Lou Holtz’s Top 3 Most Important Assistant Coach Positions

The former Hogs head coach on why he always hired o-line coaches second, with some Donald Trump endorsement thrown in for good measure.

The below is via Via Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly

“The first thing I wanted was a good defense at court. I got a couple great ones. Monty Kiffen at Arkansas, Barry Alvarez at Notre Dame. The next important is your offensive line, you third was your defensive back to your coach. The offensive line dictates everything. If they have togetherness, they have confidence, and their a unit, it sends a whole message to your offense. When your leaders are the wide receivers, running back, quarterback, you’re going to usually struggle there because they’re all statistically inclined. The offensive line is just about putting points on the board, that’s the only thing.

It’s not just that you have some problems. You look at what we scored in the season. You have two sophomores and a freshman in your starting line-up coming out in the spring. You do have only one senior, Skipper coming back. The offensive line, either you’re playing young people because they’re outstanding, or else because you don’t have an awful lot of options, you’re building for the future. I would like to think it’s because they’re outstanding. Your offensive line. It’s particularly in Enos and Bielema, offense, they have to run the ball, that’s what they want to do. They want to establish the running game. You’ve had a lot of great running backs in the past, you had some very talented, yeah. If you can run the football, that’s when your play action passing come in. You look at Wisconsin when the coach was the head coach of Wisconsin, they always ran the ball really well. Dan Enos, who was a head coach at… Central Michigan.

He left a head coaching job to come there. They obviously had good leadership, the ran the ball very well. Everything should be based on their ability to run the football on offense. I don’t believe that he’s the type that wants to throw the ball 35, 40 times. They don’t play an awful lot of spread offs. The don’t run the spread off. The had a lot of difficulty stopping the spread off last year. I’m sure they’ve studied it in the off season and they’ve come up with a plan. The best way to stop a spread off is your 3-3-5, which is what? Your defensive coordinator. I believe it’s Robb Smith.

His take on Bret Beliema’s performance at  Arkansas

Lou Holtz : I knew Bret, I think Barry Alvarez was playing a football game and he had me come over and visited. Bret Bielema, at that time, was a defensive coordinator. Barry had already announced that he was going to retire and be athletic director. He told me that Bret would be the guy that he hired, he spoke very, very highly of Bret. I’ve known Bret, I’m very impressed with him. I like his attitude. I met his wife when he was dating her. They came to ESPN. I absolutely love her. I think she is a beautiful, talented young lady. I think he’s a very good coach, he’s a very solid coach. I think he’ll do an excellent job. I know he’s been there 3 years and he’s only 18 wins and 20 losses, but he’s building that program.

That’s what people don’t understand. I’ve said this to so many different people. How many good athletes do you have in the start of Arkansas? Every year, you will have anywhere from 12 to 15 big time prospects coming out of the state of Arkansas. They don’t get the national recognition because many people go into the state and try to recruit against Arkansas because everybody’s a hog fan there. Everybody wants to go to the University of Arkansas. Consequently, players are very much unrated when they come in. I remember when I was … Dan Hampton, Jimmy Walker, Dale White, that was our three defensive line. All from Arkansas. I’ll tell you what, they were big time players. Then what you have to do is go to Texas, Florida, Missouri or somewhere. You pick up your other ten or 11, but you can build as good a program entire country. I think Frank Broyles proved that when he was there.

On his endorsement of Trump and pro-life speech at the Republican National Convention

“I said somebody has to be the voice for the unborn child. Everybody should speak about it. That was the majority of the speech. Then I made a comment about where are we as a country. These are facts, these aren’t my facts. We have more people in poverty, welfare, foodstamps then ever before. I made a comment about immigration. The only thing I ever said about immigration: Please come here to become us, don’t come here and want us to become you. I’ve never said a negative word about a person, a nationality, or anything else concerning their character, their integrity, their work habits or love of their family. For somebody to put out a national story said I called deadbeat, that is just a blatant lie. If you really want to upset somebody, tell a lie to them or about them. That’s what upset me so much, in fairness.

The only thing is, maybe my speech about abortion, said it was effective. Everybody has to make their decision for themselves. I made mine for myself. I think we have an obligation. I’ve asked every youngster here: Look at everything and vote your conscience. Republican, democrat, I don’t care. Please study the issues and vote your conscience. That’s all. That’s all.”

 

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