$1.6 million Holtz home destroyed by fire

Follansbee native Lou Holtz is looking for a new home. Fire last Sunday destroyed his 11,000 square feet $1.6 million Lake Nona home. Lake Nona a 7,000-acre community within the city limits of Orlando.

While he was born in Follansbee, Holtz grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, where he attended high school before playing football at Kent State in Ohio.

He was a graduate assistant at Iowa, and an assistant coach at William & Mary (1961–1963), Connecticut (1964–1965), South Carolina (1966–1967) and Ohio State (1968) the year the Buckeyes won the national championship.

His coaching career was at William & Mary (1969–1971), North Carolina State  (1972–1975), Arkansas (1977–1983), Minnesota (1984–1985), Notre Dame (1986–1996) and South Carolina (1999–2004).

Holtz's 1988 Notre Dame team beat WVU in the Fiesta Bowl for the mythical national title.

Holtz is the only football coach to lead six colleges to bowl games.

He coached the New York Jets in the 1976 season.

Dripping with irony

Eva Jarvis, Class of 1975, a former Wal-Mart sales assistant, provides irony over Ohio State’s butt-whipping of Oregon to win the national championship.

Eva Jarvis

Wrote Eva:

“Well, I know that there's one happy Ohio State Fan in Grant Town. Our son-in-law, Chuck Reed.”

The irony? The only other team to beat Oregon this season, and badly, too, was Arizona, coached by Grant Town’s most famous native, Rich Rodriguez.

Rich, the former WVU and Michigan coach, would have loved to play for the national title, but the Wildcats lost to the Ducks in the rematch in the Pac-12 conference championship game.

Rich, as we all know, had WVU ready to play in the BCS national title game until his Mountaineers lost to a 4-7 Pitt team in 2007, even with Pat White at quarterback.

And all the furor over Ohio State getting the 4th playoff spot instead of the Big 12's TCU or Baylor has avaporated after the Buckeyes drove Oregon nuts.