Wins, Losses, and Lessons

Legendary football coach and motivational speaker Lou Holtz writes his inspirational autobiography, from his years in the military to making Notre Dame a national champion and turning South Carolina into a winning program.

Few people in the history of college sports have been more influential or had a bigger impact than Lou Holtz. Winner of the three national Coach of the Year honors, the only coach ever to lead six different schools to season-ending bowl games, and the ninth-winningest coach in college football history, Holtz is still teaching and coaching, although he is no longer on the gridiron.

In his most telling work to date, the man still known as “Coach” by all who cross his path reveals what motivated a rail-thin 135-pound kid with marginal academic credentials and a pronounced speech impediment to play and coach college football, and to become one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in history. With unflinching honesty and his trademark dry wit, Holtz goes deep, giving us the intimate details of the people who shaped his life and the decisions he would make that shaped the lives of so many others.

His is a storied career, and Holtz provides a frank and inside look at the challenges he overcame to turn around the programs at William and Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, and Minnesota. From growing up in East Liverpool, Ohio, to his early days as a graduate assistant at the University of Iowa, to his national championship runs at Notre Dame and his final seasons on the sidelines in South Carolina, Lou Holtz gives his best, a poignant, funny, and instructive look into a life well lived.

Author Biography

No one has seen as much as Coach Lou Holtz, and no one is in as much demand. He has shared his strategies for success with Fortune 500 companies, groups and organizations. He was voted the top motivationsal speaker two years running by a survey of speakers’ bureaus. Many companies have taken on his bestseller Winning Every Day (HarperBusiness) as their company Bible. (International Paper, a $35 billion a year company with 110,000 employees uses it religiously.) He coached Notre Dame to a national title in 1988; was twice voted Coach of the Year (1977 and 1988). In almost thirty years on the field, he coached at six different schools: William