I've followed Louisiana Tech for 50 years...and while it has been a very rough two years for Tech athletics, we've survived worse. We've always bounced back before, and I believe this to be the first step toward our future. I wish Skip and his family the best.
We'll never know what would have happened moving forward. In year one I doubt most of us (myself included) would have expected the bowl streak or 9 and 10 win seasons.
It's always really risky to change coaches. Always.
But as conservative as I am on this kind of thing, the ODU loss was the turning point in my mind towards "maybe it's time." The USM loss with no QB solidified it.
I wish him well in his next gig. I do think he has some valuable coaching skills that some other program could benefit from. He might be a hard sell for an AD at the moment because of the way things are ending at Tech, but a program looking for stability could do worse.
I just really didn't think it would happen.
It's going to be an interesting year to be looking. On one hand there are a ton of openings (with more coming). On the other, maybe we get a recently fired guy like a Mullen or Paterson for a couple of years that we'd otherwise not been able to afford while previous school pays them. Not sure we'd want either of those two specifically, but same principle.
His next gig will not be anything to do with coaching football.
This is the dirty side of the business, but I'm not sure this could have been handled any better than it appears to be going down.
I appreciate what Holtz brought to Ruston, and we will all be able to remember the good times much more fondly with it going down this way now than waiting until later to get it done.
He’s a nice guy, I wish him well, but it was time. Good luck coach Holtz…. I hear ULL may have an opening you could fill
Maybe we can keep him on in a diminished capacity....like OC or QB coach.
Running for cover now!
That said, I wish him well. He seems like a good fellow. I feel for anyone that loses a job they love, but I'd feel worse if it was the guy that cleans the stadium after the games because he'd be in much worse shape financially. Skip has been well paid and will be fine.
Good luck to Skip! I have nothing against him - he just wasn't right for us and we need someone that will shake things up and win again.
We were at the very bottom. He led us there. Now y’all carry on with the Skip praise.
Tech and northeast finna swap HCs.