Loquacious Lou elicited laughter on his way to Hall of Fame

Legendary Holtz coached Razorbacks for seven successful seasons, led Notre Dame to national title

Hall of Fame football coach Lou Holtz does not like NIL or the transfer portal | Rick Robb/Special to The Post / USA TODAY NETWORK

Lou Holtz is the funniest and probably most cantankerous football coach the Arkansas Razorbacks have ever had.

He was scrawny, wore glasses and spoke with a lisp, but could command the attention of an entire room.

He would also grab the facemask of a 300-pound lineman and mercilessly take him to his knees to resoundingly make a point during practice.

Then he'd catch a flight to Los Angeles to appear on late night TV and tell jokes to Johnny Carson that kept insomniacs in stitches.

That's when he coached the Hogs from 1977-83, a successful seven-year run that recaptured the glory days of his predecessor, Frank Broyles, and vaulted Arkansas back into the national spotlight.

In his first season, as the Hogs won their final regular-season game and it was announced they'd accept a bid to play in the Orange Bowl, fans pelted the Razorback Stadium astroturf with oranges.

"I'm glad we're not going to the Gator Bowl," Holtz quipped to reporters afterward.

A few years later, he was coaching Notre Dame following a two-year stop in Minnesota. Living in South Bend, Ind., overseeing the almost mythical Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program, was Holtz's dream job.

He was Catholic. He was a dreamer. And there was no more glorious team in the history of college football.

Fighting Irish program is rooted in titles and legends

Notre Dame has won 13 national championships in football. The Fighting Irish have had six Heisman Trophy winners.

The campus is famous for the Golden Dome and its legendary coach of 100 years ago, Knute Rockne. He's still the winningest coach in major college football history (.881) with a record of 105-12-5.

Second on that list is another Notre Dame coach, Frank Leahy, who played on Rockne's last three teams before he died in a plane crash. Leahy was only 107-13-9 (.864).

Hollywood made movies about Notre Dame football. A future president, Ronald Reagan, played one of its most famous players and acquired the nickname "Gipper."

That's the team that spoke to Lou Holtz's heart and soul.

Best of both worlds for Hall of Fame coach

But on Saturday, Holtz will have mixed emotions when Notre Dame invades Razorback Stadium to play Arkansas at 11 a.m.

He'll be honored before the game, a fitting tribute to a man who enhanced the Razorbacks' image and restored glory to old Notre Dame.

They're two of the six college teams he coached, including three years at William & Mary and four at North Carolina State before he landed in Fayetteville.

Oh, between NC State and Arkansas was a brief pit stop in New York for a disastrous 3-10 season with the Jets of the NFL, which saw him resign with one game left. That was near the end of flamboyant and phenomenal passer Joe Namath's career.

Holtz led a depleted Hogs team to an 11-1 record and 31-6 monster upset of Oklahoma as an 18-point underdog in the Orange Bowl that first season to finish No. 3 in the polls.

He finished 60-21-2 with the Hogs but did even better at Notre Dame from 1986-96, fashioning a 100-30-2 mark.

He led the Irish to their last national championship in 1988 with a 12-0 record.

In a phenomenal six-year stretch from '88 to '93, Notre Dame was 64-9 with a pair of three-loss seasons in 1990-91.

“I’m five feet ten inches tall, weigh 152 pounds, speak with a lisp, and appear to be afflicted with a combination of beriberi and scurvy," Holtz once said.

All true, but the man could coach.