SI‘s Richard Deitsch reports that Lou Holtz is out at ESPN.
SI.com learned over the weekend that ESPN has parted ways with Lou Holtz, who had been a college football studio analyst with the network since 2004 and worked most notably with host Rece Davis and analyst Mark May on ESPN’s Saturday College Football Final pregame, halftime and postgame studio coverage. Holtz was also a regular contributor to SportsCenter and ESPN Radio. The decision, according to sources, was closer to a mutual agreement between the parties than Holtz getting forced out. The 78-year-old said last May that he would retire from broadcasting after the 2014 season though at the time the network said Holtz had not informed them of such thinking.
Asked why it parted with Holtz, an ESPN spokesperson said via email: “Lou brought a champion’s perspective and a legacy of accomplishment to our coverage along with his distinctive style and humor. We appreciate his contributions and wish him all the best in the future.”
While the normal reaction from a college football fan with a functioning brain to news like this would be something on the order of “jeez, what took you so long, Mickey?”, Deitsch gives us a dose of unintentional hilarity with this: “There are plenty in Bristol who knew the Holtz-Mark May shtick was long past its shelf life and this is a good time to change things up.”
Oh, really?
I don’t know how anyone up there could have gotten that impression. And I don’t have much faith that the same people in charge who thought crap like that was worth broadcasting regularly are going to do a bang up job with the retooling.
Get The Picture 
So glad Paw Paw is gone. It was unwatchable. Sure hoe Mark May is on the way out as well.
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That was unintentional……..”hope” HAHA
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Freudian slip?
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Well miss Lou when The Old Ball Coach gets there in a year or so..if ESPN dares to risk it.
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Are you kidding? Spurrier would be as much of an improvement over Holtz at ESPN as he was at South Carolina.
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I agree,. What I’m saying is he would almost certainly go out of his way to piss Georgia fans off..Maybe.
Maybe he’s mellowed.
But I agree..he’d be entertaining and I’d enjoy watching…I think.
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Possibly the greatest title ever for a post ever. This was certainly a long time coming. But I sort of can’t help but feel a little sorry for Loose Boltz. As much as I loathe Spurrier and am getting pissed just thinking about how much fun he would have at our expense in such a roll, he would be pretty damned entertaining. Rece Davis is the only one left that is consistently good. The rest of them are unwatchable.
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Agree on the title
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That is really good news but you have to wonder about a management team that took that long to realize how badly Holtz was playing to their audience. And one that recently hired F-Bomb for the SEC job. I will continue to stay away for all but live college football, and the Thursday/Friday rounds of major golf tournaments. I fear Holtz will pop up somewhere to cater to the football fans in NJ, NY, and CT, most of whom still think he is the HC for the Irish (it has to be the only reason the WWL was blind to his being a laughing stock what….almost twenty years?)
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Isn’t Rece Davis taking over GameDay from Fowler? So maybe they’ll revamp the whole format…and forget to tell Mark May to where to show up.
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Lou Holtz never ever picked a former team of his to lose. It wasn’t just the Golden Domers it was all of them. He was totally biased toward his former teams. Heck he would pick William & Mary if they were playing the Greenbay Packers. He was a good not great HC but he was also a mean little SOB.
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There is a definite shakeup happening at ESPN. They also declined to renew Bobby Knight’s contract too.
With Rece taking over for Fowler, the highlight show was going to be retooled anyway.
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I’m with Athens Dog. There is a God, after al..
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Itth a thad day when there ith no Dr. Lou.
Holtz was interesting, 20+ years ago, because he remained a cheerleader for a school that ran him off for trying to undermine the school’s academic integrity. Maybe Holtz thought folks would not believe the stories if he posed as an Irish cheer-puppet.
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Maybe they will take Finebaum off our hands
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I guess Im the only one that loved listening to Lou Holtz, I will miss him. Who cares if he always picked his old teams? I don’t care what any of those guys on ESPN pick. All the other guys take themselves too seriously and try too hard to be witty and just use cliche after cliche after cliche. You never knew what was going to come out of Lou’s mouth, besides a little spit. At least he was interesting and funny.
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I never liked listening to Holtz talk. Yes he was ND guy but he also couldn’t look at them objectively. Sometimes he was just plain absurd when talking about them. He and Skip Bayless were just about the only two people that picked ND over Ala in the Championship game a few years ago. On the other hand he was one of the few talking heads that said UGA was going to beat Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl, Lou actually laughed when others talking about how the Dawgs had never faced an offense like Rainbow Warriors.
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Holtz out?! Does former Dawg QB Dee Shay Shhocklan know about this?
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Kay Kay Pow One Chuchdown?
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Never listen to these guys anyway.
Simply watch the games with the mute on or volume down.
All commentators are biased…just the way life.
No big deal.
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