Winter 2026 Delta Upsilon Quarterly

Delta Upsilon mourns the loss of Brother Louis L. Holtz, Kent State ’59, who passed away on March 4, 2026. Brother Holtz is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and had a 34-year coaching career, most notably at the University of Notre Dame. He is the only college football coach to lead six different programs to bowl games, as well as four different programs to final top 20 rankings. He led the Fighting Irish to win the 1988 national championship and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2020.

Brother Holtz was born Jan. 6, 1937, and grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio. While a student at Kent State University, he was a member of Delta Upsilon, a walk-on for the football team, and a part of Kent State's U.S. Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps where he earned a commission as a Field Artillery Officer. He began his coaching career in 1960 as a graduate assistant at the University of Iowa, where he received his master's degree. Then, after several stops as an assistant coach, Holtz took his first head coaching job in 1969 at the College of William & Mary. He also went on to head coaching roles NC State University, University of Arkansas, University of Minnesota, Notre Dame, and University of South Carolina. He also spent one season as head coach of the New York Jets. He wrote or contributed to writing 10 books and spent time as a college football TV analyst.

While his coaching record speaks to his success, Brother Holtz is also widely regarded for his philosophy as a coach and his ability to build his players into good teammates and human beings.

In 2015, Holtz was on hand to accept DU’s inaugural Holtz-Munson Award of Merit in Sports at the Leadership Institute in Atlanta. The award is named after Brother Holtz and Brother Thurman Munson, Kent State ’69, who served as captain of the New York Yankees. As he spoke to the LI crowd, Holtz talked about his coaching philosophy and how it also relates to Delta Upsilon.

“A fraternity is no more than different than a football team or a family,” Holtz said. “The first thing you have to do is you got to be able to build a trust among each other. If you can't trust one another, you have no team. You have no organization. And if I was head of a fraternity and we're going to go recruit people, I want to get somebody that I can trust. If they say they're going to do something, they're going to back up. They're going to be a person of their word. And they're going to do the right thing.”

For Holtz, the three most important aspects of creating a good team and fraternity were a shared vision, trust and a commitment to excellence.

“Whatever we're going to do, we're going to do the very best of our ability,” he said. “Not everybody can be all-American, not everybody can be first. Everybody can be the best they can be.”

Brother Holtz is preceded in death by his wife of 59 years, Beth. The couple had four children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.