Pack hired legendary coach Lou Holtz away from William & Mary
The two men sat in their cars on opposite sides of the parking lot at a South Hills, Va., gas station, waiting for each other to show up.
They nodded to one another a time or two during the hour they sat there, both assuming that the other could not possibly be the person they were waiting on for an appointment that would change both of their lives and the fortunes of the schools they represented.
In one car was a 130-pound football coach from William & Mary, not yet 35, furiously fidgeting as he waited to be interviewed for his second head coaching job.
In the other car was an impatient former swimming coach who was two years into his job in charge of the NC State athletics department, chain-smoking unfiltered cigarettes as part of his six-packs-a-day habit.
Eventually, tired of waiting for the person they expected, the two loiterers approached each other.
“Are you Lou Holtz?” one guy asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “Are you Willis Casey?”
Seeing the slight fellow, Casey said, “No offense, but you don’t look like a football coach.”
Looking over the tubby director who smelled of stale smoke, Holtz answered, “Well, you don’t exactly look like an athletic director.”
This was in the late spring of 1971, and Casey was dealing with the unexpected retirement of longtime Wolfpack coach Earle Edwards, who had guided the school to four ACC titles and fulfilled his long stated dream of moving it into a new stadium. After back-to-back losing seasons, Edwards abruptly retired following after the 1971 spring game.
Casey had followed Holtz’s first two years at William & Mary and was interested in hiring the former linebacker at Kent State who had assistant coaching stints at Iowa, William & Mary, South Carolina, Connecticut and Ohio State before getting his first head coaching job with the Indians in 1969.
In his second season, Holtz led William & Mary to a Southern Conference championship and a berth in the Tangerine Bowl. That was enough of a resume for Casey, who had a knack for identifying up-and-coming coaches during his tenure as athletics director, to offer him the job.
Holtz was reluctant to leave the historic Williamsburg campus after just two seasons, so he declined Casey’s offer. Casey, in turn, offered to wait another season.
The Wolfpack AD left the gas station and returned to Raleigh, where he named long-time defensive coordinator Al Michaels, who had arrived with Edwards in 1954, as the team’s interim head coach.
Casey solidified his decision to continue pursuing Holtz after the Indians (William & Mary’s pre-Tribe nickname) nearly beat Casey’s alma mater, North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, losing a 36-35 decision.
The game was essentially decided in the final two minutes when the feisty Holtz, with his team protecting a 7-point lead over the heavily favored Tar Heels, earned a 15-yard unsportsmanlike penalty for arguing that a North Carolina receiver had trapped a critical pass.
UNC scored, made the two-point conversion on a tipped pass and completed the regular season with an 9-2 record.
It was the first of four straight losses to end William & Mary’s 5-6 season, but Casey was absolutely sold on Holtz.
It didn’t hurt that, under interim coach Michaels, the Wolfpack managed just three wins for the third consecutive season. And despite pleas from players to keep Michaels as head coach, Holtz was hired less than a week after the 1971 season ended.
Michaels was retained as defensive coordinator, a position he held for three more seasons.
Holtz brought William & Mary’s wide-open offense with him, and it thrived with the talent that Edwards and Michaels had brought to campus. He inherited a backfield called the “Stallions” that included running backs Willie Burden, Roland Hooks, Stan Fritts and Charley Young.
He had a future All-American lineman in Bill Yoest and a freshman class that included twins from Ohio named Dave (a quarterback) and Don (a wide receiver) Buckey.
“No matter who N.C. State had hired, he would have been successful,’’ Holtz said.
Holtz’s success was more than just winning. During the Golden Age of Wolfpack athletics, when the men’s basketball team was winning ACC and NCAA championships, swimming was completely dominant, baseball won the first three ACC tournament titles and women’s athletics was off to a fast start, Holtz and his team were the talk of campus.
His twin-veer offense churned out the yardage on the ground, but mixed in daring downfield passes that delighted the crowds at Carter Stadium. In his first season, he took the Wolfpack over to Chapel Hill to face a team whose only loss that season was to Top 10 Ohio State and nearly beat the favored Tar Heels. The game, like the one for William & Mary the year before, came down to a two-point conversion attempt on the final play.
The Wolfpack had driven the length of the field in just 54 seconds and scored when quarterback Bruce Shaw hit Pat Kenney with 10 seconds to play. Holtz went for his third two-point conversion attempt of the day, but replacement quarterback Dave Buckey’s pass to Charley Young was batted down at the goal-line.
“We came here to win, not to tie,” Holtz said after the game.
As the Wolfpack left the field, the visiting fans in two sections of Kenan Stadium rose to give the team a standing ovation.
That set the tone for what would be one of the most successful tenures in Wolfpack football history. The little runt of a coach from William & Mary lost only one home game in his four years at NC State. He guided his second edition of the Wolfpack to the 1973 ACC championship. And he won two of the four consecutive bowl games his team qualified for.
His first edition of the Pack scored 409 points and gained 4,758 yards in total offense, records that stood until the fast-paced offenses featuring Torry Holt and Philip Rivers.
NC State went from a team that could win low-scoring games because of its defense to a high-scoring team that filled the stadium with fans who wanted to see just what Lou would do next.
Casey, meanwhile, ran a department that paid off its football stadium 26 years early. He continued to make good choices in coaches. Through the years, he hired golf coach Richard Sykes, swimming coach Don Easterling, women’s basketball coach Kay Yow, football coaches Holtz, Bo Rein and Dick Sheridan, cross country/track and field coach Rollie Geiger and a men’s basketball coach named Jim Valvano.
Eventually, Holtz’s relationship with Casey began to sour. The two head-strong individuals were frequently unable to reach compromises regarding money, recruiting and other aspects of running the football program.
Holtz was courted by other schools, but it wasn’t until the end of the 1975 season, not long after he embarrassed the school by having an NC State mathematics professor arrested for jogging around the track during a closed practice, that the coach found a challenge big enough to lure him away.
He became the head coach of the NFL’s New York Jets, where he lasted only one season before realizing his motivational gimmicks didn’t work on the professional level.
His vagabond career took him to Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame, South Carolina and ESPN, though he’s said many times through the years that he should have never left NC State.
“I didn’t want to leave NC State,” Holtz said a few years ago when he visited Raleigh on a book tour. “Does it bother me to this day? Yes.
“The lesson is, don’t go do anything unless you are totally committed to seeing it through. When I went to the Jets, I had no plan, no sense of urgency, no commitment to seeing it through.”
That was not the case when he left William & Mary, when he had a full year to prepare for the success he would create at NC State.
Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.
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