and the nation’s No. 1 team, while Holtz’s Fighting Irish were ranked No. 4. The expected heavyweight bout was billed as “Catholics vs. Convicts,” taking advantage of both schools’ popular reputations at the time.

Sure enough, punches were thrown during pregame warmups. After the teams brawled in the tunnel, Holtz gathered his team in the locker room before kickoff and gave an intense speech, ordering his players to behave with decorum. At least, that’s how the pep talk started.

“‘Now, after we win the game,'” Holtz would add, “if Miami wants to fight, that’s fine; we’ll meet them in the alley.” And I wasn’t going to say this, but it just came out: ‘And if they do, you save Jimmy Johnson’s ass!’

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“I didn’t get anything else,” Holtz recalled. “They left the locker room. It wasn’t over; they came out furious…”

Notre Dame would win 31-30, the difference being Johnson’s decision to attempt a two-point conversion with less than a minute left instead of kicking the extra point to tie the score.

“We always play to win,” Johnson said. It would be one of nine losses Johnson suffered in five years in Miami.

Holtz and Notre Dame would top the table that season and become consensus national champions.

Of course, actual feuds between the two coaches never materialized that day in the shadow of “Touchdown Jesus,” but there would be a closer situation involving their professional arcs.

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The stars almost align in Dallas

That 1988 season would be Johnson’s last with the Hurricanes. Less than two months after Miami’s Orange Bowl victory, Jerry Jones purchased the Dallas Cowboys and hired his former Arkansas teammate Johnson to be the head coach.

Cowboys fans are well aware of the incredible turnaround Johnson engineered, taking Dallas from the worst team in the NFL to Super Bowl champions in just four years and then another title in year five.

But Johnson and Jones had their infamous falling out after that second straight Super Bowl in January 1994. Jones announced that Johnson was out, boasting, “I think there are five hundred people who could have coached this team to the Super Bowl.”

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One of those 500 people he had in mind was reportedly Holtz.

In the five seasons since the Miami-Notre Dame clash, as Johnson built the Cowboys dynasty, Holtz had led the Fighting Irish to a 52-9-1 record, won four of five bowl appearances and never finished lower than 13th in the country.

And in fact, Holtz had already secretly met with Jones to discuss the possibility of coaching the Cowboys, just weeks after Dallas’ Super Bowl victory. The two knew each other well from Holtz’s seven years at Arkansas, while Jones was heavily involved in his alma mater’s football program and before purchasing the Cowboys.

Ultimately, Jones hired Barry Switzer in Dallas; He led the Cowboys to the NFC title game in his first year and won the Super Bowl in his second season. Holtz remained in South Bend for three more seasons and finished his coaching career with six years at the University of South Carolina. When he left Columbia in 2004 and moved into broadcasting, the Cowboys had gone through Switzer, Chan Gailey and Dave Campo, and were halfway through Bill Parcells’ tenure as head coach.

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One has to wonder how the story would have played out differently if Holtz had been hired to lead the Cowboys. It’s already fascinating to reflect on the butterfly effect in which one of college football’s greatest coaches subtly shaped the history of the U.S. team from the sidelines.

Todd is on X at @ToddBrock24f7. Also, follow Cowboys Wire on Facebook to join the conversation with other fans.

This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: Lou Holtz helped shape Cowboys history in other ways.