One of the final acts during the tenure of head coach Tom O’Brien at NC State was to agree with then-director of athletics Debbie Yow on a contract to host Louisiana Tech for the 2013 season opener.

O’Brien never got to coach that game, however. That agreement was reached days prior to the end of the 2012 campaign, after which O’Brien was fired by Yow and replaced by NC State’s current head coach Dave Doeren.

Ironically, the coach at the time for Louisiana Tech was Sonny Dykes, and Dykes himself was a prime candidate to replace O’Brien at NC State. Dykes had just gone 9-3 in 2012 for the Bulldogs and was 22-15 in three years there, including a 14-7 mark in the Western Athletic Conference it was affiliated with at the time. Louisiana Tech is now in Conference USA.

Dykes ended up going to Cal that offseason, where he coached for four years with just one winning record and was let go. He has spent the past four seasons having better success at SMU, going 26-13 in that span. That includes a 4-0 start this year, which includes a win (via a Hail Mary) over his former team, Louisiana Tech.

The head coach for the Bulldogs that day was Skip Holtz, Dykes’ replacement.

And this Saturday will be the second time that Holtz has led Louisiana Tech into Carter-Finley Stadium to play NC State. The season opener in 2013 was both Doeren’s first game at NC State and Holtz’s at Louisiana Tech.

Holtz had a prior history at NC State before taking his current job. His father is Hall of Fame coach Lou Holtz, who among his numerous stops spent four seasons at NC State from 1972-75 and had a 33-12-3 record in that span while winning an ACC title in 1973.

Skip Holtz also coached at East Carolina for five years from 2005-09, going 38-27 overall with four bowl appearances. Holtz beat former head coach Chuck Amato in Amato's final game on the sidelines at NC State in 2006, 21-16, but lost the next two years in games the Pirates were favored.

That included an overtime loss when ECU was ranked in 2008 in what proved to be NC State and now NFL star quarterback Russell Wilson’s breakout performance.

Doeren and Holtz were two of 31 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) head coaches hired in the offseason after the fall of 2012. Only five remain with their current schools, one of which is Idaho’s Paul Petrino. Idaho left the FBS since 2012 to join the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). The only other two remaining from that coaching carousel are Kentucky’s Mark Stoops and New Mexico State’s Doug Martin.

Martin has just a 7-24 record since the start of the 2018 season, while Petrino has only one winning record (2016) since being hired. But Doeren, Holtz and Stoops are still doing well.

Doeren got the better of Holtz in that 2013 opener, winning 40-14, but Doeren’s main memory of that hot afternoon was not the victory.

“I remember our quarterback that we signed and transferred in here, Brandon Mitchell, got hurt in that game and that was not good,” Doeren recalled.

A broken foot would sideline Mitchell for most of a 3-9 campaign for NC State. Holtz and Louisiana Tech went 8-4 that season. Since then, both Doeren and Holtz have each only had one other year when they did not have an above-.500 record at their respective schools. Holtz has led the Bulldogs to seven straight bowl appearances (with six wins). Doeren has been to six bowls in the last seven years and is 3-3 in those games.

The two teams will see each other more often in the coming years. Louisiana Tech will be back in Raleigh on Sept. 7, 2024, and then the Pack makes its first football trip to Ruston a day shy of a year later.

If Doeren is still around, he can call up his good friend Elliott Avent, the Pack’s legendary baseball coach, for some traveling advice to get to Louisiana Tech. Avent and the Pack began their unforgettable College World Series run in the summer 2021 with a regional hosted by Louisiana Tech.

And to cap it off, NC State basketball will host Louisiana Tech this year on Nov. 27 at PNC Arena, a day after the conclusion of the football regular season for the Wolfpack.

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